178 Comments
Oct 16, 2022Liked by David Farrier

As a Christian I’ve been debating internally as to whether you have an anti Christian agenda as Arise claims. I’ve come to the conclusion that you have nothing against sensible and committed people of faith but are doing us all a favour by pointing out the charlatans who follow the crazy prosperity doctrine which the antithesis of all that Jesus taught. Sadly large parts of the Christian world has been captured by grifters and false profits ( ha) and hard right fanatics. This makes being a Christian today a difficult and often painful experience. I manage it (just) by staying well away from religion and the church and sticking with what the teachings actually say. Infused with a healthy dose of doubt.

So thank you David for your courage and yes faithfulness in reporting what you see. Helping me grapple with these issues is a gift I’m grateful to receive from you e hoa.

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founding

You're worth $16 million to us matey

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Kia ora David. I’m sure you know but I’d make a privacy complaint to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner regarding the redactions and ask them to review them for appropriateness of withholding.

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Oct 16, 2022Liked by David Farrier

Oh my lord.

The most profound take away for me is that you were completely correct.

You pursued surfacing and sharing these peoples stories because you did not believe the leaders of the church took the abuse they were both participating in and condoning remotely seriously, or that they cared about the impact this had on people's lives. Even with all the redaction, this is exactly what shone through.

We all saw and felt how hard this was for you, but you didnt give up. Because you do care about people, and being kind and being fair- you know, like that Jesus guy you hate.

What an amazing journey. What an incredible outcome.

Hopefully all those amazing, brave, people that came forward can now heal.

Fuck you are rad ❤

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Oct 16, 2022Liked by David Farrier

Their responses were very “Don’t Look Up”! It’s wild that you got a snapshot into their communication while you were doing your reporting on them. They’re more about covering things up, blaming your reporting (and victims!) and not getting caught rather than changing their culture, showing remorse for victims or admitting it’s toxic in the first place. Deluded, nasty and rotten to the core.

Love your work exposing all this David!! I’d pay to see them scramble and hear what they’re saying about this article haha

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“Don’t feed the beast” line is incredible, especially when one knows your love of the humble double cheese burger combo.

Thanks for doing the podcast for those of us who can’t make it.

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founding
Oct 16, 2022Liked by David Farrier

For anyone new, especially Arise folk:

Brent Cameron farts on his hands and puts it in peoples faces. You can look it up

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I’m grateful for journalists like you

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Oct 16, 2022Liked by David Farrier

‘Flippen Get Wrecked’ should be the next T-shirt.

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Wow, even with the insane amount of redactions that was an incredible unraveling. An undoing over time of people that never once seemed to show an ability to absorb, reflect and act on anything other than arrogance and pride. Crazy! I kept waiting for a moment of horror or sadness at the reality of what they were a part of, but it’s just ego and mocking. It’s quite telling of their own corruption when we look at how they interpret all your contact and behaviour. They had so many opportunities to open a dialogue or at least offer sorrow to their victims. Just a terrible reflection of a group led by greedy untrustworthy criminal humans acting to line their own pockets at the expense of those paying for their lifestyle.Very sad. I’m so happy to have read / listened to you describe their unraveling but still so sad for the victims. Well done David, you really were incredible and so persistent, I hope you feel pride in this, I feel proud to be a worm. As always, you rock. Loved having you read it out!

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I really appreciated that long read being recorded and listened to it on my morning walk. As a person who works every day with victims of abuse I see denial in all its ugliness. It is a remarkably common pattern to dismiss victims and ridicule their advocates. It’s how abusers manage to continue to have power.

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Oct 16, 2022·edited Oct 16, 2022Liked by David Farrier

They seem to have a "take a penny, leave a penny" approach to morality. The church does X number of good things, so it offsets all the bad.

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Fair fucks to you David. No idea how you find the motivation to go against these absolute fools but I'm thankful that you do.

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I loved listening to this while following along with the newsletter!! So please do the voicey again!

So interesting to see their responses and for it to be out there with how 'crisis' moments (crisis being anything that could 'attack' the church) are dealt with in the walls of arise. So many occasions where the upper tier of leadership would control what you could and couldn't read. When I was part of it, if there was an article written about arise published on news websites - someone would go and screenshot the article and post the screenshots to a leadership telegram group so that you could read the article but not actually open the link on the website so that the article didn't 'gain traction' and would disappear. Self protection mode is engrained in followers - took me soooo long to get these protection mechanisms out of me.

Thanks to you David, they are being exposed to the core. Appreciate you a lot!! And just a side note - so annoying that Charlotte has been landed with all those legals bills - we should fundraise to help out!!! Just exposes the rot even more.

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The messages! "be super profesh" And about the man in the article who moved here and was kept as a slave "but there's probably harsher working conditions at TVNZ" I- 6tyyyyyyyy01m.l My cat Pennywise typed that by walking across the keyboard, but honestly it makes as much sense as most of the messages they are sending back and forth to each other. On TELEGRAM? Red flag red flag red flag. And still none of this mentions the victims or how to address helping the people they harmed.

Oh and they have a MEMES page. I cannot imagine what that would even BE like.

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Personally I’ll be watching to see what eventuates here in Australia. A few Christian work colleagues and I have discussed the Arise mess, they claim the over reliance on naïve, eager to please youth volunteers is common in some churches. The need for transparency and good conduct is so important. Id like to think the Arise board learnt something from all of this, but predictably it seems they haven’t. And they wonder why so many people are losing faith.

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