My main aim for leaving this on my blog is that I aim to help others recognise the pitfalls of elevating over-zealous, young, generally male, leaders who have little to no experience of handling serious grievances all while being given power to speak into and impact the lives of congregants. I believe these learnings go far beyond my experience of one church movement into how people operate in business and leadership more generally.
I was recently interviewed by John Collins, someone who has been researching the connections between various church movements who can be linked to the movement of William Branham. Though my knowledge of the connections to William Branham are limited, there is a link through Paul Cain to Branham and Cain was an influential voice in many of the more charismatic and pentecostal movements to which New Frontiers grew out of. Neither Branham or Cain have a particularly positive history, nor do several of their counterparts such as Mike Bickle. I won’t get into the history here but John reached out to me having heard of my story with New Frontiers.
I hope that I handle the main question and the history of New Frontiers fairly. I am open to being corrected if I have shared anything that is not true or accurate. You can watch the interview here:
If you are new here and aren’t sure about “the mess” as I refer to it in this interview, I’ve now removed the historical posts from my blog, mainly because they no longer form a helpful part of this platform. However if you would like to know how I responded to the church pushing out a staff member under threat of an NDA, would like to chat through your own experience of church hurt, or just have some questions following this interview, please feel free to get in touch.
I have been following John Collins’ podcast for a while because of my experiences with the Charismatic movement in the Anglican Church while growing up, with the Vineyard and other similar churches in California and with a Bethel (Redding, CA) influence on our church in Hong Kong where I was an Elder.
I was aware of New Frontier churches over the years, but only at a distance, so I was interested to hear about your experiences. Thank you for sharing them. I then read about your exit - it sounded challenging. You have my great sympathy.
What you described regarding your church sounds less extreme than what has gone on at some of the Branham (Message) churches, which are truly cultic, so I wouldn’t want to lump New Frontiers in with them, but it seems that what they have in common is a focus on the organisation and staff instead of on God’s glory, with a resulting risk of pastoral abuse. It seems that this is sadly not uncommon.