Showing posts with label Faith Christian Church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Faith Christian Church. Show all posts

May 1, 2016

UNM ousts arm of church that some at UA called a cult

Carol Ann Alaimo and Emily Bregel
Arizona Daily Star
May 1, 2016


New Covenant Christian Church
An affiliate of a Tucson church that former members describe as a cult has been banned from a university campus in New Mexico for aggressive proselytizing, misusing school property and causing distress to students.

The actions of New Covenant Christian Church in Albuquerque “have significantly negatively impacted” students at the University of New Mexico, school officials there said in recent letters ordering the church’s leaders to stay away.

New Covenant is a satellite of Faith Christian Church in Tucson, which more than 20 former members and staffers described as a cult in an Arizona Daily Star investigation last year. The Tucson church recruits on the University of Arizona campus, while the eight satellites target university students in three other states and New Zealand.

The Albuquerque church is appealing the ban, UNM officials said. Church officials did not respond to repeated Star requests for comment.

Meanwhile, at the UA, the administration did not follow through this year on a pledge to keep close tabs on three campus clubs affiliated with the church. A plan to conduct unannounced spot checks of the clubs’ activities was dropped because it was deemed unnecessary, a UA official said.

Two pastors banned at UNM — Jim Cooper and Kirk Walker — were campus ministers at the UA before the Tucson church sent them in 2003 to establish the Albuquerque site. All of the satellites were founded and are run by believers who started at the Tucson church.

UNM officials say Cooper and Walker, in their recruitment effort, gained unauthorized access to residence halls by slipping inside as others entered or left. They also are accused of misusing a student club affiliated with New Covenant to secure meeting space on campus for the church’s Sunday services.

The UNM student club, Lobos for Christ, is under “emergency” suspension, and some of its student officers are among those accusing New Covenant leaders of wrongdoing.

EXTREME CONTROL


Most of the satellite churches follow the teachings of Faith Christian leader Stephen M. Hall of Tucson, a self-described former marijuana farmer who has no pastoral training.

Hall, 63, preaches male dominance over females and spankings of infants and children to teach them obedience, former members and employees of the Tucson church say. Pastors exert extreme control over members’ lives and finances and encourage them to cut ties with family and others outside the church, they say.

Faith Christian’s methods amount to “religious practices gone awry,” according to the UA’s University Religious Council, a group of religious entities on campus that is not part of the UA administration. Faith Christian was kicked off the council last year in response to complaints.

Hall has not responded to numerous requests for comment. The Star has sent requests by telephone, email and postal mail since February 2015.

Ex-members from Albuquerque and Tucson report similar negative experiences, although the New Mexico students don’t have children yet and couldn’t speak to the church’s parenting practices.

Many said that after leaving, they went into therapy for panic attacks, flashbacks and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

“It’s like a bad poison. I just wish I could get it out of me,” said UNM alumnus Martín Ulloa, who ended up in marriage counseling soon after his wedding last year.

Ulloa spent six years at New Covenant, a church he joined as a lonely freshman in search of friends. Two years after leaving, he said he still struggles with extreme anxiety in the presence of authority figures.

Now 25 and a UNM employee, Ulloa said he didn’t realize how warped his thinking had become until after he got married. He said his bride, Michelle, 22, confronted him about his domineering attitude, which mirrored the church’s teachings “that it’s a man’s world and whatever the man says goes.”

“She said ‘Martín, you are being abusive,’ and it made me stop and think: Where did I learn that from? It was ingrained in me and I had to get extra counseling to unlearn it.”

“LIKE A CULT”


Former members say New Covenant ministers — much like those at Faith Christian — give strict orders to members about how they should live, including how to spend money, whom they should date and befriend, and the proper roles for men and women.

Each member is assigned a minister, who closely watches the student’s activities and reports back to church leaders, said Kalyn Kollie, 20, a junior at UNM who left the church last summer.

“That minister knows everything about your life, everything you do, everything that’s going on,” she said. “I felt like I couldn’t breathe or use the bathroom without this girl watching me.”

Kollie said that when she left the church, she was shocked by how difficult the transition was. Her church friends stopped speaking to her. She struggled to sleep and when she did, she had nightmares that “the ministers were going to come find me.”

When she started researching the roots of the Albuquerque church, Kollie came across the Star’s 2015 investigation and realized New Covenant was an offshoot of Faith Christian in Tucson. She found a Facebook page for former members of the Tucson church and its offshoots.

“I started to realize it was like a cult,” she said. “That’s when I started to realize how serious it was.”

LOBOS FOR CHRIST


In March, five UNM students who recently left the church complained to school officials about church practices. They also reported that Lobos for Christ, which is supposed to be run by students, was controlled by pastors.

“Lobos for Christ was just a front for them to reserve space with the university,” said Katherine Schweizer, 21, a UNM junior and former officer of the group. Schweizer, who left the church last year, was one of the five current students who met with UNM officials in March.

In Tucson, a similar claim arose in 2014 that Wildcats for Christ, one of the UA student clubs affiliated with Faith Christian, was being run by church leaders instead of by students. The allegation was not substantiated by UA officials.

In Albuquerque, UNM reacted swiftly. Within weeks, church leaders were barred from campus and warned they could be arrested for trespassing if they didn’t comply.

“Our investigation into this case is still ongoing, and our response to it is in line with how we work to handle all student concerns — quickly and carefully,” Jenna Crabb, UNM’s interim dean of students, said in an emailed statement.

UA SITUATION


The UA received more than 30 complaints about Faith Christian Church last year in the wake of the Star investigation. But administration officials said little could be done because most complainants were former students, and the school’s rules only cover current students. Also, they said, the UA only has jurisdiction over the church’s student clubs.

The student clubs were investigated last year and found to be problem-free. Even so, the clubs were put on “active monitoring status” for this school year, which was supposed to include unannounced spot checks at club events, UA spokesman Chris Sigurdson said at the time.

But no spot checks occurred, UA dean of students Kendal Washington White said last week. The student clubs were so cooperative that spot checks “were not deemed appropriate or necessary,” she said.

The university has not received any complaints this school year about the church or the student clubs, she said.

Faith Christian’s campus clubs include Wildcats for Christ, Native Nations in Christ and the Providence Club. Each of the clubs’ advisers is a longtime Faith Christian Church member employed by the UA.

Faith Christian’s campus ministers have been virtually invisible on campus this year, said Michelle Blumenberg, spokeswoman for the University Religious Council.

Jeff and Lisa Phillips of Mesa, who worked for the church for 12 years in Tucson and at two of the satellites, said laying low is part of Faith Christian’s strategy for coping with controversy.

“When they get in trouble they just fly under the radar for awhile until it blows over and then go back to what they were doing,” Lisa Phillips said.

Faith Christian stopped meeting at Amphitheater High School last year. It has been holding Sunday services at the Tucson Marriott University Park hotel, just outside the UA’s Main Gate.

OFFSHOOTS SCRUTINIZED


Other universities that are recruiting grounds for Faith Christian offshoots are paying closer attention to church activities on campus.

“We remain very cognizant of the church and the issues raised around it,” said Mike Hooker, spokesman for Colorado State University, where Faith Christian satellite Grace Christian Church recruits members. Hooker said the university has received complaints about the church’s activities, but none from a current student.

Last year, Massey University in New Zealand banned nine leaders from Victory Christian Church — another Faith Christian affiliate — from campus.

New Mexico State University in Las Cruces received a written complaint in March from the mother of a student involved in satellite Living Hope Christian Church and its on-campus club, Walk By Faith.

Among her concerns, the mother paraphrased what her child said church leaders told members: “If a friend calls needing a ride home after drinking too much alcohol, do not offer them a ride home. It is their sin to do such things, and you will be supporting their sin if you go to them and help.”

The university’s Dean of Students Office investigated the complaint and found Walk by Faith had not violated campus policy, a spokesman said.

But the university was not aware that Living Christ holds its Sunday services in a campus building until the Star sent a screenshot of the church’s website advertising the services.

NMSU general counsel Patrick Field said Walk By Faith reserves a campus room on Sunday mornings, but if the reservation is actually used for church services, the church should be paying rental fees. The university is looking into the situation, he said.

Arizona State University has gotten complaints about Faith Christian affiliate Hope Christian Church, but spokeswoman Herminia Rincon did not say how many nor whether they came from current students.

The university has taken no action against the church or its on-campus student club.

Living Hope Christian Church and Hope Christian Church were both founded and are run by former Faith Christian Church pastors, but are not listed on Faith Christian’s website as official affiliate churches.

Kollie of UNM said she and most of her friends who left the church are in therapy.

Even with a strong support network, Kollie can’t escape the memories of New Covenant Christian Church. She is planning to transfer to another college for her senior year.

“I need a fresh start,” she said. “It’s hard to move on and be on campus, knowing the stuff is still haunting me.”

Contact Carol Ann Alaimo at calaimo@tucson.com or 573-4138. On Twitter: @StarHigherEd Contact Emily Bregel at ebregel@tucson.com or 573-4233. On Twitter: @EmilyBregel

http://tucson.com/news/unm-ousts-arm-of-church-that-some-at-ua-called/article_5e7c8286-ba3e-556d-90ac-ad6d9e6db971.html

Jan 15, 2016

Tucson church some call a cult laying low

Emily Bregel, Carol Ann Alaimo
Arizona Daily Star
December 26, 2015

The holidays weren’t always happy for Doug Pacheco, but this year he feels blessed by a season of forgiveness.
For years, Pacheco says his family suffered because of his unquestioning devotion to the leaders of Faith Christian Church, which encouraged corporal punishment of infants, unquestioning obedience to church leaders and mandatory tithing even by families in financial distress.

He shared his story last spring as part of an Arizona Daily Star investigation into the Tucson-based ministry that’s been recruiting members on the University of Arizona campus for more than 20 years.

Twenty-one former followers described the church as a cult that targets UA students and inflicts financial, spriritual and emotional abuse.

New parents were trained to start spanking babies soon after birth to rid them of “rebellious” spirits, the former members and staffers said. They often used cardboard dowels from wire clothes hangers to hit infants who wouldn’t sleep, then switched to other implements as children grew, they said.

Pacheco, who joined Faith Christian’s predecessor church and left in 1990, said he and his then-wife accepted the church’s teachings. When the Star’s initial story ran in March, Pacheco — now remarried and living in Indiana — emailed links to the story to each of his children, now 33, 31 and 29.

“They knew just by me sending that article that dad is facing up to something here,” Pacheco, 58, said in a recent phone interview. “I got to call each of my children and tell them I loved them and apologize to them.

“Each of them said, ‘We love you, we forgive you, we’re with you.’ Ever since that time, my relationships with all three of them has just improved.”

His eldest son, Isaac, was about 8 years old when the family left the church. He recalls harsh discipline, living on food-bank donations and dumpster-diving for canned goods, even as his parents kept giving to the church.

“I just remember my parents fighting and crying and not having enough money for anything, like gasoline for the car, and still giving that 10 percent,” said Isaac Pacheco, now the editor of a U.S. State Department publication in Washington, D.C.

After reading the article, Isaac called his father and they spoke for a long time.

“It was kind of like the smell after a big rainfall. The air is clear again,” Doug Pacheco said of their conversation. “It was exactly like that.

“I think what my son needed to hear me say was, ‘I recognize that that was not right.’ Saying those words set him free like a bird out of his cage.”

Faith Christian’s head pastor Stephen M. Hall and executive pastor Ian A. Laks have refused for months to respond to allegations that members were harmed by the church’s practices. Neither has replied since March to dozens of calls, emails and letters from Star reporters.

Hall often advised his underlings to lay low when facing criticism, said Jeff Phillips, a former associate pastor who left the church in 2007. Phillips now is an adjunct professor at American Christian University in Phoenix.

He recalls Hall’s advice for dealing with negative publicity like this: “If someone throws mud at you, don’t try to wipe it off. Just wait for it to dry and it will fall off on its own.”
UA SCRUTINY

At the University of Arizona, officials say they are keeping closer tabs than in the past on three student clubs linked to Faith Christian, which has been recruiting on the UA campus for more than 20 years.

UA spokesman Chris Sigurdson said staff members from the dean of students’ office now drop in unannounced at club meetings, a practice that began at the start of fall semester. The staffers, whom Sigurdson wouldn’t identify, haven’t found any problems that would warrant disciplinary action, he said. The UA also made the clubs’ advisers take cult awareness training.

UA officials say they have authority over the student groups and must tread carefully because religious freedom is protected by law.

The UA will take complaints only from current students or their parents, but former followers say those who leave often are too traumatized to come forward until years later.

The University Religious Council, a campus entity separate from UA administration, isn’t bound by the same rules and has taken the most definitive action against the church. Council leaders did their own investigation and banished Faith Christian from the council because the church’s leaders refused to answer questions about the allegations, council spokeswoman Michelle Blumenberg said.

“The number, seriousness, and pattern of red flags raised compel URC members to no longer believe that Faith Christian Church and its affiliates operate at the highest level of integrity, transparency, safety for students, and respect for students, standards required for URC membership,” a statement from the religious council said.

