Al Duff, can you clarify please: Who are the people whom you think should resign? Current or previous Church Treasurers or members of the Board of Management for SMC? The School is no more, so the Board of Management and Treasurer for the School have disbanded. Or do you think that current Church leaders should resign? Thanks, Al. Just wondering.
Forum: Destructive Churches

Unfortunately I do know what Mirmac is talking about because I have fallen victim to this. My identity has been revealed to others and maybe passed to SMC leaders too. I am very sad about this and it is a betrayal of confidentiality. I wish to remain anonymous on this Forum but it looks like that is not now possible. I am not the only one whose identity has been revealed and caused them upset.
Forum: Destructive Churches

You had me laughing there, Mirmac, re the toilet in the vestry of the Glasgow Church. I remember there is a single toilet in there, which was used by the ministers before and after meetings. Since the majority of the ministers are female, it seems odd that it is to be made into a gents only toilet! I am being facetious here by the way. Diana was joking too, I know. I wouldn’t have thought she’d h
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Hey, Liz25’, yes I remember that day-conference at Castle Levan. Did it not take place on the Friday night aswell or on the Sunday? I can’t quite remember. How rude indeed, for a Christian minister to be so disrespectful to hotel staff. I didn’t attend; oops, once a backslider always a backslider! lol! We were encouraged to buy the tape-recordings of the meetings if we hadn’t been at the conferen
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Can you post this on the main Struthers forum, Mirmac? Are the churches thriving now? I don’t think they are, especially Glasgow. So many have left.
Forum: Destructive Churches

Firstly, welcome to Wiser and anonanon (and any other new posters I might have missed) and thanks for your posts. It has definitely been necessary to make it known about Alison Speirs and bring to light the damage she has done and how she ruined the Glasgow Church. People need to know what went on. We are all on here to support one another and listen to what each other has to say. It does
Forum: Destructive Churches

Mirmac, what phone-hacking? Who is trying to hack into phones? Is that not illegal anyway?
Forum: Destructive Churches

MW89, where are you getting it from, that the person (who wrote the testimony shared by Mirmac), who left Church of the Nazarene is saying that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true church? I may be missing something but I can’t see anything in the person’s testimony about joining the Roman Catholic Church. Church of the Nazarene is not Catholic by any means. Prayer at the altar and various t
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Thanks for all of your interesting posts. Something I have to disagree on, though, is the concept that every single member and attendee of Struthers, is responsible for the abuse of various kinds which has been meted out by the church leadership. Why I see things this way is because of the fact that we were all (or mostly all) once part of SMC and we didn’t know any better. We went to Struther
Forum: Destructive Churches

I agree with Amazing Grace that this Forum isn’t losing credibility and that there are many sincere contributors on here. This is a great Forum which has helped so many ex-SMC members over the past 14 or 15 years. I am certain that it will continue to be a site where people can have a voice after years of being held back and silenced. Thanks for your treatise concerning the financial situatio
Forum: Destructive Churches

Welcome to the Forum, Mirmac, and Thankyou for your contributions. Please pass on regards to your cousin and I hope he/she is doing OK. The answer to your question re why did others allow the over-control to go on for so long, can be found from reading many of the posts on this Forum thread. There you can read stories from ex- members of SMC which show that: anyone who tried to question the l
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Welcome to the Forum, Joe0202. As Liz25 says, it’s interesting to hear things from a different perspective. I imagine Hugh Black would have been an extremely strict Head Teacher, judging by the authority he wielded in the church where any bad behaviour was quickly squashed and a warning given either privately or publicly. I’m wondering how he dealt with any female pupils whose skirts were deemed
Forum: Destructive Churches

I really like the humorous word distortions, usually sung by children, which some contributors have posted here! ThePetitor, that’s a very suitable one for Struthers as it’s about hats! You could add, “the berets rolled away”, referring to the time when mandatory wearing of hats for women and girls ceased! Mulberry and RedRoad, I was interested, and of course concerned, to read about your frig
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Thanks for your support, rrmoderator. I agree with what you’ve said, The Greek, about this still being a safe space for people who have left SMC, to write about their experiences in this cult-like church, and to share the difficulties one can go through on leaving. Now, the more recent leavers will know what that’s like and perhaps better understand what we’ve been going through and why we hav
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Extra, why are you confused? The Cedars School started in 1999 in the old Larkfield Church building then it moved to the building in Ardgowan Square in 2004, where it was run until its closure last year. I don’t see any reason for confusion in Esme’s accounts. Children attend school for about 13 years and I’m guessing that Esme stayed in the Cedars commune when she was an older teenager.
Forum: Destructive Churches

This Forum has a Rick Ross moderator. It’s only he or she who can remove someone and his or her posts if they deem it to be necessary. This has happened in past years.
Forum: Destructive Churches

Welcome to the Forum, Shug The Pug. Yet another ex-attendee of SMC coming on here to tell us about their experience in this church. Do tell us more about your time in SMC and let us know your thoughts about what’s happening in Struthers at the present time. I’m glad you have never regretted leaving. I know what you mean about Diana’s preaching via the livestream. She comes over as very censori
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ThePetitor, No I don’t think the other leaders knew what was going on. But A Speirs was given her turn at preaching at the Summer Camps, so the other leaders would have heard her there. She made everyone laugh. People liked her funny stories. But to speak about the Black family like she did is in bad taste. By the way, who pecked Mr Black? I never saw things that way because he came over as a
Forum: Destructive Churches

Esme, I’ve copied and reposted your new message which was on the main Forum list. Polly wanted top spot Posted by: Esmespiers () Date: April 09, 2025 03:30PM Good morning everyone. Yes Petitor Sadly that vision haunted a lot of us. Especially us dog lovers, l gave you the short version. She claimed it to be cvision. My father says, " Paul ANDERSON, vi's a bit of a hypocrite. H
Forum: Destructive Churches

Firstly, thankyou to FriendlyFace for managing to acquire Pauline Anderson’s two open letters plus the reply from the Struthers Board, and for putting the links on the Forum. It has taken me some time to digest all of the content and make some comments. I’d say that Pauline has shown great courage in writing these letters to the Board. She is saying things that many of us would like to say to the
Forum: Destructive Churches

Thanks for your input re breaking of the will, RedRoad. I agree with you and others that this type of behaviour was imported into Struthers by Hugh Black due to his background and being brought up in a strict Brethren group. Breaking of the will is a means whereby people can be controlled and made to submit to leadership. It’s a technique used in many cults and it’s also in operation in communist
Forum: Destructive Churches

Hi Esmespiers Welcome to this Forum and Thankyou for your posts and detailed information. It truly is shocking about the way you were treated, especially being continuously told to go into the vestry to get prayed with, if one could call that treatment “prayer”. More like verbal and even physical abuse! What good did it serve? This “breaking of the will” concept is scary and dangerous. No other
Forum: Destructive Churches

lintar123, it sure is very concerning to think that children as young as 9 are sitting in meetings listening to Struthers sermons about “death to self” and living in holiness. I guess the same subjects are being taught in the meetings arranged for children and young people. At the present time, Struthers Cumbernauld is the only church I know of which has a sizeable number of children and teenager
Forum: Destructive Churches

Welcome to the Forum, anonymous_2023, and Thankyou for sharing your journey with such honesty and clarity. As others have said already, you have shown courage by sharing your experiences of growing up in SMC. As you’ve outlined, your difficulties in SMC seem to have been compounded by your having an outgoing personality and by witnessing the pressure your parents were put under. I am so glad that
Forum: Destructive Churches

Firstly, someone new called GentlennessandJustice posted on the Forum on 13th February (see the foot of Page 214) and I don’t think you got a welcome because your post came just before the huge flurry of discussion about Miss Taylor. So, welcome to you! RedRoad, you asked whether anyone thought there was some sort of training given in controlling others when they were being given leadership re
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Liz25, you were asking what the iPad carry-on was. Well, in 2010, the Cedars School in Greenock introduced iPads to the school, supplying an iPad for every single pupil to be used for teaching, homework, art, everything really. Cedars was the first school in the UK to have a 1:1 iPad deployment for the pupils and the story made it into national and local newspapers. Alison Speirs’s son, Fraser, w
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Hi GirlWiston I’ve had some thoughts about your list of questions. I’m not able to give a lot of details because I’m still not comfortable with revealing my identity on here and personal details would give too much away. You left Struthers a long time ago, GirlWiston, whereas many posters on the Forum have left SMC in more recent years and might be wary of revealing too much. All I can say is
Forum: Destructive Churches

I’m sorry, Al Duff, but I don’t think it is right for any Minister or Pastor to tell people whom they should or should not marry. They might confirm it but it shouldn’t be necessary to ask for permission from a Pastor to marry someone. That is getting into the realm of control and is what cults tend to do. Issues of the heart which lead to marriage should be between you and your partner alone, an
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GirlWiston, first of all apologies. I had got your story mixed up with RedRoad’s and hadn’t double-checked that it was RedRoad who had written about being terrified of Miss Taylor. I’m glad that she liked you and was helpful to you. Would this be because she felt that you’d been set apart, as you said in a previous post, and were to be trained for future leadership? I very rarely had one to o
Forum: Destructive Churches

I haven’t posted on here for some time, but I do continue to follow this Forum and have greatly enjoyed reading all of the recent posts. It’s so good to see such continual activity and to see posts from new contributors too. So, welcome to the forum, ATheist 101, Iquitthestrutherscult, Blacksheep57, Mulberry and WestofEast. Also Welcome, Lesley and Liz25 and Thankyou both for speaking so honestl
Forum: Destructive Churches