This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Episode 025 – SPECIAL EPISODE: Loren Cunningham, YWAM Founder (& Cult Leader?) Just Died … Entanglements with Keith Green and Last Days Ministries

October 9^th, 2023

T: Hi, I’m Tracey.

S: And I’m Sharon. And we are Feet of Clay…

T: Confessions of the Cult Sisters! And Sharon, our cult sisterhood actually goes back to the cult commune Last Days Ministries, started by Keith Green, which was a ranch down the street from the Youth With A Mission Tyler Base, which was located in the Garden Valley Lindale area.

S: Of Texas! Of East Texas.

T: Of East Texas.

S: And that was back in the late 1970s. There were many para-church type ministries who had moved into East Texas, into that Lindale Garden Valley area. I do not know why, I don’t know what happened to create the draw there, but it did form a pretty unique neighborhood of contemporary Christian musicians. We had Second Chapter of Acts; Dallas Holm and Praise; Keith Green; at some point Jimmy and Carol Owens; Silverwind; Barry McGuire – just a whole bunch of musicians. And also this post-Jesus movement ministries. Youth With A Mission moved in in 1980. They purchased 365 acres, a property that was known then as Twin Oaks Ranch. That originally belonged to David Wilkerson. He’s the guy who wrote Cross and the Switchblade, and other books.

T: Yes. They actually made a movie. I went to that in my youth group, and the big repeatable draw was, God loves Nicky Cruz. And the CHiPs guy. He was the star. He was Nicky Cruz in the movie.

S: You are dating yourself so badly there, Tracey.

T: I know. But I was very, very much a fan of David Wilkerson and the Cross and the Switchblade.

S: Yeah, so this was like a mecca of a whole lot of Christian superstars in that area, right?

T: Yes.

S: So, Youth With A Mission comes in, and they set up a big training and outreach headquarters. I don’t know if it was the biggest one in the US or not; I’m not sure. They ran a lot of training schools – DTSs, Discipleship Training Schools, but really Tracey, these were more accurately recruiting schools, right. This was a recruiting mechanism. Yes there was training, but it’s really like, the first hit to get their hooks in and bring you onto staff, or you’re going to pay, and pay, and pay, and pay. Youth With A Mission was founded by Loren Cunningham.

T: Yes. And we’ll get into the nuts and bolts of that training school here in a minute, but that of course is why we’re doing this special broadcast, Sharon. Loren Cunningham is the subject of this episode because yesterday, October 6^th, was the day we saw the news splashed across social media announcing that Loren Cunningham had passed away.

S: Yeah. Let me just read real quickly some online obituary highlights. Here it goes: “Youth With A Mission founder and international chancellor of YWAM’s University of the Nations” (a side from Sharon and Tracey, we’re going to talk about how that wasn’t really a university, was it?)

T: No, it was not.

S: Sorry. I digress. “Loren Cunningham lost his battle to stage four cancer on Friday. Cunningham’s staff shared in a web statement; ‘Loren was the first person in history to travel to every sovereign nation on earth, all dependent countries, and more than 100 territories and islands for the sake of Christ and the Great Commission. (Mark 16:15)’” Okay, this is Sharon’s commentary again. Really? For the sake of Christ? Eewugh. Maybe not for the sake of ego and bragging rights? Okay, stop Sharon. Go back to the quote. Continuing on. “Now he has added one more ‘stamp’ to his well worn passport – heaven! Cunningham was diagnosed with stage four cancer back in March, which had spread to his lungs, bones and lymphatic system. He was determined however, to continue on with his ministerial efforts of serving the Lord and others until he was called home.”

T: Well, we of course knew this day was coming, Sharon.

S: Yeah, cos we had heard months ago that he had been diagnosed with stage four cancer. He’s 88 years old, so we figured it would be imminent. We also knew that in the wake of his death there would be thousands, or tens of thousands maybe, of posts, messages, and online forums highlighting the amazing legacy of Loren Cunningham, and Youth With A Mission.

T: Yeah, and we’re just a little over 24 hours since this news broke, and that is true. Also there is a community of people out there who are survivors of Youth With A Mission, who have been very hurt and abused through the years.

S: Decades.

T: Decades. So that’s one of the reasons we wanted to get right on here and say Sharon, we know a different side of this story. A different part of his legacy, don’t we Sharon.

S: Yah, yeah we do. Sadly we do. So, in anticipation of this news, knowing that Loren’s time on earth was going to be short, we’d already started to collect some stories from former YWAMers. I mean, they are just heart wrenching stories. People who have suffered trauma and abuse through this organization. It’s amazing to me how it’s flown under the radar for so, so long.