To warn the new crop of freshmen that arrived this fall, the council announced its actions against the church in fliers that were included in UA orientation packages.

The council also added “religious manipulation” to its list of red flags for “religious conduct gone awry.” Religious manipulation includes “strategies that target vulnerable students, methods which seek to break down and then rebuild students, and instances of over-the-top niceness used as a form of entrapment,” the URC wrote.

The addition was specifically aimed at the Faith Christian recruiting tactic former members called “love-bombing” — showering new students with attention and affection to gain their trust.

“The University Religious Council hopes that the situation which happened with Faith Christian Church will lead more students and parents to do their homework about faith groups with whom they would like to become involved,” Blumenberg said in an email.

Faith Christian doesn’t answer to any larger policymaking body, the way a Presbyterian church falls under a synod, or a Catholic parish, a diocese.

The little accountability that did exist evaporated in April when the national Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability began an investigation into complaints from former Faith Christian members about high-pressure demands for donations and other church practices.

Faith Christian responded by resigning from the financial accountability council. The resignation halted efforts to determine whether the church met council’s standards for responsible stewardship, a council spokeswoman said.

The church remains a member of the National Evangelical Association, and touts that membership status on its website. The evangelical association has recommended pastoral practices but does not oversee member churches to ensure they are followed, the group’s communications director said.
SMALLER CROWDS

About a dozen former Faith Christian members and supporters picketed the church’s Sunday services at the start of fall term, typically the church’s busiest season for bringing new UA freshmen into the fold.

In years past, a few hundred freshmen usually showed up. This year, “I was shocked by how few students we saw,” said former church member Rachel Mullis, 39, one of the picketers.

“It seemed like attendance was way down from what it historically has been,” agreed picketer Phillips, 43, the former associate pastor.

Laks, Faith Christian’s second-in-command, called police, but officers who responded found the picketers weren’t causing trouble and allowed them to stay, public records show.

Faith Christian, which has never built its own worship facility, has been without a home for several months. For years, the church used rented space at Amphitheater High School for its Sunday services, but chose to leave shortly after the school district began its own investigation in April.

In recent months, the church has held its services at the Tucson Marriott University Park hotel just outside UA’s main gate. Last week, a few days after the Star tried again to reach church leaders, Faith Christian’s website was changed to remove any reference to the location of its Sunday services.

The negative publicity may be affecting the church’s fundraising efforts.

Former church member Connie Cohn said she’s been approached five times in recent months by current or prospective donors who said they were put off by news reports of Faith Christian’s methods and the church’s refusal to address the allegations.

All five said they had decided against giving to the church, said Cohn, 52, a former lay leader who left Faith Christian in 1999 after 18 years.

Henry Puente, a member of Faith Christian’s financial board for several years, says when he left in 2005, Hall’s salary was around $150,000 a year and Laks’ about $100,000. The mean average wage for a clergy member in Tucson was just over $54,000 in 2013, U.S. Department of Labor statistics show.

The church also employs at least nine members of Hall’s family, according to a staff list on its website. They include Hall’s wife Teresa, the couple’s five grown children and three sons-in-law. It isn’t clear how much the relatives are paid.

Faith Christian’s assets have swelled from $200,000 in the mid-1990s to more than $5 million this year, state and county records show. That includes a ranch as well as two cabins on Mount Lemmon that were rebuilt in 2013 at a cost of $1.38 million, the church’s 2013 financial statement shows.
SATELLITES AFFECTED

Faith Christian has six satellite churches as far away as New Zealand, all of which recruit on college campuses.

In New Zealand, New Palmerston Victory Christian Church — launched a decade ago by staffers who trained at Faith Christian — recruits at Massey University. In March, Massey banned nine representatives of the New Zealand church from setting foot on campus. School officials there said they’d been looking into complaints about the church prior to the Star’s investigation, but said the newspaper’s findings prompted additional scrutiny.

Massey officials became “sufficiently concerned about the actions and behaviour of certain members of the Victory Church,” spokesman James Gardiner said in a March email. “What has been alleged is that vulnerable young people have been offered friendship and support, but then made to feel dependent on the church and its members and isolated from other support networks, such as family and friends, with a consequent loss of self-esteem.”

In April, the Tampa Bay Times investigated Faith Christian-affiliate Cornerstone Christian Church, which recruits on the campus of the University of South Florida campus. That school received complaints from two former students about the church’s overly controlling practices, but officials said there was little they could do without complaints from current students.

