The 6-weeks I spent in Master’s Commission, and how it changed my life.
By Mandi Y. Voegele | Written April – July 2021
AUTHOR’S NOTES:
This story is a personal journal / blog and is not intended to be published for any monetary gains. The accounts referenced occurred 20-25 years prior to the time this was written. While all persons and locations referenced are real, all names other than mine have been changed or left out. At least three of the individuals included in the narrative are now deceased. Though the accounts and evidence disclosed could be used toward legal action, at this time there are no plans to pursue any lawsuits with regards to the incidents outlined in this writing. The purpose of this piece is to share my story on paper so that my daughter can someday read and understand how this period changed the trajectory of her parents’ lives. I want her to know she always has the power to stand-up for herself when something is wrong, or walk away from harmful people and situations regardless of their power or position. – Mandi
CHAPTER LIST:
3 PROLOGUE – The Man of My Dreams, The Place of My Nightmares
6 CHAPTER 1 – The Convincing
8 CHAPTER 2 – The First Class / Cult Lab Rats
11 CHAPTER 3 – “Pray in Tongues!”
12 CHAPTER 4 – Saturday Club… Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes
13 CHAPTER 5 – If Being a Christian Makes You Mean; You’re Doing it Wrong
14 CHAPTER 6 – Becoming a “Bad Girl”
17 CHAPTER 7 – Lies, Blackmail, and Other Atrocities
19 CHAPTER 8 – The Lost Year
22 EPILOGUE – What “Happily Ever After” Actually Looks Like
24 Additional Resources
DEFINITIONS FOR TERMS USED:
- Cult – In modern English, a cult is a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, or by its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal.
- God – (In Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being
- Spirit – The Holy Spirit, (in Christianity) the third person of the Trinity; God as spiritually active in the world.
- Satan (devil) – The rebellious angel who in Christian belief is the adversary of God and the lord of evil.
- Pastor – A minister in charge of a Christian church or congregation.
- Church – A building used for public Christian worship.
- Prayer – A solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship.
- MC Leader – The person hired to teach/run a branch of the Master’s Commission.
- Master’s Commission (MC) – (From official website of the Arizona branch, 2021, USA) – An intense nine-month long discipleship program, an International discipleship movement. A nonprofit institution. A full-time commitment that leaves no time for outside obligations. Complete dedication is needed. Students are not allowed to maintain outside employment during the 9-month school year. Students are not allowed to date during their first year.
PROLOGUE – The Man of My Dreams, The Place of My Nightmares
I was around the age of 9 when my mom started attending an evangelical, charismatic, Christian, nondenominational church a few towns away from the small Midwest town where we lived. I attended that church with my family, and then my husband, for more than 15-years. This was the church where in later years I briefly, accidentally, joined a cult.
The church was full-on “spirit-filled,” with praying in tongues and people dancing in the aisles! As a kid, it was honestly a ton of FUN because you just never knew how “the spirit was going to move” on any given Sunday. I loved the beautiful streamers and tambourines we got to use during worship.
My parents were divorced, so I only attended that church every other week and thankfully had a well-rounded faith-based experience. One Sunday I would go to the nondenominational church, and on alternate Sundays I attended the local First Christian Church with my dad and stepmom. (Talk about culture shock going from one to the other!) On Wednesday nights, I went to the best/most fun youth program in town at the Free Methodist Church that was attended by kids and teens from a variety of other churches.
When I was 15-years old, I left public school and enrolled for one year at the private Christian school affiliated with the nondenominational Church where my stepdad was a teacher. My now husband (we’ll call him Joe) also attended this private school.
I knew who Joe was from years of Sunday school, but that year we became friends and dated for 2-weeks around Christmas time. He was my second kiss, but I thought he was moving too fast, so I broke it off. He also thought it was too soon to kiss me, but I didn’t know one of his “friends” (who we later learned came from a family of abuse) told him I was “going to break-up with him if he didn’t kiss me”… the first in a long line of other peoples’ lies that dictated the course of our lives.
I was aware some things at the school did not seem quite right, like when the principal’s son kissed me in the hallway after school, then I got called into the office the next day. I was lectured by his mother (also a teacher) about how it was “my fault” because girls are responsible for making sure boys don’t become physically turned on, and how I needed to apologize to them (his parents) for making their son do something sinful. I learned many years later that she herself had recently come out of an extra-marital affair within the church.
Yes, I know how weird that all sounds to anyone who hasn’t experienced the “slut shaming” verbal abuse of a patriarchal church obsessed with the purity movement. Sadly, this story is mostly downhill from here in that regard.
I did not know at the time, but one of our male teachers (an ordained pastor) was a pedophile. During the course of several years, he group-molested a number of teen boys including my husband, showing them pornography, having them skinny dip in his pool, and engaging in “bunk bed fort sleepovers” during class trips.
I told you this story only gets worse, but the truth of what was going on behind closed doors was indicative of the manipulation and abuse that was yet to come. The teacher was fired, moved away quickly, and it was swept under the rug. In recent years, people who were in leadership have claimed that they knew nothing about it when one of the former students and his parents went to the media. That is a lie. At least two of the boys’ mothers and one church counselor went to the pastoral team about the abuse after it happened, which I’ve heard from each one of their own mouths.
