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/

@DustintheWindDude Please, please stop. Just stop. Stop now.

I'm sure that probably does happen.

I actually find people trying to witness in public to be quite distressing and disturbing - I have to get away from them fast. I do some work at a local rugby stadium on match days, dealing with the crowds. A while ago, while I was standing directing people from the public transport drop off to the entrance, a group of Christians appeared and started handing leaflets out right next to me.

Given my past experience, I had to go to my manager and ask to be moved somewhere else. I was extremely anxious once I realised who they were and what they were doing, and I couldn't cope with being anywhere near them.

Gosh she doesn't stop. It's like talking to a brick wall with no cognitive interaction. Even after they're told they're hurting people they continue. Even after they've said they'll stop.

All this is part of the problem, and the battery down the hatches/be convinced any criticism is "those who persecute you" as I predicted earlier.

Truly not worth any of us engaging anymore. It's a version of trolling :( And yes so sad when, like you 2, I remember a time that could gave been me.

It does kind of relate back to MP as this is exactly the cute that wont change or take on board safeguarding feedback. It's our own example of this.

I'd be up for a new thread too.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s MP trolling. He has several anon accounts on Twitter which are instantly recognisable as him. A few have finally cottoned on and stopped engaging with him.

I am so happy I stumbled upon this thread. I went to SS and momentum for 2 years back in 2007/8 and I absolutely loved it at the time. I definitely got caught up in the hype with the dim lighting, music and a feeling of being part of something big.

I ended up being quite involved in the CU at university but left it all in my final year. When you strip back the dim lighting, ‘cool’ music, attractive worship leaders that things like SS and contemporary churches have, I felt I was left with some messages I didn’t agree with, including those mentioned previously like strict views on sex before marriage, women taking a supporting view to men in the church and only surrounding yourself with other Christians.

The president of the CU had to step down when I was at uni because his girlfriend became pregnant. I remember an email he sent out which was telling everyone to keep it within on the CU - I was so shocked, firstly because they were trying to cover it up from anyone outside but also because I genuinely thought that everyone was sticking to the ‘rules’.

When I finally left and starting dating an ‘unbeliever’ I got a long email from one of my friends, with quotes from the Bible. Once they realised I left and they couldn’t convert me back I was dropped from the friendship group.

I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about all of this, on one hand I have amazing memories of those festivals but on the other hand I wonder if I was part of some sort of ‘cult’ which took away quite a few years of my life.

@user1469629176 I think this is one of the biggest issues I have with it, looking back - so much hypocrisy and so much holier-than-thou “sticking to the letter of the law”. Look at MP - weird massages are apparently OK because it “isn’t sex”.

The whole sex deprivation thing IMO is just completely unnatural - hence why so many (including your CU leader, and the youth leaders at my church) don’t actually practice what they preach.

@user1469629176 That being part of something big was always really appealing, wasn't it? I really feel for you - it's horrible to realise something that was a positive and treasured memory is actually something sinister and nasty. Like you, I'm left with a feeling that so much of my life has been wasted on this stuff, and there's so much I'll never experience because I was told it was completely off-limits. I'm full of regret for that now.

@Worried1305 I sometimes feel like I was just about the only person who took the prohibitions on sex seriously. There were people doing all sorts of weird mental gymnastics to justify all sorts of sexual activity with their partners, and plenty of people who were, of course, just shagging. Now and again people in my youth group and CU would get caught out when a girl got pregnant, and the answer was almost universally pressuring the couple concerned to get married. In many cases these marriages turned out to be utterly miserable, and at least one I know of was abusive and violent.

Nah, I think it's the sort of earnest and serious (probably young) Christian of the sort I used to be, who desperately wants it all to be true and good and wonderful, and feels very threatened by evidence to the contrary. Their response is to get the Bible out and throw some verses around in the hope we'll respond by saying "what must I do to be saved?"

I find it very, very hard to deal with and I have no patience for it these days, but I do completely understand it, because that was me once. With bells on.