In August, the Florida school received another complaint from a former church member who claimed Bill Cooper, the church’s senior pastor, had a yacht. The writer also described the church’s controlling tactics.

“They want to know all your business. All your misfortunes. All your weaknesses. All your sins. All your family problems. If you don’t open up to then, you will be accused of a rebellious spirit,” the complaint read. “Once you decide to leave or if you’re kicked out, your contact with church members ceases. ... I couldn’t believe how fast my friends of three years forgot about me. People struggle for years after they leave.”
CAUTIOUSLY OPTIMISTIC

The mother of a UA junior from Los Angeles launched the Star’s investigation into Faith Christian when she emailed a reporter with concerns about her son. His behavior and personality had changed dramatically after two years with Faith Christian, Kathy Sullivan said. She feared losing touch with him entirely and was bewildered by the level of influence church leaders wielded over him.

“I felt like I was in a tug-of-war with strangers over my son,” she said in a recent interview. When she made the decision to contact the newspaper, “I felt like a mother bear protecting her cub.”

Sullivan is cautiously optimistic that her son, who graduated from UA this month, has read the Star’s reporting and could one day pull back from the church. In recent months, he’s been warmer and more like his old self, she said. But they never talk about Faith Christian and have not directly addressed Sullivan’s role in the media coverage.

Sullivan said she believes speaking out has protected others, if not her son.

“Even if it doesn’t succeed in getting him out, it’s had a positive impact and I’m very happy for that,” she said.

The Star’s coverage also fueled conversations within the UA’s religious community about healthy church conduct, said Ben Garren, chaplain of the Episcopal Campus Ministry at the UA. The ministry is a member of the University Religious Council, a coalition of ministers and directors of religious and spiritual groups at the university.

Garren said he heard the same refrain from many students in the wake of the Star’s reporting: “I thought there was a problem, but I thought I was the only one who saw it.”

“Once the information was out there, students started talking about it,” Garren said. “Then suddenly, they’re all nodding their heads.”

Garren said he wishes the UA could do more to shield students from Faith Christian’s influence. But without hard evidence, he said, the school can’t ban church representatives from a public campus without risking violating the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

“I’m stressing to students the need to report when they have concerns to the dean of students’ office, so if there is something happening that is chronic and systematic, the dean can see that and act upon it,” he said. “Without concrete evidence, they can’t do much.”

http://tucson.com/news/local/tucson-church-some-call-a-cult-laying-low/article_5011ffe1-bba7-5647-b0a2-b1b6dec83d48.html

Mar 16, 2015

UA asks church's campus recuiting arm for answers

March 11, 2015
Arizona Daily Star
Emily Bregel, Carol Ann Alaimo

University of Arizona officials are meeting this week with the president and faculty adviser of Faith Christian Church’s campus recruiting arm to ask about allegations of wrongdoing raised in a recent Arizona Daily Star investigation of the church.

The leaders of Wildcats for Christ “are going to have to show up and answer questions,” said Melissa Vito, UA’s senior vice president.

The Star interviewed 21 former employees and church members and nine of their parents as part of its investigation. They described Faith Christian as a cult that promotes spanking of babies that show a “rebellious spirit,” exerts excessive control over members’ lives and finances and encourages students to cut ties with family and friends outside the church.

Faith Christian’s top leaders, senior pastor Stephen M. Hall and executive pastor Ian A. Laks, have declined for more than two weeks to comment on the Star’s findings.

Four people have told the Star they raised concerns to UA about Faith Christian Church as far back as the mid-1990s. But Vito said the school was unable to act because doing so requires a written complaint related to a current UA student.
She asks those with comments to email DOS-deanofstudents@email.arizona.edu or call 520-621-7057.

Vito said Tuesday that some tactics used by the church’s campus ministries have come under scrutiny over the years and were addressed informally by UA. For example, around 1995, the UA restricted the group’s access to student dorms in response to concerns about overly aggressive door-knocking and soliciting. The UA also banned the group from holding Bible studies in students’ rooms, she said.

The UA recently began an investigation after hearing from a Los Angeles-based mother of a current UA junior who is a church member. Kathy Sullivan said she has witnessed “drastic” changes in her son’s personality and behavior, and she worries about losing him completely. Sullivan told the Star she has filed a written complaint.

Since the Star’s investigation was published Sunday, the UA has received eight emails from former students and their parents criticizing the school for not taking action. Some said they would not send their offspring to the UA if the church is allowed to continue recruiting there.