The last time I checked, that man is still teaching out-of-state. Since then, his ex-wife and another teacher who knew him have told us additional stories of his abuse in his family, and at other schools on young men over the course of several decades, which they learned about later. Yes, it is very, very sad.
NOTE: It is not a minor victim’s job to bring justice to a situation where they were abused. Asking them to do it later in life it further perpetuates the trauma of something horrible that was not their fault. Those who were legally adults in charge were responsible for investigating, and using their resources and money to bring legal charges at the time of the situation they allowed to occur. They did not. That is on them, not the victims.
The GOOD part of this story is me and Joe.
The summer after high school we started hanging out a lot after church and going out to lunch. We primarily used this time to talk about our crushes… who were not each other! I was smitten with another teen at our church, and Joe was in love with a missionary’s daughter from another church.
After a couple months of this, one day I looked at him and thought, “Wait a second, we get along so well, he is so cute, and he is becoming my best friend. Why am I not dating HIM?” That very day we went over to his best friend’s house (we’ll call him Kyle) and held hands while watching a movie on Kyle’s basement couch.
That was it for me. As the Broadway Skylar sisters sing, I was “Helpless”.
Soon after, we started to “court” during my freshman year of college. That was the era of “True Love Waits,” the purity / abstinence until marriage movement of the later 90’s, early 2000’s. Our church had fully embraced this movement and the idea of “courting” versus “dating.” I myself had a promise ring, vowing to only have sex with my someday husband. All of this was perpetuated by a book called “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” by Joshua Harris that became like our Bible.
Every good Christian teen I knew had read this book. Joe literally bought copies to hand out to other teens. We were the “good kids.” The ones God “highly-favored” because we were remaining “pure”… and low-key shaming anyone who wasn’t. We did not even kiss for the first five months we dated. We were those people.
NOTE: In the past couple of years, Joshua Harris actually got a divorce, and spoke out publicly about the harm his book caused and how he regretted writing it. We forgive you Josh. You didn’t do this alone, and we all thought we knew everything back then. At least you apologized.
But for Joe and me, a slow start to a long journey wasn’t a bad thing. We dated all through my freshman year of college. He would drive through snowstorms to come see me. He wrote me beautiful letters. I would be up late working on papers in the computer lab and we would flirt back and forth on AOL instant messenger, or just talk about our day.
I spent that Christmas season with his family. Soon after we had our first real kiss under a big beautiful tree in his backyard. In the spring, he went on vacation with my family.
I knew he was the man I wanted to marry. He was smart, funny, honest, sweet, good looking, a hard worker, and deeply knowledgeable about theology. We fought off and on because we were very different… and also both passionate, kind of stubborn, and a little bit crazy… but we were real, honest, and we loved each other in that tumultuous, beautiful, young love kind of way.
He ended up breaking-up with me in the spring, but we continued to see each other and date off and on during that summer.
At this time, the pastors at our church decided to implement their first ever class of The Master’s Commission, a 9-month paid “discipleship program” hosted by the church. They told Joe that he had to attend, because they were quite literally starting this program “just for him.”
We did not realize at the time they had spent years grooming him to do anything they said, having people preach, teach, and prophesy over him that he was supposed to be a five-fold minister, prophet, and preacher, and anything aside from that he wanted to do was basically heresy. For more than a decade they made sure he (and his parents) knew his only purpose in life was to fulfill God’s calling in ministry… and they were the ones who got to tell him what that looked like.
Whether it was cleaning the pastor’s house out of “honoring your leadership” or sending your kids to the Christian school because “anything the secular world does is evil,” everyone in the congregation knew how people without the right last name or enough money had to stay on the leaders’ good side, and Joe knew better than many.
It mattered little what he wanted to do with his life, they “knew God’s calling for him.” They would make it happen. They convinced his parents of the same, that this program would prepare him to change the world for God.
He never wanted to go to MC. He dreaded it. But he did want to do something great with his life (which he has, by the way) and he didn’t want to disappoint or let down the church leaders or his parents. This is just one of many instances where we have seen how manipulation and guilt play a big role in how some church leaders control people.
When I found out Joe was joining a program where he not only couldn’t date, but also could not communicate with me AT ALL because we had formerly dated, that was it. I was not okay with this…. I had to do something.
CHAPTER 1 – The Convincing
True confession: I had to do some manipulating of my own to end up in a place where I was being manipulated myself.
I was 18-years old, legally an adult, (which never occurred to me at the time, another outcome of a ‘submit to your spiritual authorities’ Christian lifestyle), and had just completed my freshman year of college at a private university. The school was a 2-hour drive from my hometown. I had a full-ride scholarship that I earned after applying and interviewing thanks to my father being a tenured professor at a sister-school.
But a young woman in LOVE is hardly focused on practicalities or finances.
I only knew one thing for sure, that Joe was my best friend, and there was no way I could survive an entire year not seeing or speaking to him.
I was also smart (a dean’s list kind of student) and knew that “I don’t want to live without him” was never going to fly with my “get a college education and pursue your dreams” parents.
So, I convinced myself, and subsequently them, that “God was calling me to join the first class of the Master’s Commission at our church.” That was it. That was my story and I was sticking to it.
They had little reason to doubt me. Again, I had always been a ‘good-girl rule-follower’ so it seemed plausible. My mom and stepdad were hesitant and not in full support of the program, but sat down to discuss it. They came back to me with the condition that they would pay for MC if I promised to return to college the following year.