I remember a group of CU evangelical students at school aged 14 or so making the only Asian girl in the year cry by telling her she was going to hell because she'd had the opportunity to believe but didn't take it.

A nice CU girl told me this news, a bit horrified at what had just happened, and quite censorious of everyone who had joined in the bullying, but then confided to me, "It is true though. She will go to hell."

Yes it brings back uncomfortable memories of someone telling me on a crusader holiday when I was 10 or so that my df would go to hell because he wasn't a Christian 😓

This reminds me of someone at my local church (who by that time was a smug married in her mid 20s) trying to sell Christianity to her unbeliever friends by saying: "We're just like you and do all their things you do, apart from we just don't have sex before marriage!"... possibly one of the worst sales pitches ever 😂.

That was the thing where they sought to draw a line in the sand... Drinking, partying, being the same as everyone else.... just no sex before marriage, even in a long engagement!

My Dad still believes that women who have a second (or subsequent) marriage should wear an off-white or ivory dress as they are no longer "pure" as though the whiteness of the dress indicated sexual purity and virginity! The idea that you have to parade your apparent purity into the church for all the behold is sick in my opinion.

Then there's the "how far should you go?" question, with my uni CU advocating "don't go any further with your bf/gf than you would with your mother/father"... which basically meant even a closed mouthed kiss on the lips that lingered for more than a split second was off the cards!

Yeah, a lot of it is about being seen to be pure. On my year out I shared a house with a bunch of other guys, and they were absolutely obsessed with not allowing women in the house after a certain time of night, so it didn't appear to the neighbours that anyone was having sex.

I suspect the neighbours never gave it a moment's thought.

I had a friend of the opposite sex who went to residential Bible college and when I went to visit him I had to walk a different way around the college as I wasn't allowed on the male corridors and he wasn't allowed on the female corridors 😂

Remember those Joyce Hugget books

My friends and I used to laugh at the passages

I remember the advice when I was a teenager was if you have a boyfriend/girlfriend never spend time just as a couple, always be in a group so you won't be tempted to go too far. Which I ignored because I thought it was stupid. I don't know how you are supposed to build any kind of meaningful relationship if you aren't allowed in the same room alone together.

That's as funny as it is tragic... Did they not realise that it was possible to have sex before bedtime?... Or did they think that sex only happened when you have your pjs on and had done you teeth, and the lights were all turned out? 😂

Did you ever come across the book “I kissed dating goodbye”? It was about a Christian in the US who had concluded that even to KISS someone before marrying them was wrong. It was very popular over here for a while. Think he has retracted it more recently and said it was too extreme.

I went to a Baptist church but we also went to crusader holidays spring harvest, soul survivor events and similar stuff. I definitely saw MP talking in the late 1990s/early 2000s.

I remember talks saying that you shouldn't do anything with a gf or bf (obviously a bf in my case because homosexuality was a sin) that you wouldn't do with your brother or sister! Even as a young teen who'd never had a relationship I remember finding this quite perplexing.

And going out with a non believer was a big no no as well. Of course the ideal formula was meeting a nice Christian of suitable age/the opposite sex at your uni CU or church, and anyone who didn't, was meant to save themselves for someone suitable or be joyfully single!

Ewww

Yeah, the author has requested that the book is no longer published, and has made a lengthy apology for the damage it caused. He's now no longer a Christian and is recently divorced.

He wrote the book when he was very young and I think I can forgive him for that. Purity culture was a huge thing at the time. He's shown great maturity and courage in denouncing it all - it cost him a lot to do that.

I downloaded a PDF recently and read it out of curiosity - it's awful stuff. Sadly a lot of Christians (although mainly American ones) still think it's fantastic, and have been widely circulating pirate copies to keep it out there.

Often couples got married too young because of the nsbm pressure and then divorced

I never agreed with it

Unfortunately, a more common outcome was that they stayed married forever, and were utterly miserable.

Such a shame

We used to get told 'don't touch what you haven't got'.
Which gets a bit awks with same-sex relationships. Not that any of us would have even contemplated that at the time, but in hindsight (and in a SS relationship), it is quite funny.