Recently, on the 26th October, a 94 page document was published by the safeguarding charity, Thirtyone:eight, on the group of churches known as The Crowded House (TCH). It is a document well worth studying because, among other things, it allows those of us who have never been part of a house-church environment to understand better how churches within this model operate. I have chosen to focus on two aspects of this report which, between them, take us to the heart of the issues encountered by many independent churches led by single individuals. One is the leadership style. The other is the question of whether the congregational members receive appropriate pastoral care for their individual needs.
TCH was originally a mission plant with indirect links to an Anglican parish, Christ Church Fulwood in Sheffield. It was set up at the end of the 90s largely through the initiative of its founder/leader Steve Timmis. He and another leader wrote a book exploring his vision for the congregation, called Total Church. This appeared in 2007. I have not seen the book, although I understand that it explores the ideas of radical commitment both to God and to the church community. The small cluster of congregations that came under the umbrella of TCH in the Yorkshire/Sheffield area remained independent but developed an association with Acts 29, an American church network which strongly emphasises mission and evangelism. Steven Timmis was later employed by the Acts 29 network to be an international director of the group.
The request, by Trustees for an independent learning review from Thirtyone:eight in February 2020, followed a critical article in the magazine Christianity Today appearing in that same month. The article recorded the unhappiness of 15 members with the leadership style of Stephen Timmis. They claimed that there was a pattern of spiritual abuse, bullying and intimidation. It is impossible to attempt to summarise what the review revealed in this area, so I am taking a more global look as to why church members may sometimes find leadership oppressive. There seems to be a tendency in churches which are initially attractive to young people and which provide exciting new experiences of church life, to go down such a path. The main clientele of TCH when it was first set up was certainly fairly young.
It goes without saying that churches attractive to large groups of the young will feel quite different from established traditional congregations. The main distinctiveness about such congregations is that there is great deal of youthful idealism and energy, with a readiness to be committed to a variety of programs involving, perhaps, evangelism or working in deprived areas. Many young people will pass through large student congregations and enjoy the buzz of lively worship and preaching for the time they are students. Because of the large numbers involved in these congregations, many will be happy to be attenders and observers rather than becoming deeply caught up in the inner life of the congregation. Even those deeply involved have to move on for work and family reasons. They can look back and see the church of their university years as a stage in their pilgrimage. It was never meant to be a place of permanent Christian residence. Whatever new church they end up in, it is unlikely to demand the same things that were expected from them when they were young, free and full of energy.
TCH seems to have operated with a different model from the typical university student congregation. Although it appealed to the idealism and energy of young people when it was founded, it was also trying to create a pattern of church life for the long term. What seems to have been happening is that Timmis was expecting as much from older (30+) more mature congregants as he was from the youngest cohort. When these older members resisted, they were told that they had ‘lost the vision’ or were no longer committed to God in the way that he, the leader, believed to be required of them. The other issue was that some older members were expecting to grow into positions of responsibility and decision making. Timmis had other ideas. He wanted to preserve the same pattern of dependency that he had established when the church was first founded. Whatever his gifts of preaching, evangelism and teaching, Timmis apparently lacked the gifts of empathy and discernment. These would have enabled him to see that he needed to adapt to the congregation pastorally and in other ways. His congregation was changing in terms of what they needed, and he was failing to respond to this fact.
In an interesting interview on The Pastor’s Heart, an Australian website, an Australian church leader, Stephen McAlpine, who had spent time with TCH in 2007, spoke of the tension that can occur when a highly committed group of young followers starts to grow up. Members initially come to a church excited by its offer of a vision and wanting to make their contribution to that vision. But once they arrive, their own needs gradually come to the fore. In short, they need to receive something back in terms of pastoral care as well as to give of themselves to the church’s vision.. The move from being idealising, energetic young believers to people facing ordinary life challenges is something that churches are not always ready for. It is up to the leadership in any church to cope with these inevitable changes in the needs of its members.
In offering my personal take on this report, I am suggesting above all that the leader of TCH, Steve Timmis, was failing lamentably to respond appropriately to the needs of some individuals in his congregation. This was becoming particularly apparent as these adherents of his church were growing and changing over time. At the beginning of the journey, Timmis, as their leader, had understood well how to draw in a group of impressionable young people to share his gospel vision. His sermons were universally appreciated. He also found it easier to manage people when they were still in this state of dependency as they had been in the beginning. Many of the problems uncovered by Thirtyone:eight were problems of a Timmis’ failure of flexibility to deal with individuals who were 15 -20 years older than when they had joined. He was a leader who needed to be in control, and this had the result that a part of the congregation was living in a state of suppressed frustration. Eventually this dissatisfaction exploded into a revolt and the article in the magazine Christianity Today. A few days later Stephen Timms resigned, and the congregation asked to have a review commissioned by the safeguarding charity. Their report is this document that we have today.
Most of the reports published about dysfunctional congregations and abuse situations in the Church of England over the past few years have involved sexual misconduct. Refreshingly there is no hint of this in the conduct of the leadership at TCH. We meet instead spiritual abuse alongside harmful examples of control, coercion and simple love of power. The report deals helpfully and usefully with these concepts, ensuring that reader is up with the latest scholarly opinion on these topics. The Thirtyone:eight report is thus a model of informed commentary on all this material. It can be read as a mini-textbook of applied theology and psychology which is completely up to date.