My dad, on the other hand, was not on board at all. Looking back, I totally get why. He was very concerned that if I took a year off from traditional education, I would not return and therefore never get my degree. Completely reasonable.
Meanwhile, I said “I won’t go if I can’t get a blessing from all my parents.” But in the end, I went anyway. Young love is a very strong pull, and one-year feels like an eternity.
But aside from all that, this whole set-up was destined for failure from the very start. The headquarters for MC had established a set of guidelines / rules that all of their program plants were supposed to follow. The MC at our church broke like a million and five of them… not to say I even think they were great rules, but they were there for a reason, to keep more “issues” out of any already super problematic program.
BROKEN RULE #1: Anyone who had previously, or was currently, in a dating / courting / romantic relationship was not allowed to be in the same MC class. We were supposed to go to different MC programs away from each other. This never even came up that I recall. They let us both in because “the more (money) the merrier!” Rules be damned.
BROKEN RULE #2: A guy and girl were never supposed to be in a car alone. But the only other girl in our class, let’s call her Stephanie, had a car and could pick-up Joe and me on her way to class, which was actually well OUT of her way from her host home, and she could pretty much drive around with anyone she wanted. We would then pay her for gas. (Joe and I also had our own cars, but trying to understand the insanity of the “MC carpool” is a task beyond even my well-educated mind.)
BROKEN RULE #3: A guy and girl were not supposed to be in host homes next to each other. There were only seven people in our MC class, and yet they put Joe and I in host homes LITERALLY NEXT DOOR TO EACH OTHER. Never mind that Joe’s own family lived about 10 minutes from his host home. (I know right?)
In case you cannot see the writing on the wall, this was not going to go well.
There were also rules that I broke…
We weren’t supposed to be emailing each other, but I did a few times anyway. Not a lot, I wasn’t a total rebel, but once in a while.
We weren’t supposed to talk to each other… but we were in the same church services, taking daily classes, and being unpaid manual labor seven days a week in a group of seven people, so not talking to each other was completely unrealistic.
In hindsight, the craziest part to me is that not a single person in charge of this inaugural MC class stopped for even one minute to ask, “Should we be allowing an educated girl who wants to pursue a career, who has a loving family, who has a full-ride to college and just spent a whole year living / studying / working independently, to take a year off and come to this guinea pig program for wayward teens and/or young adults without a life direction who want to be better disciples of Christ?” But I guess history proves over and over again that arrogance and unearned confidence in an untested endeavor are the downfall of many a man.
CHAPTER 2 – The First Class / Cult Lab Rats
I need to start this chapter by pointing out that no one intentionally joins a cult. We all go into a group thinking it is something normal, and later discover that the odd spiritual practices and rules are horrifically harmful to us and others.
There were seven of us in that first class, five boys, two girls, all between the ages of 18-20. I can’t speak for anyone else, but Joe and his best friend Kyle were there because their parents / church leadership made them be there, and you already know why I was there.
It was weird for me from day one. SO many arbitrary rules!
It was another culture shock for me going from a successful freshman year of college where I was trusted by all the other adults to do my work and show-up well, to a place where the other adults distrusted me immediately and everything I did or said was scrutinized for “sins.”
It was also strange to go from a place where I was learning about EVERYTHING, from sociology, to psychology, to mythology, to history…. To a place where everything was singularly focused on the “total depravity of Man” and how God and Jesus can fix all that.
But I was happy to be where Joe was, even though we had to be very careful how we interacted.
The days were filled with classes, devotions, prayer groups, worship services, service projects, cleaning, more cleaning, lectures, and mostly spending WAY too much time with the same six peers and three leaders.
There were two assistant MC leaders. One was basically a parrot of the MC leader – he is referenced moving forward as “the parrot” – so I barely remember the significance of him even being there, except that he was horrible to Joe after I left. There was also a lovely older lady, but I’m honestly not sure about her role either. All I remember was her sitting in the back crocheting during every class, and making us cookies. I joined a crochet group with her years later, and I really enjoyed getting to know her as a friend instead.
Overall, I did fine. I was used to studying and writing and sitting in class, so this was a piece of cake in that regard compared to college, although certainly not as interesting.
But some of the things being taught were SO toxic, it took me years to shake them off. For example, traditional gender roles were HUGE for MC, and within the church. They made it clear that some tasks were for men, and some were for women. They made a big deal over the fact that women should not be involved in carrying heavy things, like unloading the luggage on a group trip, because we were the gentler sex (I.E. submissive to the patriarchy and therefore fragile. Just a reminder here that WE bare the children… fragile my ass).
This became a problem a couple of years later when my college choir (yes, I did go back to school) went on the annual spring break tour and I was put on luggage committee to assist with unloading and reloading luggage at each host church.
I went to the choir director and explained the philosophy of my church and why I couldn’t be on that committee. He was gracious and moved me to another committee, but he also made it clear (kindly and in different words) that that kind of thinking was antiquated, that women were strong and capable, and that feminism had moved us past putting women in subservient, weaker, roles then men.
I am thankful that he said something because I had so much respect for him as a music professor and mentor, and it made me take time to stop and think about the lack of validity with what we had been taught in MC.
Now I have zero problem carrying heavy boxes for our small business, doing the hard labor, building and fixing things, and basically kicking butt at tasks previously designated “men only.”