T: It has. That’s part of one of the reasons we started collecting those stories, because we wanted to start to unpack and we will, in a future episode we’re going to do it way more justice than this one, but we wanted to get this one out as soon as we could. But as we’ve heard from those survivors, and many who have agreed to come on our podcast and share those stories, we realize how many people need to be aware of the dangers of this organization. Now I will say, it has been able to fly under the radar for a very long time, but there are more and more stories coming to light all the time. I’ve noticed especially, I would say even in the last six to eight months, when I google, I’m finding way more stories that start to surface when you type in YWAM abuse, YWAM is a cult, YWAM trauma, and there are more stories that are out there, and more people that are willing to come forward. We’re going to do our best to platform some of those stories.

S: Yeah. One of the things that has been most striking, as we’ve started to gather the stories of other people, is how fucking similar it is to our own experience – what happened with us at Last Days, with Youth With A Mission, and that’s more than 30 years ago, right?

T: Yes, and it’s a bit chilling when i think about it.

S: Holy shit, wait, wait. Holy shit. It was 40 years ago, Tracey! 40 years ago.

T: 40 years ago!

S: Yeah.

T: And our name, Confessions of the Cult Sisters, ties back to Last Days Ministries, but we are absolutely one of the stories of the abuse and trauma from Youth With A Mission, because they were so connected.

S: Yeah.

T: There’s been a playbook in place that of course, back when we were cult sisters in our teens, we had no fucking clue.

S: No, we didn’t.

T: We were really blinded to that, and I would say even as we’ve been collecting these stories in just the last six months, it’s been whoa, wait, that’s exactly what happened to us! That’s almost word for word the same scriptures used; the same stories told. This, we realized, has been a playbook that has been in place -, as you so eloquently and painfully reminded me – 40 years. And what has been even more heart wrenching is, you know as time goes on, some people learn, they grow more mature, things get better, the stories we’ve been hearing – it’s gotten even worse, Sharon.

S: Yeah. And the reason they can do this is because of sincere desire, sincere passion, sincere commitment on the parts of young people. Trust – right? We look to these leaders and we’re like oh my gosh, well of course they’re going to be pure in heart for God and non-questioning – then if you do try and question, they smash it down. But I’m getting ahead of what we want to talk about.

T: No, that’s really good, because we’re going to go ahead and start where our story begins to segment into Youth With A Mission. I was very much a young teen, so I came – as people will have heard, if you are a listener and you’ve heard some of our story you’ll know a little bit of this, and if not, we’ll put it in the show notes so that you can catch up. But I attended the first Intensive Christian Training school that Last Days Ministries had. Now Sharon, I notice that Youth With A Mission didn’t move into that area until 1980 and you guys moved into Garden Valley in 1979.

S: Yeah, we got there in 1979, so a year before.

T: Right. So do you have any memories of Youth With A Mission coming into that area?

S: Well, just knowing that they were buying David Wilkerson’s big, giant property, which was pretty damn expensive and pretty damn impressive, so they had to have some bucks to do that, for sure.

T: Yeah. So I’m a teenager on the other side of Texas – I was still in Texas – reading faithfully the newsletter and in many issues in 1979 it would say specifically say please don’t come, please don’t show up, we are not a training school. Then at some point in 1982, Last Days Ministries did start a training school.

S: Let me just back up with that. One of the issues was that we had this ever growing demand for our literature; for the magazine; for the tracts; for Keith’s albums, and we are already working six days a week, 10-12 hours a day, and people wanted to come and volunteer but then they’d show up and work with us and it’s like, oh, they’re not quite holy enough, or they’re not committed enough, or they’re grumblers and complainers, or whatever. And I’m sure Keith had really looked into the Youth With A Mission DTS – Discipleship Training School – format, which is a wonderful way to get people to conform and to control them. So he decided what we need to do is we need to grow our own. So what we need to do is make sure these people just buy into what we’re selling. We can get them to become staff members who are willing to work these ungodly hours and that was the impetus for the school, was really to make it easier to find staff people who would be compliant and not cause problems.

T: And it was already a model that was successful for Youth With A Mission.

S: Right.

T: At the time that I arrived, I didn’t know about Youth With A Mission so I really thought it was a very separate concept. Of course as time has gone on and then eventually as I began to work in the school, it’s like this model is the exact same model, which later TeenMania would borrow from, IHOP Kansas City would borrow from, I think at the time Agape Force was already using – and this is how it works, folks. You pay to go be trained at whatever ministry that you have a lot of respect for. So part of your tuition…

S: Wait. You mean at whatever base, when you say whatever ministry.

T: Yes, but if you were going to Agape Force, if you were going to TeenMania, if you were going to IHOP Kansas City, it’s like you want to be around all these godly people from whatever place that it is, and every one of these ministries has this model of training that began with Youth With A Mission.

S: With Loren Cunningham. It began with Loren Cunningham’s vision, and Youth With A Mission.

