In the last few months I have been working with a journalist who is writing a biographical account of my life, in particular since our move from the UK to Germany. The article will be published in the coming weeks in the German national press as the basis of a plea for more social enlightenment about the issues raised. The journalist is now provoking me to translate it into English and to have it published in the UK too.
I’m as yet undecided, partly because I am not into vendettas, but I thought I would tell some of the story on my blog as a litmus test. In telling my story, my aim is simply to protect others.
Having grown up in a pagan family in the north of England, I became a Christian in 1991 during a gospel preaching service at King’s Church in Hastings. My conversion turned my life on its head and all my beliefs and values were aligned with those of fundamentalist Christianity.
By 2002, I was married, had three children and was leading the church. I would say that the strongest characteristic of the church during my leadership was mission (Christians sharing their faith with non-believers and caring for underprivileged families).
During 2008, I was strongly encouraged to leave Hastings and to start a brand new church, from the ground up, in Berlin. Newfrontiers – the group of churches to which King’s Church Hastings belongs – is fiercely committed to exporting its brand of Christianity to other European cities. I agreed to go, sold our house and car and took my wife and by then four children to start a new church in the centre of Berlin.
In contrast to other so-called church plants, we had no team to help us. No relatives. No friends. No contacts in the city. There were just the six of us. On our own. We were given financial support, yet without a congregation to pay your salary, living in the capital city of the wealthiest nation in Europe, I had to take on a second full-time job in order to pay the bills. The pressure was enormous: my wife became sick and lonely, all four children suffered from isolation and culture shock, the competitive culture to make a fast-growing church out of nothing in an extremely secular society, the stress of effectively two full-time jobs all came together to produce a catastrophe that was to end in family breakdown and divorce.
Meanwhile, I got into significant moral difficulties that led, amongst other things to the loss of my so-called secular job and my laying down the leadership of the new church.
This is the point in my life when I most needed the support from the members of King’s Church Hastings. I was so desperate. What happened next is still hard to believe, even to this day. Five years later.
On the day my sin came to light, my family and I were swiftly deleted from every page of the King’s Church Hastings website, along with every reference to the exciting church plant in Berlin. Every recorded sermon, every article, every photo. As in the movie “Enemy of the State”, it was as if my whole existence had been suddenly deleted. You can check this out for yourself by visiting www.kingshastings.org Just as with some of the child sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, instead of honesty, transparency and accountability, there was nothing but cover-up, deceit and denial.
Next came the need for financial support for my wife and children until I could find a new job, at least. The response of the church’s leaders was to pay for my wife and four children to leave me in Berlin and fly them back to live in England. Instead of love, care and reconciliation, we were offered division that ripped us apart as a family. Our oldest two children (then only 16 & 14 respectively) refused to get on the plane and ended up living on the streets for several weeks until I was able to find them. The youngest two had no choice but to go with their mother. The damage to their emotional and educational development are still with us today.
As for the financial support for the oldest two children, this was promised until I could find a job, but not a cent was given. Furthermore, one close friend in King’s Church Hastings sent me £300 to help us, but he made the mistake of telling the leaders who then forbade him to send us any more money privately. Which is similar to what happened to my other close friend who wanted to come out to Berlin to offer me some much-needed moral support, and she too was effectively forbidden by the leaders from coming to visit me.
The moral of the story is: it is best to stay away from religion, especially Christian sects. And if you don’t escape, I guarantee you that the church will ruin your life.
“I’m completely in favour of the separation of Church and State. These two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.” George Carlin