Although many days at MC were fine… if a bit boring… there were others that were completely suffocating.
There were these weird times when for some reason one of us would sit in a chair in the middle of the group, and the leader and other students would basically tell us all the things that were wrong with us. It was bizarre, and now kind of reminds me of a scene in the book “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
The other students called the chair ritual “The MC Beatdown.” It’s been 25-years and my husband still has a trauma-based fight or flight response when he enters a room with one chair in the middle. He immediately looks for the exits and needs to know why he is there.
But often when either I, or someone else, was “in the chair,” or when something I felt was wrong or uncomfortable was being preached in general, I would ask to go to the restroom.
I needed a place to BREATH. To have a moment to use my own mind to stop and think about what was happening, and whether it was okay.
I remember one such day when the lead pastors were there observing, and I asked to go to the bathroom.
The MC leader said, “See, this is what she does! When she doesn’t want to deal with something she goes to the bathroom.”
Well… Yes, actually. But first of all, WHAT CENTURY IS THIS? You are really going to keep another adult from using the restroom for a few a minutes?
And second… Would you rather I have a panic attack because your cult is telling me and the people around me how horrible we are and everything we need God to do to “fix us?” Read the room buddy.
CHAPTER 3 – “Pray in Tongues!”
The church where my MC program was held was founded and led by a married couple who both maintained roles as lead pastors while I attended. It was a frequent occurrence that we were asked to pray out loud, either alone, or as a group, during all my years attending that church.
I remember the term “for the edification of the saints” being thrown around… but now it does is make me wonder if the leaders all missed the point of Matthew 6:5.
One day our MC class was in the choir room prior to a service standing in a circle, instructed to pray out loud simultaneously. The female pastor was circling the group, listening and giving instructions. When she came to me, I was praying out loud, quietly, in English. She began shouting at me, “PRAY IN TONGUES, PRAY IN TONGUES, PRAY IN TONGUES!”
Startled, I began to do “that” (it’s not hard to fake, just rattle off gibberish, though I was TRYING to “listen to the Holy Spirit”), but needless to say it was not really prayer… just me TERRIFIED, trying to follow the rules.
Looking back, I almost have to laugh. Like, “Listen lady, I think you need revisit the Bible’s description of the day of Pentecost. This is not how that worked. Either it’s gonna happen, or it ain’t. Yelling is not part of this.”
Years later I finally figured out that prayer is an intimate act between a person and God, and that forcing anyone to pray out loud is spiritual and emotional abuse. Period.
CHAPTER 4 – Saturday Club… Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes
In MC there was this thing called “Saturday Club.” It was the dumbest “club” ever. It was detention for grown-ups, but instead of sitting in a classroom after school, we were all forced to do manual labor if we got in trouble and earned Saturday Club, one hour per infraction.
This was how the church leaders got the sanctuary and bathrooms cleaned, the yardwork tended, the “service projects” completed… through the students who were paying good money to take their discipleship program.
Ironically, the more projects that needed to be done, the more infractions were earned by the group that week. (My husband says it is strangely and sadly reminiscent of the current American prison system… I can’t help but agree.)
So, what kind of infractions lead to Saturday Club?
Nonsense and Shenanigans. If you can think of any single thing most adults do that the rest of society considers “normal,” it was probably on the list for Saturday Club.
Talking alone to a member of the opposite sex…
Making a snide comment or inappropriate joke…
Not turning in a journal entry…
Not completing a chore at your host home…
Not memorizing your CHAPTER of the Bible (you got Saturday club for each WORD you got wrong)…
Talking during a church service…
Etc. Etc. Etc.
One weekend Joe’s dad wanted to take him to see a PG-13 rate movie. R rated movies were forbidden, PG-13 were “allowed with leader approval.” Even though his dad, a long-time church member, was the one taking him, Joe called The Parrot while in line to buy tickets just to confirm it was okay.
The Parrot said “No.” Joe said, “But my dad already brought me here.” The Parrot said, “Well maybe if you had called before you went, but since you didn’t, the answer is no.” No reason given at all, just an assistant MC leader being a jerk.
Needless to say, Joe did not get to see that movie with his father, now deceased. He was too worried about getting Saturday Club.
One weekend Stephanie decided we should try putting highlights in my hair. Highlights were allowed in MC, but changing your hair color was completely forbidden. We got the bleach and she set to work with one of those silly highlight caps in my host home’s bathroom.
Halfway through, Stephanie informed me that it was not going well, and she needed to just bleach all of my hair. At that point what choice did I have? I wasn’t going to have a bad dye job if I could avoid it. I was an 18-year-old girl!
So, I went from being a brunette to a blond.
I proceeded to promptly receive Saturday Club as of first thing Monday morning once my hair was seen by the leaders.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
CHAPTER 5 – If Being a Christian Makes You Mean; You’re Doing it Wrong
One of the hardest memories for me was watching otherwise sane, smart, kind people I knew turn into legalistic jerks.
A friend of mine from both church and the private school, we’ll call him Jeremy, was also in our inaugural MC class. He too had grown-up in this church and knew the rigors of being one of “God’s chosen youth.”
He and I had been in a high school musical playing roles opposite each other, and even attended a school formal together.
But MC changed things about all of us.
One night the seven of us went out for pizza after a church service. We were leaving the pizza place, and Joe offered to drive me home.
