Have you or your kids been to Soul Survivor?

[Coffeeandcards]

You might want to read this if so:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/12/mike-pilavachi-soul-survivor-charity-watchdog/

How can you possibly claim that? You don't know everybody's experience of soul survivor.

I suppose I don't, but no more than @DustintheWindDude knows that no funny business happened at New Wine. All I was trying to say was they were similar evangelical festivals that were pretty similar in many ways... for most people who attended at least.

I think all the allegations about MP relate to the Soul61 gap year program rather than the festivals
That I can well imagine - in our church the power and patronage of the youth leader in choosing who got a gap year role was huge.

Those of you saying Matt is behaving with dignity - why didn’t he expose it sooner? He has the platform to do so

I thought i read earlier in the thread that Matt had raised some issues with church leaders which were denied/gaslight or swept under the carpet? (Sorry if I have mis-remembered that)

This isn’t the case.

Nice victim blaming there.

He tried. He references that in his statement.

It’s complex isn’t it, because MP
is godfather the MR’s children…

MP is godfather to Redman children, Hughes, Layzell etc. All of that group, it’s totally screwed up.

Most of my kids have been to Soul Survivor, and it was an important part of their faith journey.

We obviously had to do a safeguarding investigation when the disclosures first came to light. We concluded that our young people were never at risk because they were part of a church group with adequate supervision from both pastors and parents.

They also attended the guest services at Soul Survivor Church in Watford, but again, with supervision (including me!)

Your young people certainly could have been at risk- that's how grooming works.

And…. Well it’s up for debate that young people being brought into that type of faith (fundamentalist, evangelical) in of itself is in fact damaging @CraftyGin .
There are many people like me who have been through that and come out of the other side or ‘deconstructed’ that now see it in a very different light.
there’s lots I could say but for one thing the guilt and shame I carried in relation to sex, and the effects of going into marriage I believe far too young and hastily, partly because of the no-sex-before-marriage thing, plus finding it so hard to understand why this loving God wasn’t healing me/setting me free from a particle thing I struggled with - then concluding it must only be because my faith was not strong enough…. All that stuff and more.
I don’t believe it was conscious but teenagers are so vulnerable to being swept along and buying into all this stuff unquestioningly. Soul survivor and the like were targeting people just at the right age.

You can't write off a whole genre based on one bad film. Likewise, you can't condemn the whole Evangelical movement based on a few bad apples at one church in Watford.

Unfortunately it’s not just a few bad apples, the guilt-laden, restrictive environment @User63847484848 describes is a common experience for many, many young people growing up in these churches.

Why on earth is sex before marriage bad - now, in the 21st century? Or in the late 20th century? I can see that in the subsistence-agrarian society of biblical times sex outside marriage would have been socially disastrous, but now? Really?

The social necessity for strict religious control (not that it was ever that successful over the last 2100 years) has been replaced by the rule of law, secular morality and the structures of civil society.

I have said it before but I don’t think any religious group should be allowed to evangelise to or accept donations from young people under the age of twenty-one.

Absolutely agree. It's not just "a few bad apples". Charismatic evangelicalism is corrupt and harmful on a really widespread basis, and my involvement with it as a teen 30 years ago messed me up beyond belief. It's led me to have appalling self-esteem issues, really messed up my sexuality, and led me to do a lot of things I now really regret.

This is what happens when you start taking a book thousands of years old literally, and going to real extremes with it, writing off anyone who disagrees with you as evil, and building personality cults around people with no safeguarding training or accountability structures. We'll keep seeing more and more of this, as more people realise, like I did, "hang on, this isn't good, it's actually really f*ed me up".

I think the problem is seeing it as aubade apple" as the solution is to remove bad apple and problem solved!

What's harder is the deeper work of examining the culture of places like this and the environment it creates. THAT Is where the work needs to be done.

Just thinking it's a "bad apple" completely (conveniently) ignores the need for wider change.

This is starting to sound like a witch hunt. 🙄

No..it really isn't.

But the tenancy to "close ranks" so people can't possibly think anything negative of the church (and by extension God..) is so common.

Yes absolutely

I really struggle with it and some of the practices really irritate me

In what way?

No it's not. A witch hunt is where a person is publicly persecuted by many people in a manner that is out-of-proportion to a minor or non-existent offence.

People have revealed concerns about Mike Pilivachi, stretching back over twenty years.
Well-known people have come forward with first person testimony, written in their own name.
Mike Pilivachi was suspended by Soul Survivor Watford.
A major incident was reported to the Charity Commission.
Other members of staff were suspended.
The Church of England have convened a safeguarding investigation.
National newspapers have reported on the issue.
Mike Pilivachi has resigned his role.

Please see the timeline by GodLovesWomen for the full picture
The Soul Survivor Situation – A Timeline – God Loves Women (wordpress.com)

This is not nothing. These are serious safeguarding concerns about an ordained minister, Canon of the Church of England and holder of an MBE. And alongside the concerns about Mike Pilivachi himself comes a quite reasonable readiness to scrutinise the church culture and environment that may have given rise to this situation.

Bad apples, unless promptly removed, corrupt the whole barrel.
When were concerns about Pilachi first raised?
And the CofE has a dreadful record of institutional coverup and poor safeguarding.

I think you don't understand how much Soul Survivor shaped and influenced evangelical culture.

I don't think that the UK has anything like the issues with purity culture that the US has, but my experience with SS and the charismatic wing of the church does make me think it's not far enough from it, and the shame it causes allows predators to take advantage. In a society with reliable contraception we don't need the damaging absolutes that purity culture carries.

I'll omit the details but the fact that sex in my long term marriage is very good has plenty to do with us worshipping each other with our bodies, as we are taught, but ignoring / getting rid of all the purity / virginity stuff.

I just don't like the way this is turning into a general Evangelical church bashing thread. I didn’t experience Soul Survivor personally but did attend similar, as mentioned upthread, without any issues.
Also don't see any problem with keeping sex within a marriage setting.