Arise Church Still Sucks, Ya'll

Hi,

First, some great news: You read and spread the shit out of my Ed Sheeran piece, my second Ed Sheeran piece, and the very long feature on the creep capturing website "Tika". 587 readers visited Tika after reading the piece, which is pretty cool too.

We've had about 50,000 unique visitors on webworm.co this month, plus all of you reading in your inbox – thank you. These are the countries with readers in them (21 in Russia, apparently: possibly bots?)

To my paying readers who keep this place going – thank you.

Now I've largely given up talking about Arise megachurch, because frankly it's incredibly depressing and boring. But I also think Webworm is in a unique position where I can keep tabs on things. Just because stories drop out of the news cycle doesn't mean those stories are over. This isn't a newspaper or a news website. I can take my time, and we can break shit like this down together.

It's part of Webworm's power, imo.

I also think it's important to follow case studies like this, as they reflect similar churches worldwide – and people need to know about what they're like.

"Deeply Sad. Truly Sorry."

If you missed the memo, Arise was New Zealand's largest megachurch – until Webworm spent a year writing about how they abused staff and interns. The leaders – John Cameron and his wife Gillian, along with John's brother, Brent – quit and fled to Australia (they never apologised, and have started up new churches there).

Well, with hundreds of interns used and abused by Arise church, they have finally decided to pay out... four of them.

Four.

Arise Church proudly added a press release to their website, which included this:

"Since 2023, the Labour Inspectorate has been conducting an investigation into our former internship programme. It ultimately believed the way we implemented parts of our internship programme with four former interns meant an employment relationship existed between Arise and these four former interns.

We have agreed we fell short in this regard, and agreed to a consent determination with The Labour Inspectorate. As part of this, we are paying an agreed amount of arrears, as well as offering the below apology:

We deeply regret that you placed trust in a church community and experienced hurt and disappointment as a result. This likely affected your relationship and trust in church and even in God. This is tragic and for this we are deeply sad and truly sorry. Our door remains open if you would like to offer any further feedback for us to take on board or if it would be helpful to achieve some closure and healing."

After saying they are "deeply sad" and "truly sorry" comes this clanger (and what actually matters to Arise):

"What this means is this matter is now resolved."

Resolved, sorted, done! We all move on.

Since its original reporting on the Arise debacle, Webworm has kept in touch with a variety of former staff and interns. I think it's fair to say the press release landed like a bag of old sick. This is what one former church member told me:

"[The press release] just really pissed me off.

I mean, they took three years to come to a resolution. If they truly cared for these ex-interns, they wouldn’t have made them wait so long. I wasn’t even one of the people hoping to get paid arrears, but it’s been this horrible rigmarole… every time an email comes through from MBIE with an update, I’m launched back into this messed up world.

I can only imagine how much worse it’s been for the people who have been waiting and hoping for their own personal justice."

If you were an ex-staff member or intern, you may have been lucky to get an email yesterday from Arise's new lead pastor, Ben Kendrew. It had the tone of the goo-ing-gargling baby from Teletubbies (except more smug):

Kia ora [REDACTED]!

I know it's been some time since we had any contact, we haven’t been able to get in touch directly before now due to the fact the live process with The Labour Inspectorate was underway.

Now that it’s resolved as of yesterday, I wanted to reach out and check in. We've been committed to meeting, listening, apologise and offer any care and counselling to people with negative experiences at Arise. So I thought now that I'm able to, I thought it good to reach and offer this — if you’re open to it.

We now have a completely new governance and leadership team at Arise and we’ve been making a lot of changes to make sure things are run differently such as ceasing the former internship model and ensuring greater accountability and support for senior leadership. I can fill you in on the changes we’ve made and open to hearing your feedback on these changes.

Let me know if you would like to do this and we can set up a time—happy to answer any questions in the meantime. Also completely understand if you'd rather not or thi [SIC] is of no interest to you.