T: Yes, and I was one of those, and so I did pay, and I remember working and it was the time I was still working in the world, and I didn’t want my parents to have to pay for it so I saved up all of my money and emptied my savings account so I could pay for this tuition, and most of the day was spent working at the ministry. I never thought anything of it, right. You work part of the day, you do have classes, but one of the odd things that I remember thinking was odd, even at the time, was it was mostly on video tape. We had very few live teachers. As I would come to work in the school, that was part of the model as well. These Youth With A Mission teachers would have a live speaking course where people would videotape them, and the majority of your courses were sitting a room, watching a video monitor. Then you’d load up and go to work all day. Part of the model that I’ve seen in almost every story that we’ve talked to is the curriculum. You have the same teachers that are visiting all these bases. There’s an openness and brokenness session, and that started in the first ICT. Usually the Youth With A Mission teachers that were involved in that were Kalafi Moala, John Dawson, Bruce Thompson, and it was really imperative that at some point in the school you broke everybody down where they would confess, in a group setting,…

S: And cry. You needed to cry if you were sincere.

T: And cry. And that was a test. That was part of the test that I can see so clearly now, but at the time I’m oh. For me it was that my father was an alcoholic. That was our big family secret. So then you bond with this leadership in this very unsafe way when you’re in a group setting like that, and you become very attached to this leadership model. The model works, as you go through the ICT training school, you get broken down, you’re taught this obedience, you’re taught this leadership structure, and then if at any point you begin to hear anything you think would be from God, or your intuition or anything inside that could be saying something different than your leadership, part of that teaching is you are wrong and they are right, because God wouldn’t call you to go to a ministry school if he didn’t expect you to submit and obey them. So it becomes this very vicious circle, that happens very quickly – because it’s in a ten week period of time, or a three month period of time, according to the different bases. So you’re paying to work; you’re being broken down; you’re being indoctrinated with a very specific slate of teachings; and then if you are successful, you can go through – in ICT it was a second term, in Youth With A Mission it then becomes a School of Evangelism. That’s kind of the next step.

S: Right.

T: Which then you have to pay for to be a participant of. And then there’s an internship phase, where you still have to pay and support yourself. Last Days at least brought you on to staff, but Youth With A Mission staff – still you raise your own support, and you continue to pay the base a portion of that. That’s the school model.

S: Yep, that’s the school model. I wanted to call out one other thing that’s definitely a part of the school, was the whole purity culture thing. It wasn’t called that then; it was Dean Sherman’s Loving, Logical Limits, and it was all about sex – or it was about don’t have sex, and don’t think sex, and don’t be a sexual being. All that stuff. That was huge, so that indoctrination was a major part of it as well. We had one other lovely thing we did at Last Days. We took these teachings, these video indoctrination sessions, and we converted them in to written articles that first appeared in our magazine, and then they became pamphlets or tracts so we could indoctrinate hundreds of thousands more people via print, right?

T: Yeah, and I never even thought of it.

S: No.

T: I never realized how much we were producing so many of the teachings of Youth With A Mission leaders. Never thought of it, Sharon.

S: Yeah. And I think our reach was far wider than Youth With A Mission’s to be honest with you at that time. We had our magazine with hundreds of thousands of names; we’re mailing this stuff out. We had a really organized machine, a really systematic way of reaching people to the max. that became something that Youth With A Mission was very appreciative of, if we want to call it appreciative.

T: Yeah. I mean, when you step back and you look at this organization that now is following that model and recruiting a very – honestly Sharon, I always likened it that I thought we were like the special forces of evangelism, right?

S: Yeah. Well, we thought we were holier. We definitely thought we were holier than YWAM. Even thought we were using their teachings, we thought our hearts were purer, we were more committed, we were the more serious followers of Jesus.

T: Yes. We’ll get into some more reasons for that, but when I look back and I think of – as later I would work in the school and it was my job to write the honorariums for the guest speakers that we did have, which were mainly Youth With A Mission – I would say all Youth With A Mission, but there was a couple, like George Verwer from Operation Mobilization who would visit. I know it was an honor to come to Last Days – (a) you’d get paid, and most likely your teaching would get videotaped. Eventually we would have a video and tape department Sharon, where we would sign people up for a teaching of the month club, where we would mail these and give them national platforms.

S: Yeah, we did.

T: And then print their teaching in tract form which did get that hundreds of thousands of reach, which there is always opportunity then to sponsor these Youth With A Mission leaders. When this started – this didn’t start after Keith died. This started while Keith was alive. Looking back now I can see how important he was as a tool in their hand.

S: Yeah. Well, I think that where it really began in a big way was the trip that Martin and I and Keith and Melody took together, to be a vacation. I think it was like a combination, maybe it was sort of a delayed honeymoon for me and Martin cos we’d only had a couple of days.

T: Good evangelical honeymoon!

S: Yeah. Keith wanted a vacation or a break, so the four of us were going to go to Europe together. Keith said hey, it’s not going to be fun on my own, you guys gotta go. You gotta go, so we did. But at some point, and it probably happened before we actually even got on the plane, some of the bases of Youth With A Mission started extending invitations for us to come and visit them; to come and see what God is doing. I remember we went to Switzerland, the base there – think it’s in Lausanne, right?

