Jess is a legend and her journey of doing the right thing, being brave and speaking truth is the most beautiful contradiction to these cruel and weak abusers that hide behind lawyers and use people's faith as a way to manipulate and exploit.
Ending this journey at any point will never be a failure on her part. She has done enough already.
Any failures lie firmly and solely with these cruel and gross losers who can only achieve power through climbing over and bullying others.
As an ordained minister in a mainline Christian denomination let me be clear: it IS NOT normal for anyone to cry from sheer exhaustion and for that to be ok. Its called burnout. What has happened to Jess and the other interns does not meet the standard of loving/caring for your neighbour. It is exploitation and abuse. Period.
Withholding wages from workers directly contravenes multiple biblical instructions too, so it is very confusing that a church purporting to "demonstrate and proclaim the love of God ... by living according to His Word" then turns around and says, but not *these* words (and this is only a quick short selection):
Romans 4:4 - Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.
James 5:4 - Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.
Leviticus 19:13 - You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning.
Jeremiah 22:13 - Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing and does not give him his wages,
Deuteronomy 24:14-15 - You shall not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brothers or one of the sojourners who are in your land within your towns. You shall give him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets (for he is poor and counts on it), lest he cry against you to the Lord, and you be guilty of sin.
The different between what is legal and what is moral, hey? You'd think churches would err on the side of doing the right thing, rather than split legal hairs
I feel so sad and heartbroken for Jess, and all the interns at Arise. She’s been through so much. I wish I could give her a hug.
What Arise did and continues to do is exploit people for their own gain, all the while paying no taxes and using God as an excuse to do anything they want, with no serious consequences. It’s disgusting.
Innocent people don’t flee to a new country to start over; guilty ones do. I hope that Jess and the other Arise interns will be compensated for their hard work serving these awful, corrupt people.
It's amazing to me that the replacements to John and Gillian, Ben and Amy Kendrew, are pretty much just John and Gillian. Then again - utterly unsurprising. How people can stomach attending Arise - after all that is known - is just beyond me at this point.
Reading her story all feels so familiar that I almost don’t need to read it.
I grew up in the AOG in Melbourne. Grandad was the pastor so it was very much woven into the fabric of our world.
Fast forward to 2012 and after years of not being in church, and facing your mortality during the feb quake in Christchuch I reached out for some security in the church. I was also trying to suppress the fact I was gay, but my experience with the church and my sexual orientation is a whole other story.
I started going to c3 in Christchurch. The first six months were incredible. I felt good and found myself in an amazing community and gladly threw myself into helping out around the place.
Then I heard about internship in Auckland. I was talked into it, but the senior pastor there at the time tried to talk me out of it.
But as a burnt out architect in post quake Christchurch, I packed up the car and moved to Auckland.
C3 there was much bigger. Within days I found myself on a remote Auckland island at a survival camp being pushed to the limits. “It’ll be better after this” I told myself.
It wasn’t. The annual conference hit and I remember the long hours working past my restricted license curfew. Getting home long past 12 and being worked to the point of exhaustion. Doing dishes from the pastors green room till 1am while everyone else had left.
Just say yes. That’s the phrase the drum into you.
I was lucky though. Once they found out I was an architect, I was given less taxing jobs. They know a good thing when they see it and a free architect is definitely a good thing.
I too would spend long hours hosting the senior pastor or guest pastors all over Auckland and a week in Sydney at their conferences. But those hosting roles have a bit of exclusivity about them. You’re with the who’s who of Christendom and in the inner circle. So you go with it. I was such a good intern I ended up on staff and would often look after the pastors house while they were away. This was a big deal because very free people knew where they lived, and fewer would go inside.
All this came to an end when I left Auckland, but I returned to take on a young adult pastor role (unpaid) in 2016. This too fell apart when I choose to step down after I confessed to dating a guy in secret. By 2018 I’d come out. When I did, the entire church (bar a small handful) shunned me. I got angry. I knew I couldn’t have both with the way they are, but the total silence overnight was unacceptable. I confronted the senior pastor about this openly and offered to have a chat from my perspective, as someone who knows both worlds, during the conversion therapy debate in Nz, but all I got were abusive messages. I’ve written pieces in NZ papers about this and got involved with one news when they picked up Davids story. Nothing came of it other than the pastor having to face the media but it was all on script and I’ve seen the messages he was sending about me at the time. But my point was to make known it’s not limited to arise, it’s part of the Pentecostal culture.
