Talk Beliefs
August 13, 2021
"EMILY PERRY runs the @c3churchwatch account on Instagram, exposing abuses within the C3 Church.
Emily spent three years in C3 - most of it under "pastoral care" that was unwanted. It began while she was trying to alert the church pastors and get help when an abuser showed up at a church conference and was threatening towards her.
MARK from Talk Beliefs talks with Emily about the C3 church, its reach across the world, its constant demands for donations and hollow promises of care and sympathy."
Showing posts with label Christian City Church (C3). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christian City Church (C3). Show all posts
Jul 20, 2021
Modern Church... Modern Slavery? My Time in a Pentecostal Cult ~ Richard Turner
Talk Beliefs
February 29, 2020
"What happens when a group set up to help victims of human trafficking is just as controlling of its own members?
RICHARD TURNER grew up near Liverpool, UK, and trained as a therapist before finding a placement within a charity linked to a church - a church that quickly seduced him into their ranks. Before long, they were watching his every move, even demanding that he not see his girlfriend, but rather 'submit to the leadership of the church'.
MARK from Talk Beliefs interviews Richard about his story of his time with this church and how, after suffering serious stress, he was eventually able to leave."
Oct 13, 2019
Members 'brainwashed' by mega-church into donating thousands
A Current Affair
September 30, 2019
He's the flashy church leader who takes money for miracles and is living a million-dollar lifestyle thanks to the tax-free donations from his thousands of believers.
Phil Pringle rose from humble garbage collector to leader of C3 Church – one of the biggest churches you've probably never heard of, and the focus of a two-part exclusive investigation by A Current Affair.
Its target is God's hipsters - a following of young faithful hooked on Instagram.
Over three decades Phil Pringle has built an empire including around 400 churches world-wide, and the church claims more than 100,000 members.
And for a man of God, Phil Pringle is incredibly rich. He drives a luxury car and owns a palatial clifftop mansion overlooking the beach at Sydney's Mona Vale. It comes complete with an infinity pool and cost him $3.4 million seven years ago - it's now valued well above $4 million.
He also enjoys skippering yachts in exotic destinations around the world. His message seems to be less about repenting your sins and more about building your finances.
"Go make millions and give it to the House of God ... Amen!" Phil Pringle preaches at one conference, recorded and published online. In another clip, the leader of C3 Americas Jurgen Matthesius is also captured giving the hard sell to parishioners.
"God is brilliant with ledgers. God is the most perfect accountant, he knows everything you give and he makes sure it comes back to you with interest," he said.
Another deputy and leader of C3, John Pearce, is even more blunt about how God's blessings work.
"Some of you are going to walk into heaven and God is going to go 'massive mansion over there for you' like what's that for? He'll go, well you were part of C3 powerhouse," he said.
In a special investigation, former members reveal the extent of the pressure put on followers, starting with tithing – a term that requires you to donate 10 per cent of your pre-tax salary.
"The first 10 per cent of whatever they earn. So if you're on $100,000 that's $10,000 that you're giving per annum to them," former C3 Church member, Aaron said.
When asked by A Current Affair Reporter Dan Nolan about tithing, Phil Pringle said tithing is optional, but on C3's website, it's made clear that even if you are in "significant debt", your regular tithe is still expected.
The preachers claim this is okay because if you give money to C3, God will bless you with more money in return.
"They would describe giving as like a seed," Aaron said.
"You not only give once, you've got to continue to give, which is like your watering of the seed and then it will grow and then eventually you'll get this big blessing and this good stuff will happen to you."
It's claimed by giving, followers can be blessed with 'miracles' - curing the sick and exorcising demons.
"In one offering, $50,000, $100,000, a million dollars in some cases, just at the drop of a hat like that," Aaron said.
The most recent information lodged on Australia's charity register reveals the total revenue declared by all C3 churches in Australia is $40 million annually - less than half of Hillsong Church's $103 million, but growing fast.
Most of that revenue was from donations and everything is tax-free. C3 Church Sydney Limited, a company that Phil Pringle is a director of has total assets of $46 million.
That includes 11 church locations, including the sprawling C3 Headquarters at Oxford Falls.
Reporter Dan Nolan questions Phil Pringle. (A Current Affair)
Kerri Ferguson was a member of Christian City Church before it became C3.
"They call it a free will gift or free will giving, that simply isn't true. You're brainwashed into giving this kind of money," she said.
She says even when she was raising five kids on her own, the pressure to tithe remained.
"There were nights in our house when my children did not have food. And I never got any assistance whatsoever from anybody," she said.
Chris Rosebrough is from Fighting For The Faith, a podcast dedicated to exposing prosperity preachers like Phil Pringle.
"They're playing on people's greed, playing on people's needs and basically exploiting them," he said.
The Christian pastor has analysed C3 Church and Pringle for years.
"Stories like these they are intended to bring large amounts of money, and convince somebody that God wants them to empty their savings account," he said.
At the recent C3 Australia Conference at the Gold Coast, a speech about giving was streamed online before being removed the next day.
In the clip, worshipers are directed to the portable eftpos machines before stories of healing take centre stage. One man, who happens to be the son of another C3 Pastor John Pearce, claims Phil Pringle cured him of his epilepsy last year. Another man seeks a cure for his gut health.
And then there are 'miracle offerings', encouraging believers to donate a one-off hefty amount for a special need in their life - often to have children.
"They would portray it in this way of do this and you get this back, kind of thing. So whether that's new job, new house, new car, is it kids for some people?" Aaron said.
Chris Rosebrough, a devoted Christian, says the church's teachings don't align with the bible.
"The gifts of God are not for sale. Gifts of God are received as gifts, they are given freely by God, they cannot be purchased," he said.
Phil Pringle denied preaching about miracle offerings when approach by A Current Affair, saying, "well we certainly haven't preached that."
But audio recordings, since deleted offline, capture Phil Pringle explaining how "miracle offerings" work.
"It's a miracle because as you bring an offering to the Lord and stretch yourself into a zone you've never been before you're going to find yourself, God stretching his resources to you," he said.
"I believe there's a person here today who can give $1 million. In fact I believe there's two people who could do that."
Statement from C3 Church:
C3 Church has robust governance policies in place regarding remuneration of Pastors which extends to the remuneration of Ps Phil Pringle. All remuneration is set by an independent board of Directors and the quantum is benchmarked to organisations of a comparable size in the Education sector.
C3 Church complies with the disclosure guidelines articulated by the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC).
Ps Pringle confirms he fully complies with all his taxation obligations.
https://www.9news.com.au/national/a-current-affair-c3-church-prosperity-preaching-phil-pringle/4833bfb6-970a-47b7-8d20-a1a205758533
Jan 21, 2018
Hipsters of the holy: How a Toronto church became a hit with young believers
ERIC RANDEW-GEE
THE GLOBE AND MAIL
JANUARY 21, 2018
Until recently, Aimee Burke was a cartoon of her generation. She cut hair on Toronto's gentrified Ossington Avenue. She partied a lot and was partial to coke. Her hookups comprised partners both male and female. She was unhappy.
Her life began to change, she said, with the appearance of an unusual tattoo. (Even her epiphany had a millennial cast.) About two years ago, a client at her salon flashed a wrist inked with an image of Christ. When Ms. Burke asked about it, the tattooed client said she belonged to a new Toronto church.
Soon after, having confirmed that she could attend in ripped jeans, Ms. Burke went to her first C3 Church service.
There was no guarantee she would be won over by a Pentecostal movement founded in Australia 35 years earlier as the Christian City Church and re-branded in the course of its rapid, worldwide growth.
"I'm pretty sure I went to the service hungover from the night before," she recalled.
But as the service wore on, she found herself weeping. "I just felt less empty."
"Everyone was within about 10 years of my age and I was 24 years old at the time. They were talking about God, but they looked like people I could party with," Ms. Burke said. "I felt like I could be myself right away."
The church had won a convert.
"As the Christians would say, I've surrendered over my life," she said recently. "I do everything. I pray in the morning, I pray at night, I read my Bible every day. … Now I'm waiting for marriage. I've been sober for almost two years."
Across the West, Christian congregations are aging and young unbelievers now outnumber their religiously committed peers in Canada, according to an Angus Reid survey last spring. But amid the general greying of the religious population, C3 has found a niche as a hipster church.
Although it will perform a water baptism if you so desire, its focus is a self-help message geared to the practical worries of young, alienated urbanites and a glossy social-media presence. It is making worshippers out of people who might otherwise have spent their Sundays scrolling through Tinder in a coffee shop. C3 has grown to include more than 450 churches around the world, including 11 congregations across Canada with about 3,000 parishioners total, and a Toronto branch so big it recently split into eastern and western "campuses."
"I think people are looking for something to believe in," Ms. Burke offered, "even if it's just themselves."
'Do life together'
On a recent Sunday, the foyer of Toronto's Central Technical School looked like the orchestra pit of an Arcade Fire concert.
Many forearms were covered with tattoos, many male faces were covered in beards and the median age was about 30.
The morning's second service at C3's western campus was about to begin, with close to 300 people in attendance.
The church does not have a bricks-and-mortar place of worship in Toronto, but in virtually every other way it presents as a thriving and exceptionally well-funded religious community.
Volunteers had placed little Christmas trees spangled with candy canes in the dank public school bathrooms.
Inside the school auditorium, volunteers with walkie-talkies in their back pockets arranged children artfully on a Persian rug in front of the stage for "Kids Takeover Service," in which the pastor's wife interviewed kids from the congregation on stage.
From the vantage point of most Christian churches in Canada, every day at C3 is Kids Takeover day. The youth of the place cuts sharply against the national trend.
"They've managed to do something a lot of people haven't managed to figure out," said Brian Clarke, a lecturer in the History of Christianity at Emmanuel College, Toronto School of Theology. "In 1961, the United Church of Canada looked like Canada, in terms of age profile, in terms of ethnic diversity. … You look now and it doesn't. United Church is not alone in that. All the larger Protestant churches have gone through that."
C3's demographics are no coincidence. The church carefully gears its message and outreach to striving young city-dwellers. The Toronto congregation has an Instagram page and a podcast. Photographers buzz around parish events snapping deftly lit photos for diffusion on social media. Sunday services open with a Christian rock concert.
Pastor Sam Picken started C3's Toronto chapter in 2012 with his wife, Jess Picken, and it has been a family affair ever since. They and their two small children are the face of the church.
On a recent Sunday, Jess introduced the congregation to Rocco, the C3 kids' mascot – an adult dressed in a plausible-looking raccoon costume – and recounted how "dope" the church Christmas party had been.
"We crowd-surfed people at our Christmas party," she said.
The church's upbeat, easy going style attracted many of the parishioners at its west end campus.
"The big thing here is people come and they don't feel pressured to be anything other than who they are," said Jonathan Li, 30. "It's more about having people to do life together.
"I think people are a lot lonelier these days, even with social media. … I think there's a false sense of connectedness there."
Mike Sexsmith, 32, is part of a church Connect Group – like a Bible study group, but not necessarily for studying the Bible – that meets to play a game called Spikeball.
The Greater Toronto Area has millions of people, he said, "but it's like the loneliest place in the world." At C3, "Guys just invite you to hang out."
Embracing inadequacy
When Mr. Picken walked on stage to deliver his sermon, he looked like a guy just inviting you to hang out. Dressed in tight black jeans and a denim shirt, his hair shaved on the sides, he carried a Bible and an iPad in the same hand, eventually reading from them both.
"God's presence is in this place," he said, as the band played softly in the background. "Thank you, Jesus."
His sermon that day was a riff on the theme of inadequacy, drawing widely from Biblical scripture.
"God is doing something massive in your life," he said in a rough-hewn Australian accent. "God has a strong plan for 2018."
"God is higher than your thinking," he went on. "If you are inadequate, he is adequate."
Parishioners urged him on. "Right!" "Yep!" "That's good!" "Come on!"
"Nobody understands why you give your money to the church," Mr. Picken said. "They don't understand why you give your time to the church."
It's true that some parishioners are misunderstood by their friends – colleagues at the salon call Ms. Burke "crazy Jesus lady" – and also that many parishioners give generously of their time and money. C3, which has a staff of seven including Mr. and Ms. Picken, is funded entirely by donations, like many churches. Worshippers at the Sunday service were given a card indicating giving options, including PayPal and regular automated debit transfers. "Take a moment to thank God for his faithfulness," it said.
The sermon gained urgency and intensity as it went. The overriding message was that inadequacy is something to embrace, not shy away from, because it brings one closer to Jesus.
"God wants to point a finger at your owie," Mr. Picken said, using the idiosyncratic, modern evangelical diction in which giving a sermon is "preaching a word" and caring for someone means "loving on" them. "Jesus is excited … to work in your stuff."
"Dear Jesus, I thank you that you died on a cross to work in my mess."
Mr. Picken was born in Australia 33 years ago and while he was raised Christian, he came across C3 while he was a musician playing bar-band classic rock covers.
His intense, declamatory style in the pulpit seems less inspired by the great rock n' roll frontmen than by self-help gurus like Tony Robbins. He said during his sermon that he listened to the podcasts of other preachers for inspiration; asked about his influences later in the day, Mr. Picken said: "Business books."
"Just like anyone else in an industry, you want to be the best you can possibly be."
His comfort with modern, secular rhetoric mirrors the church's ease with modern forms of communication.
"We use technology to try and advance the Gospel," Mr. Picken said. "I think Jesus would have had an Instagram account if he had been alive today."
Relationship, not rules
The church's modernity also extends to its social teaching. One of C3's selling points for the young and spiritually curious is that it avoids the language of judgment and sanction.
"We don't present ourselves in any sense as know-it-alls," Mr. Picken said. "We're trying not to offer rules, but relationship."
The church's disinclination to tell people how to live their lives seems to extend even to the fraught realm of same-sex relationships, which have so bedeviled modern Christianity. Mr. Picken tiptoed painstakingly around the subject, but ultimately deferred judgment.
"Sexuality is such a personal thing that to make a blanket statement about it feels really objective and impersonal," he said. "I see my role not to tell people what's right or wrong or what to do, but to point them to having a relationship with Jesus."
Prof. Clarke suggested that C3's studied neutrality on hot-button moral issues was a canny move for a growing church.
"I think a lot of churches realized part of their legacy was that they were judgmental and that turned a lot of people off," he said. "You've got to meet people where they are."
Aimee Burke is glad the church met her where she was. At C3, she felt like she could be herself, without feeling "self-condemned," she said. All the jokes about saying Hail Marys when she swears at work are worth it, Ms. Burke insists.
"This is going to sound really Christian-y," she said, "but it felt like the chains came off of me."
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/hipsters-of-the-holy-how-a-toronto-church-became-a-hit-with-youngbelievers/article37655616/
JANUARY 21, 2018
Until recently, Aimee Burke was a cartoon of her generation. She cut hair on Toronto's gentrified Ossington Avenue. She partied a lot and was partial to coke. Her hookups comprised partners both male and female. She was unhappy.
Her life began to change, she said, with the appearance of an unusual tattoo. (Even her epiphany had a millennial cast.) About two years ago, a client at her salon flashed a wrist inked with an image of Christ. When Ms. Burke asked about it, the tattooed client said she belonged to a new Toronto church.
Soon after, having confirmed that she could attend in ripped jeans, Ms. Burke went to her first C3 Church service.
There was no guarantee she would be won over by a Pentecostal movement founded in Australia 35 years earlier as the Christian City Church and re-branded in the course of its rapid, worldwide growth.
"I'm pretty sure I went to the service hungover from the night before," she recalled.
But as the service wore on, she found herself weeping. "I just felt less empty."
"Everyone was within about 10 years of my age and I was 24 years old at the time. They were talking about God, but they looked like people I could party with," Ms. Burke said. "I felt like I could be myself right away."
The church had won a convert.
"As the Christians would say, I've surrendered over my life," she said recently. "I do everything. I pray in the morning, I pray at night, I read my Bible every day. … Now I'm waiting for marriage. I've been sober for almost two years."
Across the West, Christian congregations are aging and young unbelievers now outnumber their religiously committed peers in Canada, according to an Angus Reid survey last spring. But amid the general greying of the religious population, C3 has found a niche as a hipster church.
Although it will perform a water baptism if you so desire, its focus is a self-help message geared to the practical worries of young, alienated urbanites and a glossy social-media presence. It is making worshippers out of people who might otherwise have spent their Sundays scrolling through Tinder in a coffee shop. C3 has grown to include more than 450 churches around the world, including 11 congregations across Canada with about 3,000 parishioners total, and a Toronto branch so big it recently split into eastern and western "campuses."
"I think people are looking for something to believe in," Ms. Burke offered, "even if it's just themselves."
'Do life together'
On a recent Sunday, the foyer of Toronto's Central Technical School looked like the orchestra pit of an Arcade Fire concert.
Many forearms were covered with tattoos, many male faces were covered in beards and the median age was about 30.
The morning's second service at C3's western campus was about to begin, with close to 300 people in attendance.
The church does not have a bricks-and-mortar place of worship in Toronto, but in virtually every other way it presents as a thriving and exceptionally well-funded religious community.
Volunteers had placed little Christmas trees spangled with candy canes in the dank public school bathrooms.
Inside the school auditorium, volunteers with walkie-talkies in their back pockets arranged children artfully on a Persian rug in front of the stage for "Kids Takeover Service," in which the pastor's wife interviewed kids from the congregation on stage.
From the vantage point of most Christian churches in Canada, every day at C3 is Kids Takeover day. The youth of the place cuts sharply against the national trend.
"They've managed to do something a lot of people haven't managed to figure out," said Brian Clarke, a lecturer in the History of Christianity at Emmanuel College, Toronto School of Theology. "In 1961, the United Church of Canada looked like Canada, in terms of age profile, in terms of ethnic diversity. … You look now and it doesn't. United Church is not alone in that. All the larger Protestant churches have gone through that."
C3's demographics are no coincidence. The church carefully gears its message and outreach to striving young city-dwellers. The Toronto congregation has an Instagram page and a podcast. Photographers buzz around parish events snapping deftly lit photos for diffusion on social media. Sunday services open with a Christian rock concert.
Pastor Sam Picken started C3's Toronto chapter in 2012 with his wife, Jess Picken, and it has been a family affair ever since. They and their two small children are the face of the church.
On a recent Sunday, Jess introduced the congregation to Rocco, the C3 kids' mascot – an adult dressed in a plausible-looking raccoon costume – and recounted how "dope" the church Christmas party had been.
"We crowd-surfed people at our Christmas party," she said.
The church's upbeat, easy going style attracted many of the parishioners at its west end campus.
"The big thing here is people come and they don't feel pressured to be anything other than who they are," said Jonathan Li, 30. "It's more about having people to do life together.
"I think people are a lot lonelier these days, even with social media. … I think there's a false sense of connectedness there."
Mike Sexsmith, 32, is part of a church Connect Group – like a Bible study group, but not necessarily for studying the Bible – that meets to play a game called Spikeball.
The Greater Toronto Area has millions of people, he said, "but it's like the loneliest place in the world." At C3, "Guys just invite you to hang out."
Embracing inadequacy
When Mr. Picken walked on stage to deliver his sermon, he looked like a guy just inviting you to hang out. Dressed in tight black jeans and a denim shirt, his hair shaved on the sides, he carried a Bible and an iPad in the same hand, eventually reading from them both.
"God's presence is in this place," he said, as the band played softly in the background. "Thank you, Jesus."
His sermon that day was a riff on the theme of inadequacy, drawing widely from Biblical scripture.
"God is doing something massive in your life," he said in a rough-hewn Australian accent. "God has a strong plan for 2018."
"God is higher than your thinking," he went on. "If you are inadequate, he is adequate."
Parishioners urged him on. "Right!" "Yep!" "That's good!" "Come on!"
"Nobody understands why you give your money to the church," Mr. Picken said. "They don't understand why you give your time to the church."
It's true that some parishioners are misunderstood by their friends – colleagues at the salon call Ms. Burke "crazy Jesus lady" – and also that many parishioners give generously of their time and money. C3, which has a staff of seven including Mr. and Ms. Picken, is funded entirely by donations, like many churches. Worshippers at the Sunday service were given a card indicating giving options, including PayPal and regular automated debit transfers. "Take a moment to thank God for his faithfulness," it said.
The sermon gained urgency and intensity as it went. The overriding message was that inadequacy is something to embrace, not shy away from, because it brings one closer to Jesus.
"God wants to point a finger at your owie," Mr. Picken said, using the idiosyncratic, modern evangelical diction in which giving a sermon is "preaching a word" and caring for someone means "loving on" them. "Jesus is excited … to work in your stuff."
"Dear Jesus, I thank you that you died on a cross to work in my mess."
Mr. Picken was born in Australia 33 years ago and while he was raised Christian, he came across C3 while he was a musician playing bar-band classic rock covers.
His intense, declamatory style in the pulpit seems less inspired by the great rock n' roll frontmen than by self-help gurus like Tony Robbins. He said during his sermon that he listened to the podcasts of other preachers for inspiration; asked about his influences later in the day, Mr. Picken said: "Business books."
"Just like anyone else in an industry, you want to be the best you can possibly be."
His comfort with modern, secular rhetoric mirrors the church's ease with modern forms of communication.
"We use technology to try and advance the Gospel," Mr. Picken said. "I think Jesus would have had an Instagram account if he had been alive today."
Relationship, not rules
The church's modernity also extends to its social teaching. One of C3's selling points for the young and spiritually curious is that it avoids the language of judgment and sanction.
"We don't present ourselves in any sense as know-it-alls," Mr. Picken said. "We're trying not to offer rules, but relationship."
The church's disinclination to tell people how to live their lives seems to extend even to the fraught realm of same-sex relationships, which have so bedeviled modern Christianity. Mr. Picken tiptoed painstakingly around the subject, but ultimately deferred judgment.
"Sexuality is such a personal thing that to make a blanket statement about it feels really objective and impersonal," he said. "I see my role not to tell people what's right or wrong or what to do, but to point them to having a relationship with Jesus."
Prof. Clarke suggested that C3's studied neutrality on hot-button moral issues was a canny move for a growing church.
"I think a lot of churches realized part of their legacy was that they were judgmental and that turned a lot of people off," he said. "You've got to meet people where they are."
Aimee Burke is glad the church met her where she was. At C3, she felt like she could be herself, without feeling "self-condemned," she said. All the jokes about saying Hail Marys when she swears at work are worth it, Ms. Burke insists.
"This is going to sound really Christian-y," she said, "but it felt like the chains came off of me."
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/hipsters-of-the-holy-how-a-toronto-church-became-a-hit-with-youngbelievers/article37655616/
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