“I have four children, and I would love to see them go to the U of A as well,” wrote one alumnus. “However, if this cult is still on campus by the time my oldest goes to college then neither she nor the other three will be allowed to attend.”

The UA also received a complimentary letter about Faith Christian Church from the parents of one former student who joined the church in 2008.
“I hope you recognize that the Arizona Daily Star was participating in yellow journalism,” the writer said. The names of writers were blocked out of the emails, which the UA provided to the Star.

Cody Nicholls, an assistant dean of students in the UA dean of students’ office — which handles complaints about campus groups — is a current member of Faith Christian Church. Nicholls acts as a liaison between the University Religious Council and the dean of students’ office.

The UA said the situation does not pose a conflict of interest because Nicholls has no role in investigating complaints. He oversees veterans affairs and has only acted as the interface between the dean’s office and the campus religious council for about a year, officials said.

Faith Christian Church is a member of two national evangelical organizations. Neither one will comment on allegations that the church shuns outsiders, shames members who question church leaders and encourages members to hit infants with cardboard tubes to make them submissive.

Dan Busby, president of the Virginia-based Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, expressed support for Faith Christian’s financial practices last week. In an email Tuesday, Busby said, “Since the issues were raised last week, we have had a senior ECFA executive on the ground in Arizona to confirm the Church’s compliance with our standards.”

Faith Christian also is a member of the National Association of Evangelicals, which has recommended pastoral practices but does not provide any oversight of member churches, said communications director Sarah Kropp Brown. “We provide guidance, but compliance is the church’s commitment and responsibility,” Brown wrote in an email.

Former University Religious Council chairman Dan Hurlbert said that, as early as 1999, the council was hearing about Faith Christian’s controlling practices and “badgering” of students. Hurlbert was URC chairman from 2000 to 2002.

He recalled the mother of a student mailed her concerns to then-UA president Peter Likinsaround 2002. She said her son was so deeply involved in Faith Christian that he was failing academically and was harassed by campus ministers after trying to distance himself from the church, said Hurlbert, now senior pastor at Tempe First United Methodist Church.

Former Faith Christian member Jason Bell said that after he left the church in 1996, he spoke with someone in the UA dean of students’ office about how Wildcats for Christ funneled students to Faith Christian and about the church’s controlling practices.
“They were concerned, but they needed more people, and they needed more formal complaints,” said Bell, now 43. But he said he didn’t file a written complaint because he felt he would be targeted by the church. He was already hearing rumors that church members had been telling his friends he was mentally unstable since he left the church.

“I didn’t want to be alone trying to fight that fight,” he said.
Susan Barnes, a nurse educator in Oklahoma whose daughter Rachiel Morgan left the church in 2008 after more than a decade, said she called the dean of students office around then to share her concerns about the church’s practices. She said she got a “very, very lukewarm” response from whoever answered the phone.

The person who answered told her everything seemed fine because the UA had no complaints about the organization, Barnes said. She was promised a call-back but said she didn’t receive one even after she called back to leave a reminder message.

UA alumnus and ex-member James Peeken, now 42, also said he spoke to an employee in the dean of students’ office in 1995. Peeken, who joined Faith Christian as a UA sophomore in 1993, left the church after a year and a half. He said he was disturbed by leaders’ control over members, their intense focus on tithing and the pressure to confess sins publicly, during Bible study groups.
Church leaders would exert control by saying they’d received “a word from God” about minute details of members’ lives, he said.

“They would get a word from God about what classes you should take, what car you should buy. If you didn’t follow that, you would be accused of having a rebellious spirit,” he said.
“After I went to them and said, ‘This is really troubling,’ I felt like they kind of dropped the ball,” he said. “That should have raised some red flags.”

UA seeks feedback

University of Arizona officials ask that anyone with concerns about Faith Christian Church or its campus ministries email the dean of students office at DOS-deanofstudents@email.arizona.edu or call 520-621-7057.
UA students who feel they need counseling can contact Campus Health's Counseling and Psych Services at 520-621-3334, or visit Campus Health at Highland Commons, 3rd Floor, 1224 E. Lowell St., on the NW corner of Highland and 6th St.
Website: health.arizona.edu/caps.htm

Contact reporter Carol Ann Alaimo at calaimo@tucson.com or 573-4138. Contact reporter Emily Bregel at ebregel@tucson.com or 807-7774. On Twitter: @EmilyBregel
http://tucson.com/news/local/ua-asks-church-s-campus-recuiting-arm-for-answers/article_8ca014fc-3c10-54ac-8712-b5979675d0ae.html