In the previous post, we looked at the work of Dr. Steven Lambert. He gave some insight into the shepherding movement. We compared a few of his insights into what I witnessed at Word of Faith Fellowship (WOFF) from 1992 until 2008. The resource material for that post can be found here: Chapter 2 of “Charismatic Captivation” by Steve Lambert, ThD. (Publisher: Real Truth Publications, ISBN 1-887915-00-1 / 308pp.) Chapter 2 can be found here: http://www.slm.org/pubs/samples/ccbook2.html . Again, by using material form Dr. Lambert’s website, I am not giving a blanket endorsement to all his work. I have not read all his work and caution each reader to judge for themselves what he writes.
That being said, I did find an article from Dr. Lambert in which he lists signs of abuse within a church. This is the link to the article titled, “33 Signs of Spiritual Abuse”. I will quote several of these signs here and tell whether or not I found them to be in WOFF. The article begins, “There are at least thirty-three readily identifiable signs of spiritual abuse, or hyper-authoritarianism, practiced by many Charismatic churches. Being able to readily identify the signs and symptoms of authoritarian abuse and psychological enslavement that is rampant among church groups today is absolutely essential for every believer in their quest to know and be personally related to the Great Shepherd, who is the Prince of Peace and the true “Guardian of our souls”. Lambert implies that these abusive practices will hinder a person from knowing “the Great Shepherd”. I most wholeheartedly agree. It is not possible to review the entire text from Lambert here. I recommend each reader to review the article on their own by clicking the title above. We move on.
– Apotheosis of the leadership — exalting them to God-like status in and over the group. Well, have we covered that before on this blog? When I left WOFF, one of the thoughts that helped was seeing that the members were more afraid of Jane Whaley than God. So, is she “God-like”?