Another Story of Betrayals and Abuse, an ex-member tells his story.

Sent to me by Anonymous 24-04-07

I was saved in 1991 and started to attend a healthy born-again church. However, on a business trip to Arizona , I was invited to a church service. It was the Potters House. I had been a rock-&-roll lover most of my life and found it exciting that the church had a band that played such music. After becoming a Christian, I was concerned that my life would be boring. The Potters House seemed vibrant and free. What an illusion. I decided to check out a service in my hometown at a local Potters House with my fiancé.

Shortly after starting the in the church I was convinced by the pastor not to attend the healthy church I was going to. My fiancé and I were immediately invited to his house to have supper with his family. It felt great having attention showered on us. At our first supper, I was placed at the head of the table and told that as the man, that was my place.

I started to go to church, revivals, morning prayers, conferences and started to shun the rest of society. I had been a member of AA and stopped going because I was told I would go to hell. My whole life became the Potters House.

I missed a service and the pastor, from the pulpit, slandered my name by telling the congregation that God had told him I was a homosexual. My fiancé broke off with me and actually became violent with me “in the name of Jesus”. I was kicked out of the church and members were told to have nothing to do with me.

Wanting to get back into the church, I attended a conference in Tuscon , Arizona . A pastor, again from the pulpit, told a very disturbing story. He said some thugs had broken the sign at his church. Instead of saying he forgave the people and hoped they would find Jesus, he said, lifting his arms up as though to fire a gun, that if he caught them, he would shoot them, screaming as he pretended to fire the gun, “in the name of Jesus”. The entire couple of thousand people stood up and started to cheer and yell and speak in tongues and cry, “AMEN”. It reminded me of a Nazi rally I had seen on TV. I immediately got up, told the people around me that they were crazy and left. But I kept going back just to be accepted and because I thought I would be out of God’s will in any other church. I was also convinced, like every other man I knew in the Potters House, that I was to be discipled to be a church-planting pastor. That became my entire self-worth.

In the meantime, the Potters House was convincing my fiancé to have nothing to do with me and they were trying to set up her up with a Potter House member for marriage and to be sent out to plant a church.

My fiancé and I started to see each other again when I got back from the conference in Arizona . I was at her house and the pastor came over, squealing his tires in the driveway, came storming into her house yelling at the top of his lungs that she was not supposed to have anything to do with me and that she was kicked out of the church. All of her church “friends” from the Potters House wouldn’t have anything to do with her.

I am still healing over the abuse. I have a harder time than ever trusting people. I still read the Bible, but sometimes it makes me angry because it reminds me of the abuse. I still have a hard time trusting born-again Christians but I’m getting better.

I’ve been a drug addict, alcoholic, criminal, divorced, in jail, homeless, abused as a child, suffer from clinical depression, but I can honestly say that my time in the Potters House was the most disturbing and damaging experience of my entire life. I truly believed God looked down on me and that I just wasn’t good enough.

My fiancé and I got married. But she had been taught a lot of mind control from the Potters House. Throughout our marriage she would yell things at me like “you need to get saved”, “Get behind me Satan”, “You’re the devil”. She learned all of this from the Potters House as she had never said those types of things to me before being exposed to the Potters House. We were both vulnerable when we went to the Potters House and they capitalized on that vulnerability.