When Jeremy heard / saw what we were doing, he flew into a rage. I will never forget him standing by Joe’s car, blocking the passenger door, yelling at us that we “could not do this! It was breaking the rules!… You two cannot ride together!… I can take her home, but you can’t ride together! It’s against the rules!” and so forth.
I don’t even remember what happened, or who rode with whom… but I remember his righteous indignation and determination to be the Lord’s watchdog over me and my ex not riding in the same car.
These were the things the leaders of this cult drilled into us… the RULES that God apparently cared about so much.
Not friendship.
Not kindness.
Not love.
Just who rides in a car together.
Jeremy had gone from being one of my friends, to becoming one of our bullies.
But Jeremy’s yelling was nothing compared to the hardcore bullies we faced that year. The ones who lied and manipulated to get what they wanted and make us look bad, and themselves look good.
Another member of the MC class, let’s call him Chip, was not someone I knew well prior to that year. He became the “sidekick” to the MC leader because he was willing to tell on anyone for anything… even if it wasn’t true.
One day Joe and I showed-up for class to be informed that “another student had seen us walking down the hall holding hands.”
That was a lie. It never happened. We had not touched a single time since MC began. We were too terrified of someone finding out.
We got a lecture, were told how disappointed the leaders and other students were in us, and both earned Saturday Club. We were instructed not to speak to, or even LOOK at each other during class, or there would be consequences.
I later learned that it had been Chip making up the lies, and the other ‘church kids’ were spreading rumors that we had been sneaking out to a shed behind the house next to Joe’s host home (also owned by church members) to have sex. That one REALLY makes me laugh because my parents actually bought that same big beautiful house a few years later and the shed was DISGUSTING! It was dirty, and falling down, and full of animal feces. No person in their right mind, no matter how horny, would have sex in that shed. Gross.
I still don’t know why Chip did it, other than since then I have seen and heard things that make me suspect he is a compulsive liar, but that was the beginning of the end for me.
If I was going to get in trouble for things I didn’t do, what was the point of trying so hard to meet their impossible and ridiculous standards?
CHAPTER 6 – Becoming a “Bad Girl”
Once I no longer cared about their arbitrary rules, I was determined to see Joe alone. I needed to talk to him. He is an introvert, and neurodivergent, and I knew there was no way to find out how he really felt with other people around.
I missed him.
I saw him every day, but he might as well have been on another planet.
So, one night, I snuck out the basement door of my host home after everyone had gone to bed. I walked across the wide lawn to Joe’s host home, and quietly knocked on the window.
He was surprised, but he opened the window and we talked for a few minutes through the screen.
It was freezing outside, and I was shivering. But more than that, I needed to touch him, to be held by the man I loved and reassured that everything would work out. I begged him to let me in, so he quietly snuck me in the back door.
We laid in his bed talking and kissing for hours, (no sex, again that was basically considered devil worship). It was my happy place. I could have been anywhere with him, and I would have been happy.
Isn’t it crazy how young love works like that? I could have quit MC and dated literally anyone else in the world with no issues… but I didn’t want anyone else. I loved him.
If I could go back, I wouldn’t change anything about that night. Just the fact that he opened the window and let me in, and held me and talked to me, was all the reassurance I needed that he still cared about me and wasn’t going to let the church leaders tell him not to love me, even if it was in secret.
We “snuck out” twice more after that. (Again… legally adults.)
One weekend night I left my mom’s house and called Joe from my cell phone and asked him to come pick me up (a 45-minute drive). I was scared to start my car because I knew it would wake someone up, so I walked. I walked for 45-minutes out to the rural highway leading to the interstate so I could meet him.
A girl alone, in the middle of the night.
It was crazy stupid.
Anything could have happened to me.
One car passed and asked if I needed help. I said no I was just walking to meet a friend. They must have called the police because next thing I knew a squad car pulled up alongside me.
I told the officer my car had broken down (oh yeah, prior to MC neither Joe nor I were liars, but cults teach you how to do that and that you have to be a liar to survive). I told the cop my car was a ways back on a side road and that I was walking to meet a friend to pick me up. He drove away, but a few minutes later he was back. He said he did not see my car, and asked to see my ID.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was obviously checking to see if I was a minor. Because I was over 18, there was not much he could do. Walking at night is not a crime. He did ask me to wait in the squad car until my friend arrived, for safety. I’m sure it was actually to get Joe’s license plate, just in case.
When Joe showed up at the interstate off ramp, he just about had a heart attack when those police light started flashing! The officer had him pull over, got his ID too, then let us go on our way.
We drove around my hometown for a few hours. We talked and tried to figure out what to do. We parked by an old barn and made-out under the stars. It felt like some modern and wacky version of Romeo and Juliet where we weren’t dumb enough to elope and kill ourselves for each other.
Then, with nothing resolved, he took me home and I quietly snuck back inside.
During classes and around the other students we had to pretend nothing was going on. But there were stolen glances, and secret smiles.
Honestly that part was pretty fun and romantic in a “we live under oppression like some wartime story” kind of way.
The third time was the end of this chapter in our lives. Everything blew-up like a bomb after that, and I was the one who lit the fuse.
I was staying with my dad for the weekend, and decided to go see Joe again in the middle of the night. There were rumors flying around my hometown later (my hairdresser who went to church with my dad and stepmom told me) that I had been sneaking out of a window… but I just went out the back door because seriously, I was 18.