T: Mmhmm.

S: We went to Amsterdam with Floyd and Sally McClung. Our really only true vacation part of it was we did go to Italy for a couple of days, to Venice.

T: They weren’t trying to save Italians, so there was no base there?

S: [laughing] I don’t know. And then we wound up taking a last minute – this was not on the itinerary, but we went to Greece, where Don and Deyon Stevens were commissioning the Anastasis – I don’t know, it was kind of a brand new thing with their Mercy Ships. The whole thing turned into a YWAM publicity tour, really. I mean, YWAM trying to recruit Keith, I think that’s really what that was. And they did a good job of it.

T: Could you pick any of that up while you were there, or were you just still young and naïve?

S: No. I was all dewy-eyed and yes, this is the work of God and Jesus and reaching the nations. Yeah, I bought into it too, totally.

T: You know something, we’ll mention John Dawson who was a teacher, and whose message became a tract, the Father Heart of God. You’ve heard a lot of our stories; you know a lot of us came from trauma and traumatic families, and I put Keith in that category as well. Somebody who really was looking for a father figure as well. I know the story of he and Leonard, but I think some of that working of YWAM was also kind of fulfilling that role in him. They were affirming him; they were telling him what an awesome reach he had, how anointed he was, how God wanted to use him, and I think that was an important hook for Keith as well.

S: Mmhmm. And Keith – I think he was sincere. He was sincere in his belief in Jesus. He was sincere in his intensity of – man, it’s all for Jesus. If it’s true, go all in. All in, all in, all in. That’s what he was doing and YWAM pointed an arrow and said this is the way to go, and he jumped on board, big time.

T: Yes. And I would say pointed an arrow and said this is a man we want to be tied to.

S: Well, because Keith could do a lot for them. Keith could do a LOT for them.

T: He could do a lot, and we will start to get into some numbers in a little bit, and we’ll show exactly what he did.

S: Yeah. I think that we had a few casual kind of meetings with Loren and Darlene as well. I do remember spending a little bit of time with them, but Keith did really feel drawn to Loren Cunningham. Part of that is probably, you know, head of ministry to head of ministry stuff – probably.

T: And he’s older. I think Loren even talks about – you know, you have this comet. He’s been described as this blazing comet, and you see …

S: Who described? You mean Keith described?

T: Yeah, Keith is like this bundle of passion right, and you have Loren Cunningham who is an older man at that time, and I could see that that would be a draw for Keith as well.

S: Wait, wait. Let’s also say this. “Older man at that time”?

T: Mmhmm.

S: He was in his mid 40s!

T: But Keith was 28.

S: True.

T: And I don’t know if you remember when you were 28.

[laughter]

S: That’s right, I would have thought somebody 40 was older and wiser.

T: You would have. And you would have been a little impressed.

S: Yeah. Not just a little. Yes.

T: But while I thought it was a great example of sharing, right, Christian sharing – they’re sharing some of their teachings; we’re sharing some of our stuff, I didn’t realize how much we were fitting into the playbook of YWAM that would continue to repeat itself in story after story after story.

S: Mmhmm.

T: So you guys went to Europe. You – as a younger person you were probably impressed too, going to bases all over the world.

S: Oh yeah.

T: Sounds impressive. We did shift courses upon their return, as far as going to decide to do a concert blitz.

S: Yep. And I think it was after we came back from Europe that I wrote the so-unfortunate article, Should a Christian Go to College. Which was a whole emotional manipulation on no, you should drop out of school and go become a missionary, aka YWAM. So I played into it too, big time.

T: Yes. Keith wrote two new songs that changed the course of where we were heading as a ministry.

S: It did change the course, because what previously had been about become a Christian and get serious about Jesus and love your neighbors and feed the poor, now became don’t just become a Christian, but become a Christian and go to missions. Youth With A Mission.

T: Yes. Youth With A Mission. And you know, the famous quote of “if you haven’t heard otherwise, you are called to go”, right – a very extreme message that did come from Keith, that did get videotaped.

S: And what we know, from what we saw firsthand, and also what Melody wrote in the book No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green, Keith and Loren then – they’re like, brainstorming. How do we draw more people, how do we get more people into missions? So they were praying together and working together, and again, it really became a funnel from Keith’s concerts to Youth With A Mission recruitment, even before Keith died.

T: Correct.

S: And then one of those concerts got serendipitously recorded and then after the plane crash, that got rolled into this giant, huge thing, the Keith Green memorial concerts, which was again all about major emotional manipulation, that you can’t be really a serious Christian, you can’t love Jesus, unless you GO. The two songs he wrote?

T: Yeah, and those are actually my two least favorite songs of Keith. I can almost hear kind of the agenda that’s in those lyrics, which seemed a bit different than the stuff that was his more heartfelt songs. So that memorial concert tour really cemented our relationship with Youth With A Mission in a whole new way.

S: Yeah.

T: Ultimately the memorial concert tours became an incredible Youth With A Mission recruiting tool.

S: Mmhmm. You know, I’m going to jump right in and give you some numbers, folks, because this will help give some context of what happens later with YWAM and LDM. But anyway, Keith and Loren had prayed for 100,000 people to be recruited into Youth With A Mission. I think I remember hearing that that number was actually exceeded in the course of the memorial concerts; do you remember that Tracey?

T: Yes, they definitely – Loren has a video on YouTube that people can go look where he talks about that meeting and how it far exceeded what they had originally prayed and asked for.

S: Okay, so let’s take the minimum numbers, you know I’m always about follow the money, because that tells you a lot of what’s really going on. So let’s assume that they only recruited 100,000 people, though we’re told it’s more. So these folks come in, and they’re going to pay money to go into the DTS, the Discipleship Training School. Many of them go onto the SOE, the Schools of Evangelism, and other sort of you need to pay YWAM type programs. We’ll take a conservative estimate that each of those people paid about $4,000 for the various programs that they engaged in. So, 100,000 x 4,000, that’s $40 million to YWAM. Let’s put that into today’s money – and again, remember I’m being conservative with the total number of people, and the actual out of pockets for each. In today’s dollars, that’s $120,000,000 into Loren Cunningham’s Youth With A Mission. That doesn’t include the subsequent staff fees that anybody who stayed on would have to pay to the YWAM bases. So it’s no wonder – it’s no wonder that they did not want to let go of what Keith Green’s legacy and Last Days Ministries could provide for them.

T: Correct. But you and I and so many of the people at Last Days Ministries – we really weren’t about the money.

S: No, we were not.

T: We weren’t doing that math; we weren’t calculating it out. In good faith we were like, hey, we’re just serving God. So if you fast forward and there starts to be the issues that we were having with leadership, as Last Days was drawing to a close…

S: Well, we didn’t know it was drawing to a close. We didn’t think it was drawing to a close. What happened was, maybe three years after Keith was killed in the plane crash, Melody is just kind of getting a little bit more into – frankly, Melody. And Melody serving, and she wants to become a Christian music megastar herself, and she wants to go on concert tours, and she wants to sing, and she wants to do an album, and honestly, it just wasn’t good. I remember Buck and Annie Herring, and Steve and Nelly Greisen from Second Chapter of Acts coming over to the big cafeteria when Melody is going to do a concert, a preview for us all of this concert tour she wants to do, and Tracey – it was just bad. I mean, it just was not good. The singing wasn’t good, the songs weren’t good, it was pathetic. And really like, ooh no. Steve and Nelly and Buck and Annie – we were in the back with them and they were just kind of looking at us with their eyebrows raised like, whaat? But anyway she was so intent she said to us, unless you can tell me God said no, I’m gonna do it. And Wayne and Kathleen and me and Martin were like, this is not right. Not right, not right. We got hold of John Dawson from YWAM, who happened to be in town, and we talked to him. We said this just doesn’t seem right. He agreed with us, but John is a really soft and gentle kind of guy…

T: [laughing]

S: At least, he was then. So we ask him to help us in talking with Melody about this. It was at that point that the other four of us, Martin, me, Wayne, Kath – we all believed you know what? Last Days has run its course. We need to be done. This thing should be winding down. We were ready to donate. We were ready to donate the property; donate the assets, and let everybody just go on and do something else. However…

T: Right.

S: Go ahead.

T: So Sharon, this is where – because there’s a lot to that whole story that we will go into greater detail in later episodes, but I think the point we’re trying to punctuate here is we genuinely, naively – and you all, genuinely and naively think you can go to Youth With A Mission and get God’s counsel, right?

S: Yes. Well no, not actually get God’s counsel. We were looking for assistance, because we believed that we were entrusted with Last Days Ministries. Guidance and input, yes. Direction, no. That’s not what we were looking for. We had really seriously looked at this and said this is not right. I mean, we know the legacy of Last Days. It just wasn’t right. And to give you an idea… go ahead.

T: I was going to say, now with hindsight, because we’ve talked to so many people, there is a playbook here that continues to happen over and over again. Of course, this is Sharon’s first time being introduced to this playbook. So when you were going to go for this counsel to Youth With A Mission, I’ve always heard it talked like that. It’s counsel. So were you trying to get them to confirm? Or how did you get from feeling so strongly to then being sent off to the Leadership Development School?

