“You have to stay with one church . . . I am telling you. Stay with THIS church. . . .You are a man of God but I can see the confusion and the darkness in your eyes. I have the spiritual discernment to see it. You can’t just go wondering from church to church. There is a spirit behind it. If you decide to stay with OUR church right now then God will deliver you from it. . . You are a wondering spirit . . . You must make this decision NOW. You are going to be either in or out . . . You are struggling; I can see it in your eyes.” Before we parted ways to go home, they asked me “So what’s it going to be? Are you in or out” I said I’m in.

In the first month I attended, they kept on asking me if I’ll be at the next conference or outreach or men’s discipleship. If I didn’t show up for an event, they would phone me at least ten times. Whenever I arrived at a church service after missing one of these events, I was questioned on why I didn’t go, where I was, and what I was doing.

The attendees didn’t usually speak to members of the opposite gender. The men and the women mostly stayed in their own little ‘clicks’. But after one service I happened to be speaking with one of the women there. She told me that the other members at the church were expecting her to get involved in too much too soon and that she didn’t feel she was ready for that kind of commitment yet. She said they were making her feel guilty for not doing everything they wanted.

The Pastor was John Onelum. He claimed to be God’s oracle and said that you cannot accomplish God’s will unless you are aligned to the Potters House leadership. While attending that church, I quickly became aware that they have a reporting Structure: i.e. using members to spy on other members and pass on information to the leadership. Pastor Onelum used this technique when using certain individuals as ‘middle-men’ between him and other church members to fish out information. On the pulpit, the pastor would then use that information to his advantage. Things that church members said in private would often come up in the next sermon.

During sermons he tried to play games with people’s minds. From his conduct on the pulpit, it was as if he was trying to guess what his congregation were thinking. And then would attempt to counteract what he thought his congregation were thinking. Many of his sermons were designed to condemn and pull people down and were full of agendas. From the pulpit he kept targeting individual members without mentioning their names but in a way that they would know who he was talking about. Then if he were ever to be challenged on this, he could easily deny it.

There was a sermon he preached that really stuck out. I have listened to literally thousands of sermons from different ministries. But this was the worst sermon I had ever heard in my life! It lasted for about 45 minutes so he had plenty of time to quote scripture. But hardly any scripture was ever quoted. Maybe two verses at themost. Here are some of the things that were said: . . . “If you want to be a winner, you have to be ungrateful and arrogant.” . . . “You’re not trying hard enough. You are not doing enough. You are not good enough” . . . “Upset with me? Want a fight?” . . . The whole sermon was designed to provoke anger towards him. He said that soon he would start a competition he called ‘the fruit challenge’, wherein members would be called up to the pulpit in front of the congregation to give a report of how many converts they won over and how many people they preached to. He said “What you will see, if you haven’t left by then, is there are two types of people. Winners and losers.” . . . “If you want to be a loser, you can go to another church.” He put extra emphasis on certain key words, such as ‘loser’ while making eye contact. At the end of that service he gave an altar call and kept saying over and over again “Confess your sins at the alter” and “Begin at the altar to win,” implying that only a loser would not answer the altar call.

From the pulpit, he enjoyed mocking church members that come home from a long hard days work and are too tired to make it to the Wednesday night service. During a home Bible study at Pastor Onelum’s house, half the people there began to mock and laugh about people who are over weight. Onelum said that being fat is actually a sin and is a sign of a lack of discipline. Another said if a person is over weight, it is proof they don’t fast. Absolute rubbish!

In another sermon he went into detail about “nurturing converts” and “keeping them in the church.” And while speaking of this he said “This is not control and manipulation.” When he said this, I thought; ‘you liar!’ He said it is important that disciples should ‘keep and maintain fruit’, (fruit meaning people). Concerning discipleship he said “you have to be committed to the people you work with and that if you don’t do these things you will not make disciples.” But that is not scriptural. We are supposed to come to Jesus, not to an organization. Jesus said ‘come unto ME’ (Matthew 11:28). And we are not meant to manipulate people to maintain fellowship with the body of Christ. Jesus said: no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father. (John 6:65) and: No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him (John 6:44)

I have a permanently damaged shoulder which came as a result of a very serous injury and its movement is restricted. It was broken but didn’t heal properly and needed 2 operations. On a regular basis, towards the end of a service, the pastor asked anyone who had pain in their body or sickness to raze their hand and come to the front. Two women and I went onward. One of the women had reoccurring back pain which continued to return after the service as well as subsequent healing attempts. The other woman had a cold. The pastor asked each person where there pain was. Then, one at a time he placed his hand firmly on our heads while praying dramatically in a loud voice while the congregation stretched their hands forward at us while speaking in tongues all at once at the same time. He then asked each woman if they were healed and they said yes. When he came to me, he did the same thing. I said; ‘no the pain and restriction is still there‘. So again he laid hands on me and each time this happened, the behaviour of the pastor and congregation became even more intense and loud. I gave the same response so he did it a third time. Again I told him it wasn’t healed. When he saw it wasn’t working he said the healing might take time and said; ‘I’ll pray for you.’ It seemed that all this hype and tongues speaking was being used as a thought stopping technique to manipulate the congregation and implant a form of control into their sub-conscious minds as a way to squelch critical thinking about these false heelings.