I drove to Joe’s house and parked a little bit away. He let me in, and we went down to his basement bedroom. Once again, we laid there talking, holding hands, trying to figure out what to do, sharing how we felt, quietly laughing together. We made-out and held each other and basically just WERE.
In the wee hours of the morning, around 3:00 or 4:00 am, I left to drive home. I still think what happened next was a God-thing to help me get OUT!
I was about 15-minutes from home, when my car ran out of gas. It was still showing half a tank, but apparently the gas gauge had broken. I pulled over to the side of the road and called my dad. He was shocked to be awaken by me calling, crying, saying I was stuck on the side of the road and needed him to come get me. I told him I had been to see Raymond, and that “We aren’t having SEX!” I think I said that 55-million times in the next 24-hours. The church authority figures in my life had me convinced that was the main thing that mattered, sexual purity. (God-forbid that two consenting adults might engage in intercourse! And never mind that we were LITERALLY IN A CULT. But you know… priorities.) I think subconsciously I knew I needed to call my dad instead of Joe… my dad would get me out.
By the time my dad came to pick me up, all hell had broken loose.
Joe told me later that his dad came stomping down the stairs screaming, “Was Mandi here last night? What have you done?”
I have no idea who all my dad called, or what he said, but he was having NONE of it. In retrospect it’s kind of awesome because my dad is a VERY chill guy. He is super optimistic and laid back. He is the model of “work hard, play hard, and don’t sweat the small stuff.” He doesn’t do big emotions or overreacting.
So, if my dad yells, you better believe it is DESERVED.
After that I never went back to another MC class. I moved home, and my dad got me enrolled in classes at the college where he taught for the next semester.
It was a time of deep depression for me. I cried all the time. I wasn’t seeing Joe every day and our correspondence online was minimal. He was pretty upset that I called my dad instead of him, and I totally understand why because it got him in big trouble too.
I wasn’t sure what to major in or how to proceed with college. My life, that just a few months prior had been right on track toward a successful education and career, felt completely off-balance.
I was drifting.
CHAPTER 7 – Lies, Blackmail, and Other Atrocities
A few weeks later, with no word from Joe, I was invited to Kyle’s house for his sister’s sleepover party. I was so depressed, so desperate to have contact with ANYONE in Joe’s life, that I jumped at the chance.
I asked Kyle what was going on in MC and how Joe was doing… he didn’t say much. We sat on the couch together under a blanket and ended up holding hands and eventually making out.
I wasn’t into him as a romantic partner, I was just so lonely and lost.
We went to his bedroom, but when we started to kiss again, he stopped me. He said, “Joe is my best friend, we can’t do this, it will really hurt him. You have to PROMISE me, swear, you will NEVER tell him this happened.”
I promised, and I left. I kept that promise for years because I never wanted to hurt their friendship.
Joe told me many years later that Kyle had lied to me because he came to him the very NEXT MORNING at MC with a sob story about how I had “seduced him,” how I was evil and obviously didn’t really love Joe or care about him.
It was an easy manipulation to get Joe to stay in MC, where they BOTH hated being but at least he had his best friend, instead of Joe leaving to be with me.
Joe was furious and brokenhearted. He could not believe I would do that to him, and from there it was a cakewalk for the MC and church leaders to convince him I was the devil.
Every time they told him I was of Satan, or evil, he remembered how I had “seduced Kyle,” and believed them.
Meanwhile I had no idea Joe knew Kyle and I had kissed. I kept my promise.
Around that time, I did attend two meetings with the MC folks, though I cannot recall what order they happened.
One was for me to basically “explain myself” to the rest of the MC class. I came to the church and was supposed to tell the other students why I was leaving.
Joe would not even look at me.
I said some things about how it was important for me to go back to college, that the MC program was not working out for me, and I wanted to go back to school. I can’t recall if I said that it would be too hard to stay there with Joe when we were no longer allowed to be friends.
Then one by one ALL the other students told me how disappointed they were in me that I was leaving. They laid the guilt on thick that I should be staying and following the rules to not engage with Joe because that was the right thing to do. It was like they had been rehearsed and had a hive mind.
I specifically remember Jeremy saying that I was breaking a “covenant commitment,” that I had let them all down and betrayed their trust by choosing to quit. (After I left MC, Jeremy started being awful to Joe, saying that Joe and I had completely ruined his MC year. He seemed to believe every lie Chip ever told about us, and all the ones he told about Joe after I left.)
Everyone spoke at that final meeting… everyone except Joe. He sat, not looking at me, stone-faced. The MC leader said Joe didn’t need to speak (i.e. was not allowed to) because everyone already knew how he felt.
That made me want to SCREAM, “NO actually, I have no idea how he feels because you won’t let him communicate with me! What is going on?”
It was awful. I was the one they all hated. I was out.
The second meeting was with the male lead church pastor, Joe and his mother, and myself and my stepdad.
I remember what happened like it was yesterday.
When we walked in, Joe was sitting with his mom, cold and stiff like a statue. No eye contact, not saying a word. The pastor talked about some things, why what we had done was wrong, how it was messing up God’s calling for Joe’s life, how I should have followed the rules and stayed in the program… blah blah blah.
I spoke about how Joe was my best friend, that I loved him, that I could not stay in a program where I wasn’t allowed to even talk to him when we were in the same room every day because that would be too hard.