Anyway, as much as I try to put this behind me, I still have nightmares about c3. It’s something I speak to my therapist about. As free as I am now, I do have trauma about my experiences which is why I wanted to champion what David is doing so much.
Thanks for all your hard work, and thanks to my fellow survivors out there for your contributions.
I read and took that all in Edd, what you went through matters and it's important you give airtime to it. We see you and your heart ❤️ Giving the parts of yourself that had those experiences a voice is a healing force, for you and us 🩷
Just woken up at 5 am from another dream about my experiences. They usually follow the same format of me back in the church and being grilled by the pastor over my presence there. The guy haunts my dreams. These people are oblivious to the trauma they’ve caused. But, I have a session with my therapist coming up where we will be dealing with this directly, so hopefully I can get some freedom from this.
Gosh that's so rough, I hope dealing with it directly in therapy helps!!
They don't get me in my sleep dreams but I find myself daydreaming about what I'd like to say to them....which had its moment, but I'd prefer if I could scrub my brain clean of them all together tbh
Arise have the money too, they just don't want to spend it paying the interns they brutslly exploited. And where is the congregation in all this? Why are they not demanding their church do the right thing (with their money)?! How can the congregants sleep at night knowing their donations are being withheld from the children who were exploited by their church?!
I’ve been in this world for a long time (not anymore). The church or its leaders won’t because the mentality is that she’s got a chip on her shoulder. The church is above reproach and she’ll be seen as evil for what she and other interns are doing. I know this because I’ve heard and unfortunately been part of these conversations at c3 against other former members (especially c3 church watch). They can’t see the opposing perspective because they’re still drinking the communion kool aid.
My former bible cult and Aise is also a Bible Cult called former members who raised concerns dissidents. They were named, marked and shunned. It is DARVO inaction.
Please let Jess no that she is heard, believed and loved here. No one should ever be put through that. It's why I see all churches as cults as the coercive control overrides everything. I was just trying to do the math of years of her life lost, meaning the years she would have normally had at university and then a career and money earned from a degreed career so far. In my experience as I spoke to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care and Faith based institutions, you never get those years back. Everyone always talks about picking yourself up and start again. But the reality is far different. Your 30s are cognitiveally supposed to be your wealth building years, then you carry on from there, peak and it slows down (according to those depressing money people). Well even the recovery from exhaustion knocks years off that. So I reckon Jess is owned even more because of all of that as well.
Come on John Cameron (I know you perversely enjoy reading Webworm and the comments), get off your self-justifying backside and do the right thing - if you still have any memory of the difference between right and wrong.
When you boil it down, it’s just another example of class warfare. The dressing is “church” but that’s where it ends. Evil people using any way to exploit earnest people. When and how do we stop letting money rule us?
Hard agree. It wasn't in a church, but I could relate a lot to Jess' experience - when I was about her age I landed my first job in a career I absolutely loved in a company that treated their young staff like disposable batteries. I ended up close to a nervous breakdown from burnout. There's a lot of that sort of thing out there but at least non-religious employers can't claim "but they were doing it for vocation/love/service" and cloud the issues of exploitation :-(
Grrr, I know a lot of people get so much from their faith but when you stuff like this 🤬
How do you work someone like a slave, treat them like human garbage (a warning for hanging out with a friend while doing their dodgy errands!!?) all the while gaslighting them into thinking they're not DOING ENOUGH!? Oh just categorise them as an "intern" and say GOD (not the evil mega church) is testing your faith. Honestly! How do they SLEEP AT NIGHT?
It all sounds a bit like Scientology’s Sea Org. Long hours, little to no pay, all in the service of ‘religion’… I suppose at least the interns’ passports didn’t get locked away. But it’s not right that this goes on, not in the 21st century. It’s time we all took a good long look at these cults and mega churches. Make them pay their taxes!
You make a really good point. I also just think it's important to state stuff like this, because the likes of Arise is JUST AS WEIRD AND FUCKED UP AS SCIENTOLOGY.
It feels a bit self-centered to say this when I'm not involved, but I do hope that Jess and the other interns involved in this mess find the strength to keep pushing for some sort of recompense.
I can't imagine how draining and traumatic it is to be pulled through the wringer and made to go over the worst moments of your life over and over again. Our legal system (said broadly since I'm in the legal field over in the US) is exceptionally slow, and if you have the money for it, you can make it even slower to simply outlast your opponent until they're simply to exhausted and frustrated to continue.
That's how so many of these dickheads skip out of consequences for their actions. And I can't really offer any (legal) solution other than try to shore up your strength, hold on to the anger that you feel and use it to insist that these guys don't get away with it.
I really want to be proven wrong, but I can almost guarantee there will be zero justice for Jess and the countless other interns. The rich pretty much always win over the poor, the have the resources to fight, we don't.
It’s disheartening how just being decent and saying No and standing up to awful behaviour is now an overall punish for so many people. Absolute admiration for anyone who perseveres. Also reassuring and fucking inspiring.
Totally get it when people can’t continue for whatever reason💯 ❤️
When I first became aware of the revolting behaviour of Arise courtesy of Webworm (thanks I guess😶) I also became aware of people in my community who were involved/attended Arise. Gosh it made so much sense. I made a point of having loud conversations with a family member at the horrors being uncovered about Arise in earshot of the Arise weirdos. Was kind of fun tbh. My fierce tween was absolutely down for it and super interested in being educated.
Jess is a legend and her journey of doing the right thing, being brave and speaking truth is the most beautiful contradiction to these cruel and weak abusers that hide behind lawyers and use people's faith as a way to manipulate and exploit.
Ending this journey at any point will never be a failure on her part. She has done enough already.
Any failures lie firmly and solely with these cruel and gross losers who can only achieve power through climbing over and bullying others.
I agree, Jess is amazing and also needs to look after herself. I can understand that she feels both ready to give up AND filled with howling rage.
Don’t give up Jess. We’re all here for you!
As an ordained minister in a mainline Christian denomination let me be clear: it IS NOT normal for anyone to cry from sheer exhaustion and for that to be ok. Its called burnout. What has happened to Jess and the other interns does not meet the standard of loving/caring for your neighbour. It is exploitation and abuse. Period.
Thanks, Leanne. Good to have a good egg in the mix.
or an irreverent one!:) Be safe
Withholding wages from workers directly contravenes multiple biblical instructions too, so it is very confusing that a church purporting to "demonstrate and proclaim the love of God ... by living according to His Word" then turns around and says, but not *these* words (and this is only a quick short selection):
Romans 4:4 - Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.
James 5:4 - Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.
Leviticus 19:13 - You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning.
Jeremiah 22:13 - Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing and does not give him his wages,
Deuteronomy 24:14-15 - You shall not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brothers or one of the sojourners who are in your land within your towns. You shall give him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets (for he is poor and counts on it), lest he cry against you to the Lord, and you be guilty of sin.
It would be really great if these people actually read the Bible, huh?
Heh. Wouldn't that be something?!
I think Brooke van Velden should hear a few of those biblical quotes. Oh... but her gods are Friedman and Hayek who say the opposite.
It looks like they've found the sweet spot between "hired worker" and "slave", at the cost of others' mental and physical health.
And sadly our law recognises workers and volunteers differently, hence the impasse 🫤
The different between what is legal and what is moral, hey? You'd think churches would err on the side of doing the right thing, rather than split legal hairs
Have you ever met a mega church? 😬
I feel so sad and heartbroken for Jess, and all the interns at Arise. She’s been through so much. I wish I could give her a hug.
What Arise did and continues to do is exploit people for their own gain, all the while paying no taxes and using God as an excuse to do anything they want, with no serious consequences. It’s disgusting.
Innocent people don’t flee to a new country to start over; guilty ones do. I hope that Jess and the other Arise interns will be compensated for their hard work serving these awful, corrupt people.
It's amazing to me that the replacements to John and Gillian, Ben and Amy Kendrew, are pretty much just John and Gillian. Then again - utterly unsurprising. How people can stomach attending Arise - after all that is known - is just beyond me at this point.
I hear you Jess.
Reading her story all feels so familiar that I almost don’t need to read it.
I grew up in the AOG in Melbourne. Grandad was the pastor so it was very much woven into the fabric of our world.
Fast forward to 2012 and after years of not being in church, and facing your mortality during the feb quake in Christchuch I reached out for some security in the church. I was also trying to suppress the fact I was gay, but my experience with the church and my sexual orientation is a whole other story.
I started going to c3 in Christchurch. The first six months were incredible. I felt good and found myself in an amazing community and gladly threw myself into helping out around the place.
Then I heard about internship in Auckland. I was talked into it, but the senior pastor there at the time tried to talk me out of it.
But as a burnt out architect in post quake Christchurch, I packed up the car and moved to Auckland.
C3 there was much bigger. Within days I found myself on a remote Auckland island at a survival camp being pushed to the limits. “It’ll be better after this” I told myself.
It wasn’t. The annual conference hit and I remember the long hours working past my restricted license curfew. Getting home long past 12 and being worked to the point of exhaustion. Doing dishes from the pastors green room till 1am while everyone else had left.
Just say yes. That’s the phrase the drum into you.
I was lucky though. Once they found out I was an architect, I was given less taxing jobs. They know a good thing when they see it and a free architect is definitely a good thing.
I too would spend long hours hosting the senior pastor or guest pastors all over Auckland and a week in Sydney at their conferences. But those hosting roles have a bit of exclusivity about them. You’re with the who’s who of Christendom and in the inner circle. So you go with it. I was such a good intern I ended up on staff and would often look after the pastors house while they were away. This was a big deal because very free people knew where they lived, and fewer would go inside.
All this came to an end when I left Auckland, but I returned to take on a young adult pastor role (unpaid) in 2016. This too fell apart when I choose to step down after I confessed to dating a guy in secret. By 2018 I’d come out. When I did, the entire church (bar a small handful) shunned me. I got angry. I knew I couldn’t have both with the way they are, but the total silence overnight was unacceptable. I confronted the senior pastor about this openly and offered to have a chat from my perspective, as someone who knows both worlds, during the conversion therapy debate in Nz, but all I got were abusive messages. I’ve written pieces in NZ papers about this and got involved with one news when they picked up Davids story. Nothing came of it other than the pastor having to face the media but it was all on script and I’ve seen the messages he was sending about me at the time. But my point was to make known it’s not limited to arise, it’s part of the Pentecostal culture.
Anyway, as much as I try to put this behind me, I still have nightmares about c3. It’s something I speak to my therapist about. As free as I am now, I do have trauma about my experiences which is why I wanted to champion what David is doing so much.
Thanks for all your hard work, and thanks to my fellow survivors out there for your contributions.
I read and took that all in Edd, what you went through matters and it's important you give airtime to it. We see you and your heart ❤️ Giving the parts of yourself that had those experiences a voice is a healing force, for you and us 🩷
Thank you 🙏
Thank you.
Writing this for context, not dramatic effect.
Just woken up at 5 am from another dream about my experiences. They usually follow the same format of me back in the church and being grilled by the pastor over my presence there. The guy haunts my dreams. These people are oblivious to the trauma they’ve caused. But, I have a session with my therapist coming up where we will be dealing with this directly, so hopefully I can get some freedom from this.
Gosh that's so rough, I hope dealing with it directly in therapy helps!!
They don't get me in my sleep dreams but I find myself daydreaming about what I'd like to say to them....which had its moment, but I'd prefer if I could scrub my brain clean of them all together tbh
Arise have the money too, they just don't want to spend it paying the interns they brutslly exploited. And where is the congregation in all this? Why are they not demanding their church do the right thing (with their money)?! How can the congregants sleep at night knowing their donations are being withheld from the children who were exploited by their church?!
I’ve been in this world for a long time (not anymore). The church or its leaders won’t because the mentality is that she’s got a chip on her shoulder. The church is above reproach and she’ll be seen as evil for what she and other interns are doing. I know this because I’ve heard and unfortunately been part of these conversations at c3 against other former members (especially c3 church watch). They can’t see the opposing perspective because they’re still drinking the communion kool aid.
You are, I hate to say it, absolutely correct.
My former bible cult and Aise is also a Bible Cult called former members who raised concerns dissidents. They were named, marked and shunned. It is DARVO inaction.
Brainwashed, most likely
It’s not all churches, but it’s always a church.
Please let Jess no that she is heard, believed and loved here. No one should ever be put through that. It's why I see all churches as cults as the coercive control overrides everything. I was just trying to do the math of years of her life lost, meaning the years she would have normally had at university and then a career and money earned from a degreed career so far. In my experience as I spoke to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care and Faith based institutions, you never get those years back. Everyone always talks about picking yourself up and start again. But the reality is far different. Your 30s are cognitiveally supposed to be your wealth building years, then you carry on from there, peak and it slows down (according to those depressing money people). Well even the recovery from exhaustion knocks years off that. So I reckon Jess is owned even more because of all of that as well.
Come on John Cameron (I know you perversely enjoy reading Webworm and the comments), get off your self-justifying backside and do the right thing - if you still have any memory of the difference between right and wrong.
Oh, he'll be here. I guarantee it.
When you boil it down, it’s just another example of class warfare. The dressing is “church” but that’s where it ends. Evil people using any way to exploit earnest people. When and how do we stop letting money rule us?
This is a very accurate, big picture take. Thanks for saying it.
Hard agree. It wasn't in a church, but I could relate a lot to Jess' experience - when I was about her age I landed my first job in a career I absolutely loved in a company that treated their young staff like disposable batteries. I ended up close to a nervous breakdown from burnout. There's a lot of that sort of thing out there but at least non-religious employers can't claim "but they were doing it for vocation/love/service" and cloud the issues of exploitation :-(
Grrr, I know a lot of people get so much from their faith but when you stuff like this 🤬
How do you work someone like a slave, treat them like human garbage (a warning for hanging out with a friend while doing their dodgy errands!!?) all the while gaslighting them into thinking they're not DOING ENOUGH!? Oh just categorise them as an "intern" and say GOD (not the evil mega church) is testing your faith. Honestly! How do they SLEEP AT NIGHT?
Atheists often bring up the fact that the Bible never outright condemns slavery. I think about that a lot.
It all sounds a bit like Scientology’s Sea Org. Long hours, little to no pay, all in the service of ‘religion’… I suppose at least the interns’ passports didn’t get locked away. But it’s not right that this goes on, not in the 21st century. It’s time we all took a good long look at these cults and mega churches. Make them pay their taxes!
You make a really good point. I also just think it's important to state stuff like this, because the likes of Arise is JUST AS WEIRD AND FUCKED UP AS SCIENTOLOGY.
It feels a bit self-centered to say this when I'm not involved, but I do hope that Jess and the other interns involved in this mess find the strength to keep pushing for some sort of recompense.
I can't imagine how draining and traumatic it is to be pulled through the wringer and made to go over the worst moments of your life over and over again. Our legal system (said broadly since I'm in the legal field over in the US) is exceptionally slow, and if you have the money for it, you can make it even slower to simply outlast your opponent until they're simply to exhausted and frustrated to continue.
That's how so many of these dickheads skip out of consequences for their actions. And I can't really offer any (legal) solution other than try to shore up your strength, hold on to the anger that you feel and use it to insist that these guys don't get away with it.
I really want to be proven wrong, but I can almost guarantee there will be zero justice for Jess and the countless other interns. The rich pretty much always win over the poor, the have the resources to fight, we don't.
Time for all churches to be taxed!
Damned straight!! Start with Density!
It’s disheartening how just being decent and saying No and standing up to awful behaviour is now an overall punish for so many people. Absolute admiration for anyone who perseveres. Also reassuring and fucking inspiring.
Totally get it when people can’t continue for whatever reason💯 ❤️
When I first became aware of the revolting behaviour of Arise courtesy of Webworm (thanks I guess😶) I also became aware of people in my community who were involved/attended Arise. Gosh it made so much sense. I made a point of having loud conversations with a family member at the horrors being uncovered about Arise in earshot of the Arise weirdos. Was kind of fun tbh. My fierce tween was absolutely down for it and super interested in being educated.
Small wins
Thank you for the update David
Thanks for being LOUD irl. That is so, so important.