Regardless, want to say that I hope you're well and enjoying life!

Bless ya [REDACTED],

Ben.

I got some feedback from former Arise members to that "Bless ya!" message:

"His offer of ‘care’ is absolutely unbelievable… that he could possibly think any of us would want ‘care’ from that place??!"

"The people at Arise think they’re not John and Gillian [Cameron]. They think they are victims having to clean up the mess of the perpetrators. They don’t seem to realise that they are just as complicit, and in some ways, continue to do more harm."

"I’ve come to terms with John and Gillian continuing to be idiots, doing what they do best over in Australia. They don’t think they’ve done anything wrong, and I completely get that – they’re narcissists of the worst kind. But the folks at Arise – the ones who keep spouting on about change, and care, and how they want to do the right thing – somehow that really gets to me.

I think because people I still really care about are still there, and because I think a lot of these people have good hearts and actually think they are doing something good.

They’re completely deceived, the lot of them."

I don't want to leave this newsletter with the damp, mouldy nothingness provided by Arise. Instead, I want to finish with something more solid – especially for anyone reading who's been taken advantage of by a megachurch.

It's a short essay written for Webworm by Charlotte Cummings, the woman originally hired to do the independent enquiry into Arise church (who was thanked in the form of legal bills).

To me, her words capture something places like Arise never will: Something real.

What Churches Owe the People They've Hurt

by Charlotte Cummings

My name is Charlotte Cummings. Counsellor of 20 years. Licensed Private Investigator. PhD Candidate. Christian. 

I have worked extensively in the area of church harm. Across denominations. In some cases, the harm was recent, in some cases it was kept secret for 70 years. 

I was commissioned by Arise Church in 2022 to lead an independent review, following serious allegations that came via an annoying journalist. At times, that leads to people in a room standing up and clapping. At other times, it’s led to people being hired to make a dossier of dirt on me, calling me a lesbian (only by people who think that’s offensive), and saying they’ll make sure that I never work in New Zealand again and lose my house. 

I am often asked for comment about churches. And I have been hesitant.

I’ve hung out on the edges. Kept doing the work. 

I am choosing to speak now because I’m getting annoyed. Annoyed that the church of New Zealand has not yet learnt WHAT PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN HURT BY A CHURCH ACTUALLY WANT. 

What People Actually Want

When people ask me what best practice looks like when churches harm people, I notice they often reach for two words: apology and redress. And on the surface, that makes sense. Those are the things people know to ask for, because they are the things they know (might) exist. 

But I've sat with a lot of people. People who have been harmed in church contexts in ways that go far beyond hurt feelings or offense taken. I mean covered-up child sex offenders. Pregnancies as a result of rape and sexual abuse. Pastors and church leaders who knew what was happening to families and children and did nothing. Financial manipulation. And the deeply complex injury of having your faith turned into a weapon against you, where things were done in the name of God that served the institution and gutted the person.

Having been in the weeds with people carrying that kind of harm, I have a different view of what they actually want most. 

It's accountability.

They want to know that what happened to them will not happen to someone else. That their decision to speak up, often at enormous personal cost, often in a way that was retraumatising and terrifying, meant something. That their voice could be used for good. That it could protect someone. That what happened to them will not happen to someone else. 

An apology is nice – sometimes meaningful, often not. Redress helps, practically. But power that was taken away from a person can be restored by knowing that their speaking up has created change that will shield others. 

I don’t mean the “we are going to do things, and we will be better”. I mean detailed reporting back to them about what you have done, and the mechanisms put in place to prevent this happening again. 

We have a very low bar in New Zealand when it comes to churches meeting that standard. And I think we need to say that clearly.

First, Do No Harm

There is a principle in medicine: first, do no harm. It exists because the institution of medicine is in the business of helping people. And when you are in the business of helping people, you are required to hold that standard before everything else.