The pastor asked how Joe felt.
His mother responded for him
“No, he is not leaving…. Yes, he wants to stay in MC…” I knew it was a lie, but I was pretty sure SHE didn’t know that or how much he hated and despised being there.
There was no explanation why he wasn’t speaking to me even in this “safe setting.” No communication or real discussion about what had happened, how we both felt, or what WE wanted for our futures.
It had been made pretty clear that none of that mattered to the people in places of authority. The only thing that mattered was following the rules, and making their program look good at all costs.
I stood-up and let loose on all of them. I yelled that this was crazy, that their program was a mess… I looked straight at Joe and yelled, “Why won’t you talk to me? What did they do to you? We were best friends! I loved you!”
No response.
I stormed out of the pastor’s office and sat in my car sobbing.
Those were the last times I saw or spoke to Joe for 10 months.
Just a few years ago, after we had been married for more than a decade, Joe came to me with two other events I had never heard about that brought all that pain and trauma right back to the surface.
The first was that after I left, there was an entire speech by the MC leader to the whole class on how my father was of Satan. How my dad had forced me to break covenant, and was a bad and evil man.
This guy had spoken to my dad exactly ONCE in his entire life, and never even met him in person. My father is a Jesus-loving Christian theatre professor who volunteers to help low-income kids do homework after school.
But they made him into a monster because it served their purposes.
The second event was when the MC leader told Joe to write and preach a sermon all about how I was of the devil when the class went to do a youth retreat at another church. How I, as a woman, had seduced him, and manipulated him, and tried to pull him away from God’s calling on his life. How he regretted ever being in a relationship with me. That I was literally under the influence of the Devil.
The MC leader filmed this sermon Joe preached, and he kept the only copy. He made sure Joe knew he had that sermon on tape and could show it to me whenever he wanted.
He used it as blackmail.
CHAPTER 8 – The Lost Year
Over the next 10 months, Joe and I had no communication at all. I enrolled at the college where my dad was a professor and completed the Spring semester. I made lots of new friends, made the basketball cheerleading squad, joined the dance team, and performed in several plays and musicals.
But emotionally, I was lost.
I lapped up attention from any boy who would give it to me. I dated and made-out with close to a dozen guys. Thank God I was not into drinking or I most certainly would have been date raped while drunk, which horribly happened to several of my friends.
The night I kissed a guy at a party whose name I didn’t even know, I immediately went out into the dorm hallway and sat on the steps sobbing.
I was desperately trying to fill a void left behind by the very real love and relationship I had previously had with Joe. My logical mind was screaming, “none of this will help,” but my heart just wanted to stop hurting from all the pain and trauma of the previous year.
I did fine, but I was not myself. It would take a while for me to find myself again, a stronger, smarter, wiser version of myself who didn’t just trust people because they were a “Christian” anymore.
Over the summer I lived off-campus with a couple of girlfriends, away from my family and Joe. I worked at a nearby mall, and landed the lead role in a production at a summer reparatory theatre that sat 2,000 audience members per night.
I tried to move on.
Over the course of the next 8 months, Joe endured more lies, manipulation, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, spiritual abuse, and financial abuse. There was a consistent refusal by the people around him to accept who he was, or hear what he wanted in life. He was nothing to them but their pawn.
Chip took over our former route of the MC carpool since Stephanie and Joe couldn’t be alone in a car together. He continued to increase the “price of gas” until it was ridiculous. Joe asked to drive his own car and was denied. We later learned that Chip was inflating the prices to fund his own weekend trips home.
The following year after MC, Joe was placed at the church’s new non-profit start-up in St. Louis, Missouri. He was assigned to run the children’s after school program even though he had no experience or desire to work with children. His dream was to someday run a youth center for TEENS, so this position was another manipulation to serve the leadership’s needs.
Joe was given no resources, no training, no curriculum, nothing. He was placed in a run-down building with dozens of children running wild every day, while the adults came and went in another part of the building for food outreach.
He was made to drive people home all over the city after they had picked-up their food boxes, and consistently told he would be reimbursed for gas. He never saw a cent from the church or program. He spent thousands of dollars on gas and car repair that year.
Joe was working all night, every night, selling video games on eBay to fund the gas and his pro-bono full time work at the ministry. He was exhausted. He never slept. To this day his sleep schedule is all over the place because of that year, literally killing himself to “fulfill God’s mission in the inner city.”
When he asked for a day off, he was told he was “Out of the will of God.”
Joe was told by the pastoral team that if he left the ministry, he wouldn’t have any place in the kingdom of God, because they would call every church in the area and have him blacklisted.
The pastors did not pay the bills at the facility and let the phone line get shut-off. They then used Joe’s cell phone all day at the “ministry” and continuously ran his phone bill up with no reimbursement.
The children were even stealing things from Joe, and when he told the leadership, they said he needed to “consider it a cost of ministry.”
When he asked for the money back that they had promised to reimburse over and over again, they said “You are being rebellious for even asking,” and “it should be given as an offering to the Lord.” He could not even afford to pay his own rent.
They played mind games, and manipulated him on every level.
The church leadership never thanked him. They never asked how he was doing. They never paid him back for anything.
During the fall semester after MC, I heard from Joe. We began communicating a bit via email and instant messenger, and he and Kyle came to visit me at school.
It was awkward. It felt distant. But it was also a relief, like maybe I could get my friend back.