While the church was packing away the chairs, I noticed one of the elders (Manish) was talking with the pastor. When we all got out of the building, Manish walked up to me and said; “I want you to be honest with me. Do you have a grudge against your father, sister or mother? Is there any unforgiveness?” I asked him why he would suddenly ask a question like that. He said that people who don’t forgive, don’t get healed. So I answered his question and said no, and asked him where in the Bible he got this from. He couldn’t give me an answer, but he kept asking me the same question in different ways, and asking me if I was sure. He must have asked me about 7 or 8 times at least. The reason for his persistence was because he was playing a mind game. When I said no, he was not satisfied with my answer and wanted me to give in and say yes.

Sometimes the Potters House have men’s discipleship classes. These are a series of sermons intended only for the men to hear. Women are not aloud to attend. Lesley the church elder, invited me to a men’s discipleship at Pastor Nick Kyriacou’s church at Southend-on-Sea. I asked him why it was exclusively for men and what these classes were meant to accomplish. He said it is to weed out all the homosexuals and the perverts. The implication in what he said was if you don’t go to the men’s discipleship then that means you are either a pervert or a homosexual.

I missed the first men’s discipleship class. After the next church service, Lesley asked me again if I would be going to the next men’s discipleship class. I said I’ll see. So he said; “One day the man of God will rise up in you and you will awake from your slumber.”

At another service, Lesley greeted me and within no time he asked; “Are you still church hopping?” I asked him what he meant. “Hopping around from church to church;” he said. I told him I was thinking of checking out some more churches and when I said that, he said in an assertive voice; “Let’s erase that thought from your mind.”

There was a conversation I had with an established member at that congregation. He referred to everything other than the Potters House as ‘the outside world’. Through a set of loaded questions, he tried to lead me into saying that to get to heaven you must live an obedient lifestyle; in other words, this was a sly, roundabout way of teaching salvation by works without actually saying it blatantly. It was very similar to the method the Jehovah's Witnesses use, i.e. the elder directs the member to read a paragraph from their publication, and then presents a question based on the paragraph. He tried to back up what he was getting at by saying that that the Israelites didn’t reach the promise land because of disobedience.

Frequently pastors from other Potters House congregations arrived as a guest speaker. I noticed that every time a visiting pastor preached, Pastor John Onelum never sat with the 15 or so people in the congregation. Instead he sat in the corner at the very back of the hall at least 20 feet away from us. I thought it was strange.

One visiting preacher in particular was Pastor Yaw Osie Bobie. He said you should submit to the pastor even if you disagree with him. And he said that to leave the Potters House is to leave the Kingdom of God. Yaw Osie Bobie said Eczema is related to witchcraft. He said the reason a person has eczema is either because their mother or father was involved in a secret society or in witchcraft. He said these things get passed down to the next generation.

He also said he could heal the sick. During his sermon, he made some claims that when he prayed over broken down machines including a car, a microwave and an oven, that they suddenly worked. But shortly after he said these things, in the middle of his sermon, the microphone stopped working and he didn’t even attempt to do a miracle or pray over it to get it to work. Instead he continued the sermon without it. I tried my best not to laugh and kept a straight face.

Potters House churches consider themselves as ‘a church with a difference’. But many who stay in there long enough speak and act like carbon copies of their headship. They will use the same vocabulary and the same phrases. When I speak to them its like talking to plastic. They make a big thing about not adopting man-made church traditions and dead religious routines. But in fact, their church activities are full of them. The never-ending conferences and so-called revival meetings, canned sermons and plastic testimonies, clap offerings, the altar calls, kneeling at the front, and the like; it is a religious marigoround.

Aside from being doctrinally corrupt, the Potters House is sociologically, spiritually, and mentally unhealthy. It is definitely not of God. The unchristlike character of its leaders and elders is a bad witness to people who are seeking the truth. In just about every Potters House church I have stepped into, I have observed things of this nature and much worse. Every tree is known by its fruit. Unfortunately the fruit of the Potters House is rotten to the core.

Be lead by the spirit of God, not by a cult leader. Follow Jesus Christ, not a religious organization.

Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it. (Psalms 127:1)