Churches exist, at least in theory, for the same purpose. To make people's lives better. To offer community, meaning, and for many, the hope of something eternal. That is a significant claim to make. And it carries a significant responsibility.

First, do no harm.

And when you do cause harm, you cannot genuinely move forward, in right relationship with your community, or I would suggest in right relationship with God, until you have properly reckoned with it. Apology without accountability is not reckoning. It is performance.

What the Royal Commission Taught Us

I have enormous respect for the work of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. What it did, among many things, was help us understand not just what happened, but why it was allowed to happen. The structural conditions that created environments where harm could occur and be concealed. Racism. Homophobia. Patriarchy. Power. Authority. 

Every person who gave evidence to that process was courageous. And what they gave us was a map. A map of how institutions fail, and what needs to change so they stop failing in the same ways.

The question now is whether churches in New Zealand are willing to read that map. Yes, apology. Yes, redress where possible. And I would suggest, accountability. 

What a Safe Church Actually Looks Like

As an aside, I'm asked this question often: what does a safe church look like? 

Here is my answer.

Financial transparency that goes beyond the legal minimum. Yes, registered charities have publicly available accounts. But being able to look up a high-level summary on the Charities Commission website is not the same as a church being genuinely accountable to its people. The people who give their money regularly to a church are, in effect, its shareholders. They deserve to know how that money is used. How much goes on staffing. What the policies are around expenditure. Whether the financial choices of the organisation actually reflect the values it claims to hold, including things like justice, and giving a cup of water to those who thirst.

Transparent decision-making. Who gets to make decisions, and how, is one of the clearest reflections of how power is held. If decision-making is opaque, centralised, or unquestionable, that is not a green flag.

A clear, accessible process for raising concerns. Not just for when something has gone seriously wrong. But for when someone has noticed a dynamic that makes them uncomfortable. A pattern that concerns them. Something that needs watching. We know from the Royal Commission that these early signals, when there are no safe channels to raise them through, are precisely the precursors to harm. There should also be options within that process to access support from people outside the church itself.

A code of conduct for those who have power. This should not be a radical suggestion. It is basic. Clear standards to make sure that how people are treated is actually Christian. 

Governance that is independent of senior leadership. This one matters a great deal. When the people at the top of a church's public leadership are also the people on the governance board, there is an enmeshment of power that makes genuine accountability almost impossible. A governance board cannot lead robustly when it is staffed by the people it is supposed to hold to account. Senior leaders and staff should not sit on the governance board. This is not a novel idea in any other sector.

Belonging being unconditional. You don’t have to be good enough. Cool enough. Give enough. You should be able to belong, without cost. You should be able to say no. To say you disagree with some things and still belong. Marginalised groups should be treated well – no business class, premium and economy. 

What Accountability Actually Looks Like

If the narrative a church is offering is "we have learned, and we have changed," but there is no accountability back to the people who were hurt, there is still work to be done.

This is not actually that hard. It requires honesty. It requires sitting with the discomfort of having caused harm. It requires prioritising the people who were hurt over the reputation of the institution. And it requires understanding that doing so is not a threat to the church. When things go right for people who have been hurt, they tend to go right for the church too.

I am a person with an unshakeable faith in God. I like church community, most of the time. I am not speaking from a place of opposition to the church. I am speaking from a place of wanting the church in New Zealand to be better. I believe it can be.

People will sometimes frame those who speak publicly about church harm as being anti-church, or anti-Jesus. I think that is an oversimplification, and often a deflection. You can love the church and still require it to be accountable. In fact, I would argue that loving the church requires it. 

To Anyone Carrying This

If you are sitting with your own experience of being harmed in a church context, I want you to know: you did not deserve it. It was not your fault. And there are people who care deeply about you. I would suggest that includes the God in whose name you may have been hurt. Please don’t suffer alone. 

-Charlotte Cummings

PS – Alan is recovering from surgery pretty well. He's brave: