Articles and Resources

"If I have prophecy,
   and fathom all mysteries
     and all knowledge,
  and if I have faith
     to remove mountains...

...but do not have love....

...I am nothing."

Intro to the Assembly Ministry of George and Betty Geftakys

What's New?

movie trailerJuly 1  "Join Us" (cinema verité film following four families being counseled at Wellspring after leaving their tiny "special" church) is now available online! Dave Sable reviews the movie in "'Join Us' - Better Felt than Telt". He says, "The movie...certainly touches upon the list of characteristics of abusive churches – they are all there...But this is only secondary to what the movie is about. The movie is about people. It is about what abusive principles did to people emotionally." Hat tip to Lema Nal's Blog.

June 28  "How can I discern whether I'm in a healthy or abusive fellowship?" Good question. Holly Dye tackles the answer on her blog Refocusing Our Eyes. Here is one of her observations:

"In healthy fellowships we are admonished to imitate the Christ-like virtues seen in others. In abusive fellowships the leaders are imitated in many more ways than just their virtues. In fact, members take on many of the personal characteristics (personality) of the leaders in a manner that appears unseemly..."

Here's more:

In healthy fellowships we are encouraged to love and bless our enemies. In abusive fellowships showing hatred for our enemies and speaking defamatory of them is acceptable. And often the occasion for “rallying the troops.”

Abusive leaders seldom practice this scripture:

…when ridiculed, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered we respond gently… (1 Cor 4:12, 13).

Read more....

Thanks to Al Hartman for passing along this link.

April 13  Announcement of a new study: Mary Anne Rardin, a doctorate level student in the East-West Psychology Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies is looking for participants in a study on the role of spirituality (or the lack thereof) in the healing and integration journey of people who have been in cults or fundamentalist religions. She is asking any survivor who was born/raised in a cultic group (2nd Generation cult survivors) who is interested in learning more about the study and willing to consider taking part to contact her. Email: mar_qa at yahoo dot com, phone number available from the editor on request.

AddictionMarch 20  Again, thanks to Lema Nal, here is a link to an insightful article, "Religious Addiction". This is chapter 9 of the book Toxic Faith, which we read after we left the Assembly in 1990. The authors, Steve Arterburn and Jack Felton, are therapists in Orange County. You have to push past the therapy perspectives in the first part of the article to get to the meat of their analysis. Soon after I read the book I happened to see Jim Hayman in the bank one day, and recommended it to him. His response was, "Toxic faith! That's a terrible title. How can faith possibly be toxic?" Maybe for some it wasn't, but for us the description was spot on, because it was "faith" that went far beyond the gospel to create an obsessive mentality and lifestyle. Mark Campbell's article "Defense Mechanisms of Addicts" also touches on some aspects of religious addiction in the Assembly. 

March 6  In Authoritarianism in the Church, Steve Martin, Dr. Paul Martin's brother, gives a well-reasoned and supported analysis of the growing problem of authoritarianism in churches. He cites Charity and Its Fruits, by Jonathan Edwards (great puritan preacher), for additional reading. Martin says of the book, "...a masterful exposition of I Corinthians 13 with powerful application to us today. Pastors who need to learn more about love should long dwell here." This sounds like a great antidote to the harsh attitude of Assembly leadership. Our former great Servant of the Lord would probably not benefit, but leaders he trained under him might learn the error of their ways. (HT Lema Nal's Blog.)

February 4   There is now a section on this site for "Assembly Kids, MK's and PK's". Finally, you former AK's don't have to sift through stuff that's mostly relevant to your parents. Links to what speaks most directly to your situation are brought together in one place. What's with the "MK's" and "PK's", you ask? Well, oddly enough, AK's have quite a bit in common with pastors' kids in other church settings, and missionary kids, especially those who were sent away to boarding school.

February 3  Reflections on Marriage and Children after the Cult draws out some of the causes of family problems stemming from involvement in a high-demand group, and shows how they can be tackled in counseling. Bill and Lorna Goldberg are therapists who specialize in cult issues.

Raised in Cultic Groups: The Impact on the Development of Certain Aspects of Character, also by the Goldbergs, is an article directed primarily at therapists, but it is full of insights applicable to AK's.

(Apologies for the "C" word in these two articles. Remember, on this site we use the term "cult" in reference to how a group functions, not its beliefs. We all know now that G. Geftakys had problems; one of them was that he behaved like a cult leader. He and Betty formed the Assembly into a high-demand, authoritarian group. For more about the use of the "C" word, read here ».)

December 18  Posted part two on the blog topic, "So what do we still have to do??" You can rest in the unconditional love of God because Jesus has already done it all for you.

December 4  Those of us coming out of performance-based Christian systems are happy to have escaped the pressure of all the stuff you had to do to be "spiritual". So glad that's behind us. But there is still a depressing anxiety - "I feel that I was a better Christian when I was doing all that stuff..." - "So what do we still have to do??"  »»

Book cover December 3  K. Gordon Neufeld "escaped" from 10 years with the Moonies and afterward earned an M.A. in creative writing. He wrote an article about totalism in modern fiction in which he compares the varieties of totalitarianism in the following books: Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell), Darkness at Noon (Koestler), One Man's Bible (Xinjiang), Three Continents (Jhabvala), Oyster (Hospital), Heavenly Deception (Brooks), and Heart of Darkness (Conrad). He also mentions Cat's Eyes and The Handmaid's Tale (Atwood), Invisible Man (Ellison), Imaginary Friends (Lurie), A Darker Place (Laurie King), Animal Farm (Orwell), Foreigner (Rachlin), and Mind Games (Spinrad). So there's a nice depressing reading list for you. Our daughter recommended The Handmaid's Tale to me soon after we left the Assembly. I hated it, at the time, but she got it, and she was still a teen! I've also read A Darker Place. Books like this shed light on what was wrong with the Assembly system itself, as distinct from what was wrong with G & B.

October 13  There are a few more details and a photo about Ginger Geftakys' career as a lecturer at CSUF in elementary art education.

Note:  We are sometimes asked why we don't recommend two books by Gene Edwards, Letters to a Devastated Christian and A Tale of Three Kings; they would seem to be very applicable. We read those books after we left the Assembly in 1990, and they resonated, in the sense that they described our experience to a certain extent. But they were confusing, because they blame the victim, failing to make a proper emphasis on the deception and control perpetrated by leaders. A look at Gene Edwards' own ministry shows why this is so. Kevin Knox of "The Familyhood Church" blog has a series of posts about his ten years under Edwards' ministry. Deja vu all over again in many ways! The Barnabas Ministry reviews Letters to a Devastated Christian.


Note: The word 'cult' is used on this website in the sociological sense, referring to the practice and conduct of groups, not their beliefs or doctrine. For more about the use of this word, read here ».

The assemblyboard is a forum on the Geftakys ministry having no administrative connection with this website. It is run by Brian Tucker, formerly of the Charleston Assembly in Illinois.

Back to top