We had both been through SO much, most of which we wouldn’t share with each other for years to come.
We were cautious, hesitant, and not willing to rush in, like animals who find a new loving home after an abusive one.
But over the next year we grew close again. We dated off and on for several years, and grew in our friendship again.
Eventually we got engaged, and then married. So, the bad guys didn’t win.
Love wins.
EPILOGUE – What “Happily Ever After” Actually Looks Like
I wish I could say that all the trauma, control, verbal abuse, and lies from the time in MC and the affiliated church didn’t stick with us and change our lives dramatically.
But it did.
We both still have deep emotional and spiritual scars from that time. We struggle to fully trust each other, our parents, our friends who were part of MC, and anyone leading any church-based program.
It took us awhile to even realize we needed to leave the church where MC was hosted. It’s hard to come away from a place that felt like a family, even a completely dysfunctional one. Both of our actual families had attended that church for decades. We had good memories there too.
We got married in that church 4-years after MC.
But I knew we were doing the right thing when a few months after our wedding we met with the lead pastor to tell him we had decided to move on to another church where Joe was hosting and funding a Friday youth game night. (He had previously fully funded and run a game night at the current church that was very well-attended by local teens, but the church leaders shut it down.)
The pastor told us we were bad people because we had stayed to get married at his church “just to get all the presents.”
Thankfully those pastors are no longer in charge, the church has gone through a lot of changes, and the MC program there was disbanded years ago.
Joe and I still have our faith, and it is more real and honest and personal than it ever was when it was forced and manipulated by the desires and requirements of others.
We FORGIVE everyone involved, including ourselves.
But forgiveness is not the same thing as forgetting. Any good therapist in the world would tell you that “forgetting” is not the goal. Learning from the experience and validating your feelings from that time is healthy.
Forgetting and never talking about it again is pretending that it didn’t happen.
Not even God asks us to rewrite history.
What happened to us will always be a part of us and our story, but we did find our way back to each other. Real love and friendship has a way of doing that.
We are still both passionate people, and sometimes yell, or cry, or argue. We are still beautiful and spend so much time talking, laughing, dreaming, and doing daily life together.
It doesn’t have to be perfect to be everything I hoped for, and I am thankful. I think what I learned most of all is that you can keep going, and become a kinder, more honest, and a bigger picture thinker after a series of truly awful life experiences.
For most of my life I have no regrets. I am a firm believer that we can grow from every experience and I’ll try anything once… except skydiving.
But if I could back to that time, I would have stood-up for myself more. I would not have stayed silent about what was happening, and I would have encouraged Joe to do the same.
I sometimes wonder if shared trauma is one of the things that brought us back together. If I hadn’t gone to MC for that short time, would I be able to relate at all to what he suffered over the course of several years?
His story is far longer and even more horrific than mine.
He is my favorite person in the whole world.
He drives me crazy.
He makes me worry.
He makes me laugh like nobody else on the planet.
He does the best voices and sound effects.
He takes the biggest risks and wins the biggest rewards.
He is the only man whose life I have ever wanted to share.
He is still my best friend and getting to finally make him a daddy is the greatest joy of my life.
So, it’s not perfect. But we are together. And that is the only “happily-ever-after” that I need.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: The following are a list of links to additional quotes, blogs. podcasts, petitions, and testimonials written by other survivors of the Master’s Commission cult, as well as a resource from Dr. Steven Hassan, America’s leading mind control and cult expert.
- An American Christian Chapter III — Master’s Commission and Generation Training Center https://fallout-project.medium.com/an-american-christian-chapter-iii-masters-commission-and-generation-training-center-1e22328725a1
- HuffPost: How Cults Gain Power Over an Individual: A True Story https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-cults-gain-power-over_b_3998553
- PODCAST: Let’s Talk About Sects – Master’s Commission https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/masters-commission/id1286328757?i=1000509349936
- IAmA Reddit Thread
5. Lisa’s Story – Cults
https://cultistquicklook.weebly.com/lisas-story.html
6. Vice – I Spent a Decade Working for Churches (and It Was the Worst)
https://www.vice.com/en/article/gq8bnw/i-spent-a-decade-working-for-churches-and-it-was-the-worst
7. BLOG: Be present. Be Love.
https://jillsonsteby.com/2019/10/18/oh-by-the-way-dad-norm-willis-says-its-all-your-fault/
8. BLOG: Natalie in Guatemala https://nataliespencer475.wordpress.com/2015/03/09/my-experience-with-ihop-the-rock-masters-commission-and-other-various-charismatic-churches/
9. BLOG: Lefty in her Write Mind: https://leftyinherwritemind.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/my-cult-experience/
10. BLOG: The One Where I Accidentally Join a Cult http://tumbleweedproblems.blogspot.com/
11. Change.org petition against MC abuse https://www.change.org/p/anyone-affected-by-the-abuse-of-jeanne-mayo-and-or-any-ministries-she-has-been-involved-with-demand-assemblies-of-god-to-take-a-stand-against-jeanne-mayo-s-abuse
12. Cult Education Institute https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?12,17907
13. Testimonial https://testimonials.exchristian.net/2008/05/my-descent-into-freethought.html
14. Spotify: Getting Out of a Cult with Derek Bromley
15. MyCultLife.com – Category: Master’s Commission
Mandi's Magical World! 