S: Well – and again, I want to make sure that we are also keeping this relevant to Loren Cunningham. The manner in which Youth With A Mission staff and leadership and the bigwigs behaved, was what Loren Cunningham either taught, or endorsed, or ignored. So he bears the headship of YWAM, and therefore how these things transpired, absolutely was in his scope of influence. Absolutely. So what happened was – no, we weren’t asking counsel from John Dawson then. We knew that this was going to be really hard for Melody. We knew we had to confront her, because her ego had gotten in the way; she was using funds in ways we thought was unethical, and we needed to confront her. But we also wanted her to heal. She had two small children; she’d never really gotten to grieve. We’re like, this lady needs to go have a life, a little bit. So we asked John to come in with us and be there to support Melody emotionally. We had had the meeting with him, the four of us, to say this is what we see, this is what we don’t think is right, and this is what we think we should be doing next. And he never disagreed with it. he said I’m there with you. We had the meeting, and Bobby, a young man who was engaged to Melody at the time – he’d been her piano player, she’d gone on tour with him – don’t need to go into all that stuff. Anyway, when we had this sit down meeting, Bobby was there as well. Melody was so cold and so hard and so unmoved, hearing about some of the hurts she’d caused others. She was so defiant about what she wanted to do with her music. Bobby saw this – he broke off the engagement. He called it off, because of that meeting; seeing how she responded. Now, John Dawson was there and we met with John afterwards, the four of us with him. He was assuring of us. He was supportive. He gave us every indication that he himself saw the major problem with Melody, with her hardness of heart and her ego and self-serving, and her lack of compassion for others. John said, I see it all. He was on board – or at least, that’s what he said. That’s what he said to us.

T: That’s what he said. And so – and then … hmm. Somebody that was as connected to Keith as Loren Cunningham was, and the importance of Last Days Ministries as a recruiting ministry to Youth With A Mission – I don’t have this first hand, but I guarantee you he was not acting without getting Loren’s input.

S: Oh, I can’t imagine that he would not have been in communication with Loren about this. I just can’t imagine that would have happened at all.

T: And every story that we’ve heard in the 40 decades since, does follow along a play line that I’m trying to get at here.

S: Wait, wait. 40 decades, Tracey?

T: Forty years. 40 decades is what it feels like.

S: Forty years.

T: In these 40 years is what I’m trying to get at, because many people who have had this with Youth With A Mission are feeling that feeling that support that you identify, so how did it lead from I’m with you, I see this, to now you all are going to a LTS in Hawaii?

S: So, LTS stands for Leadership Training School. What John Dawson and also Fred Markert (who then got involved) – our communications with them; again, this is Wayne and Kath and me and Martin – were that they all saw Melody’s issue. Absolutely she was not qualified for leadership; there was a huge problem. But, she is the widow of Keith Green and she does have this name recognition. So, by going to the LTS it will give her time to learn and see and reflect, and it will be good for the four of us also on leadership. The idea was everybody go, you pray while you’re there, do not talk with one another – so we were not allowed to talk with Wayne and Kath, we were not allowed to talk with Melody. We were told we were not allowed to talk with anyone back at the ministry, either. This was supposed to be kind of a sequestered time. Now, we have learned about the YWAM playbook – divide and conquer. Divide and leverage, and that was part of it. Interestingly though, and I know this, Melody did not follow that rule. She was still communicating back with people at Last Days the entire time. Not only that, but I actually spoke with another person who had been on staff at Last Days who was in the room with Fred Markert on a day when Martin called to talk to Fred about what’s going on. Fred allowed this other staff person to hear what Martin was saying, which was concerns about some things with Melody, and basically leveraged this to tell the other staff person that Martin was trying to take over and have full control. So he is playing and manipulating staff members, not following the rules that have been set out. Just two faced as can be. I mean, it’s so lacking integrity. That’s what I will say.

T: It’s so lacking integrity, but with hindsight you can see the system at work here. In bringing it back to Loren Cunningham, there is definitely an interruption to what could potentially happen to Last Days Ministries. He has to instate a leader from Youth With A Mission to run Last Days Ministries while you all are at this LTS – which he does. Fred Markert. Now, what this to the people, and why we talk about the first part of the training, is all of that openness and brokenness and confession that breaks you down and bonds you to these leaders – Fred Markert was known and loved by everybody, as was John Dawson. Known and loved.

S: Yes.

T: Because he was presiding over all of these very deep Father heart sessions where people were sobbing and crying and confessing their neglect from childhood. So he was trusted. Fred Markert was trusted. This was all done in good faith, that they are communicating we hear you; we understand you. We are going to pray with you. Now, that’s absolutely part of the playbook, because they have the end already in sight.

S: They do. They had no intention – YWAM had no intention of allowing there to be any kind of ending or closure to Last Days Ministries and no intention whatsoever of Melody being anywhere except as this figurehead, because frankly, I think they knew they could control and manipulate her pretty easily. Now I just also want to say, I am not in any way saying that Martin and I or Wayne and Kathleen, we were the paragon of the best leaders possible. No, we all had flaws. We all had problems. But we did not have the misuse of ministry funds. We did not have the ego-chasing stuff going on. I will say that both Kathleen and Martin did have issues with being very harsh and spiritually abusive to other people, as did Melody. That is one thing that those three did have in common.

T: Yes. Now that we’ve heard so many stories of Youth With A Mission, and part of when they put young people in so many important positions of authority – that’s commonplace. So for us, we’re feeling this lack of unity, this lack of people being able to submit to one another. This is commonplace for Youth With A Mission, and it wasn’t commonplace for us. Meanwhile, back at the ranch Fred Markert is rolling out methodical teachings based on the story of the three kings, which is basically about David and Saul and how you never come against God’s anointed. We’ll hear that continually from lots of abuse centers of ministry where they kind of throw that scripture as the catchall. We didn’t know that was happening though, right. So he’s leading the rest of us back at the ministry in this very systemic teaching, as far as that, preparing us so that when this leadership does come back, and they as the leaders hear the direction that God has for us, we should learn to trust our leadership because God has placed our leaders over us and we are needing to obey that, and if we feel anything differently, we are an example of coming against God’s anointed. And so it went from this crazy chaos of you guys being the eldership that was in place, now entering into Youth With A Mission has basically inserted themselves as the voice of God for us at Last Days Ministries.

S: And I’ll tell you what. I’m putting two and two together honestly for the first time here right now. At the same time, back at the LTS in the closing sessions of the LTS, I wish I could remember for sure, Tracey, if it was Loren himself personally – I kind of think it was, because this was a big, big fucking deal. But I do know that Don Stephens was there; Floyd McClung was there. Who was the other bigwig? I’m pretty sure Dean Sherman was there, I can’t remember about John Dawson, but I’m almost certain it was Loren Cunningham on the last session, there was the most public manipulation I have ever seen. I couldn’t even have thought it could be possible. Wayne had already said he was leaving Last Days. He was out. He was gone. He never wanted to work with Melody again. Loren Cunningham – again, I’m 99% sure it was him – delivers this message, talking about the kings, talking about God’s anointed, bringing up the idea of David and Jonathan, and service. Lifetime service to God’s anointed. And then he calls Wayne up and says I believe we need to do some foot washing. He sits Melody down, they bring out water and they say Wayne, we believe God would like you to wash Melody’s feet. And that is what they do at the close, and it changes the whole course of Wayne and Kathleen’s life at that point. Because they were out, until this manipulation happened. It was astounding. It was just astounding, Tracey.

T: Yes and equally astounding back at the ranch, is the teaching that if you are in opposition to your leaders that God has placed over you, it’s not just a matter of opinion; it’s not just a matter of hey we don’t see things the same way, God bless you, go on. It is then taught that it is the sin of rebellion that is in the heart of the one who disagrees and where the sin of rebellion exists is the sin of witchcraft. And therefore, it gives power to demonic forces at play. That is where – as I’ve sat and listened to so many of the survivors who have come after us with their own tales of how this has happened in base after base after base – that’s the mindfuckery right there. All of a sudden you have these beautiful brothers and sisters that I worked alongside for years and years; people obviously that we’d had open confession with, that we knew their hearts, that gave of themselves 10-12-15 hours a day, being told that they’re hearing from Satan himself. People are just wrecked, because you tell somebody whose most sincere desire is to not open the door to the devil but to follow God, and to feel so strongly in one direction and be told by people who have ministered to you in these sessions tell you that you’re hearing from Satan is a mindfuckery that I’ve watched really shipwreck people.

S: And, you have to look to the head of the organization for setting up a culture that not only allows that, doesn’t call out the abuse, but actually intentionally employs it to achieve their agenda. That’s what happened at Last Days Ministries. We’ve heard tragic stories from many people who were in YWAM, where the same things happened to them. The moment that you question something; the moment that you maybe point out some abuse that’s happening, or even just wonder aloud, you are no longer welcome. You are now part of the problem. You are now not serving the agenda, and therefore you’re going to be vilified; you’re going to be trashed. So when you’re hearing all this veneration for Loren Cunningham and this amazing organization that he started, there are so many untold stories of devastation. We will be bringing more of those out into the light in the months to come.

T: Yes. And I want to add this one story. You weren’t there at the time, but when the tornado did rip through – this was another classic example of Loren Cunningham piping in a phone call in the wee hours of the morning to assure everybody that it was the beginning of blessings and that this was not God’s hand against us, but all the more God’s had for us.

S: Wait Tracey. Just a little context for people who may not know the story. This was in March of 1987. This was after Martin and I were kicked out. Other people were leaving by droves, and a tornado came through and hit virtually every major building on the property. No one was injured, and then immediately this was Loren’s message to everyone who was starting to wonder what’s really happening here.

T: Yes, and that was a direct sign of his knowing involvement, his quickness to get in front of the narrative, and make sure it was not used by anyone else to give another message from the one that he heard from God himself. When you have that kind of stuff at play, what I’m saying is it’s not just hey, we all have different callings, we all have different opinions, we each need to go our own way. It was no, if you’re not for us, you are against us, and if you’re not for God then you are a tool of the devil. It is a very devastating and cult-like tenet. That’s what it is. It’s part of a cult-like tenet that he was at the helm of.

S: Not cult-like. I’m gonna say it’s not cult-like. It’s 100%. It’s total cult. Total cult.

T: Yeah. So we wanted to get this out because our hearts do go out for the people who have been a part of this mindfuckery, the part of being told that they’re a tool of devil, where they’ve had their entire insides turned upside down; where they’ve had their finances completely railroaded by this organization Youth With A Mission – and they’re hurting. There’s people out there hurting because all of this has been swept under the carpet. Youth With A Mission has worked very hard to keep all of this stuff under wraps. On a couple of Instagram posts for those in the survivor community, a message went out to say hey, in the midst of all of this heralding of the greatness of Loren Cunningham, if there’s one thing you would like for the world to know about what Youth With A Mission stands for, what would it be?

S: Alright, so let’s alternate these, Tracey. We’ll take them one by one, a few of them. “It’s not safe.”

T: “It’s 100% a cult, and we were devout members for close to 20 years. Loren was a cult leader.”

S: “It is a godless organization that preys on young, vulnerable kids and their insecurities.”

T: “Putting unqualified people in leadership roles causes repeated abuse.”

S: “Only one thing???”

T: “That it’s a cesspool of narcissistic and spiritual abuse of young people.”

S: “Targeting a vulnerable age group, and decentralizing structure enables abuse.”

T: “The abuse of volunteers.”

S: “The more accurate name for this organization would be Youth Who Are Manipulated.” Tracey, that one was mine.

T: And I love that. It’s the YWAM youth who are manipulated. There were a couple of people who wanted to say more than just a word, and gave us permission to share these portions of their immediate thoughts upon hearing the news. The first one: “It is so difficult for those of us who experienced abuse within YWAM to see all these posts about how wonderful Loren was. He turned a blind eye to so much of the abuse. The spiritual bypassing that took place when he was told about the abuse is astounding. I don’t say this flippantly. We were devout members for close to 20 years. Loren dedicated our first child back in the 2000s. We spent time at his house with him and his wife Darlene while we were in Kona. I don’t claim to know him intimately like so many others, but I do know of countless times he was told about the abuse and nothing was done about it. Please be aware that many of us feel great pain at the hands of Loren, and we don’t mourn his death like so many others. We see that an abuser is no longer on earth. I know that’s harsh, but it’s true.”

S: My gosh. Here’s another one we wanted to share. “I have many feelings about Loren. I saw him decimate people’s lives, and stand up and cry crocodile tears, saying he never meant to hurt anyone. And, receive a standing ovation for it. Then turn around and do the same thing with other’s lives. I don’t know if I have any one brief thing; you know how it goes. I worked there for ten years. I have a lot of experiences and feelings. But I will say this. Loren intentionally kept himself and YWAM immature, to avoid responsibility. It’s like the organization was born and went through the kind of beginning stages of development, and then when they were in the adolescent phase of taking risks and not recognizing they had responsibilities to people, and not caring about implications, Loren refused to let them mature further. When wise people would tell him he needed accountability, the organization needs it, he would immediately remove and silence those voices. He chose to act oblivious to all the damage he was doing. He chose to let himself be revered; sometimes even treated like a God. I was at a conference in New Zealand for YWAM’s 40^th anniversary, where they brought Loren in on a litter, carried on their shoulders. That shit happened all the time. He loved being adored, and it happened a lot in cultures where a white man being adored was feeding colonialism. Okay, I guess I actually have a lot to say. I could go on, but I’ll leave this here for now.” Tracey, I’m very excited that we are going to be talking in depth in the months to come with these people and others, to really paint a detailed picture, with specifics, about the abuse inflicted on these people by Youth With A Mission and Loren Cunningham.

T: Yeah Sharon, I am too. You know we’ve already started collecting some of those stories, and we have been heartbroken. I just put up a post on our Instagram, Feet of Clay.cultsisters, where I call out that in the midst of all of this abuse, what has really shown through for me is the amount of really beautiful souls, that had tender, sincere hearts, that really wanted to change the world or do something positive in the world, and they were the ones that were preyed upon, and they been being preyed upon by Youth With A Mission, in the exact model that Loren Cunningham designed and presided over for – not 40 decades, but more than 40 years. We wanted to go on record here, because we do have a tie-in and we experienced so many of these similar things. We know how much they sidelined us and played with our heads, and we are very, very proud of the people who have come to us and been willing to share their stories.

S: Yeah. Yeah. Alright folks, thank you so much for listening. There will be a lot more information coming from us, and other folks as well, in the weeks and months to come. If you have been the victim of spiritual abuse – or other abuse – from YWAM or any other cult organization, we invite you to come talk with us. We have a Facebook group, it’s Feet of Clay, Confessions of the Cult Sisters Community. You can share your story and your healing journey with others who can really relate, because they’ve been there too.

T: Yup. And they will offer good resources, and a safe space to share.

S: Okay everyone. Thanks for listening to our special episode. We’ll see you next time.