The one thing that is missing from the TCH account is any speculation as to why Timmis should choose, consciously or not, to abuse his power. As readers of this blog will know I have often discussed the potential issue of narcissism in religious leadership. There are plenty of clues to suggest that Timmis, in his inability to delegate or share responsibility for the leadership of the church, was afflicted by narcissistic tendencies. In short, his identity had become so bound up with his position of controlling leader, that he could not let go of any of it without this threatening his sense of self-esteem.
Among those who suffered as the result of this narcissistic ministry were those who simply walked away. Timmis discouraged any attempt to reach out to these leavers and they were normally ostracised as being people who had lost the vision or chosen the world in preference to radical discipleship. According to my interpretation, these were people who had grown up and now needed something that they were not being offered, a way of living a life of discipleship compatible with family responsibilities and the demands of a career. The remaining congregation got used to the simplistic explanations to explain these departures. These rationales were both untrue and deeply unjust. It was also deeply damaging to declare, as TCH did, that any thought or action not coinciding with the will of the leader was sinful. Binary thinking like this always needs to be challenged. In TCH, as the report indicates, there was little in terms of challenging the leader. A need for subservience was what was required.
The failure of TCH was a failure to allow balance and compassion to reign in the congregations. Instead of allowing the Christian faith to enhance and enrich life, Timmis demanded from his followers a harsh and inflexible adherence to a vision that could never change. I become very concerned when any Christian teacher suggests that Christianity is an inflexible body of truth. Two words that are at the heart of the Christian message, compassion and forgiveness, reveal constant new insights as we ponder them and make them our own. If these two words mean anything, they imply that God is reaching out to us where we are at that moment. He never lays upon us impossible burdens that we cannot carry, but travels with us along life’s journey.
For the full text of the Report please click on the link
It is interesting that people classified as abuse, behaviour that did not involve sexual misdemeanors. I find that encouraging.
As an aside, Christ Church Fulwood is within the ambit of Reform, their current incumbent is Paul Williams formerly of All Souls, and their previous vicar was Hugh Palmer.
So it would also be useful and interesting to look at parallels in the leadership style of TCH and Reform more broadly, especially given recent events.
Thanks for this info Murther. The origins of TCH were not laid out in detail, partly because Stephen Timmis chose not to give evidence to Thirtyone:eight. I have already had it pointed out to me in a comment elsewhere that the Iwerne camps were an example of growing men being kept in a state of permanent childhood. The parallels are there but I leave it for others to draw out these likenesses. It is difficult to do the kind of study you suggest from the outside.
I am very impressed with 31:8’s work here and the Report is much more detailed than I was expecting. Hopefully that bodes well for their Jonathan Fletcher report, which I suspect will be significantly harder to untangle. Do we however know if that will be published in full as this one has?
Full credit to the Crowded House trustees for cooperating fully and it will be interesting to see if the same will apply with Emmanuel Wimbledon. As the wider ReNew network is however not within the scope of their work, I suspect that many peripheral (or should that be key?) people will be left out entirely. We shall see.
I’m not sure what constitutes a house church these days, but this story sounds sadly familiar.
Like Athena, I find it encouraging that being spiritually abused and bullied have been recognised as the damaging and traumatic experiences they are. It’s interesting to note that spiritual and physical/sexual abuse seem to occur most commonly in churches at both ends of the theological spectrum; but bullying and power lust can happen anywhere. I’m pondering what it is about ultra high and ultra low or ultra charismatic spiritualities that make room for spiritual abuse to take a physical form? Or, possibly, for predators to recruit a greater number of victims.
RE TCH
As many of you will know I haven’t respondent for some months, the reason for this was simply that I had returned to the church in my home village, where I was able to soak up some healing. Things have sadly changed over the last few months.
I am slightly encouraged that the area of spiritual abuse is still active and the term ‘spiritual abuse’ is now written into the language of safeguarding.
My concerns still rest with poorly educated at helpless people who have been targeted for reasons of powerplay.
Having experienced this form of abuse myself, I naturally feel concerned when I see it still taking place.
I shudder when I hear the leader of a large congregation use the word, “We”.
All too often the word, “We” presupposes that all fellowship members are understood and respected. Sadly, my experience is the reverse of this and I still hear silence scream.
Chris Pitts
Very moving, Chris. For similar reasons, I shudder when I see on websites and indeed all publicity “our” church, “our” vicar, “our” anything. Possessive, exclusive, limiting, infantile, unwelcoming (you have to agree with our viewpoint). It s very common. It is totally unnecessary. There is nothing wrong with the simple definite article.
It’s a misconception that ‘our’ is always or solely a possessive term. Just as often it denotes belonging rather than – or as well as – ownership. There’s a basic human need to belong so there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as the chance to belong is always open to newcomers and people who differ from us in some way.
Having said that, I did once pen a parody of ‘I Belong to Glasgow’: ‘I belong to South Street, dear old South Street Free…and when I put a couple of bob in the offering, South Street belongs to me.’ That was in my nonconformist days. When I joined the C of E I could warble, ‘Never mind the why and wherefore, I have signed and I am therefore, in despite of all appearance a conforming Anglican…In my youth I was Dissenting, now in wisdom am relenting, seen the error of my ways and become an Anglican…’
From music hall to Gilbert & Sullivan.
Anyway, Chris, good to see you back and I hope you’re OK.
Hello Chris. Lovely to see you. Hope you and yours are physically well.
Thank you for writing about this. I’m pleased that this report was written despite there not being any sexual or indeed any criminal misconduct.
However it is notable that the triggering event came about because Steve had a role in an organisation outside of his church and the leader of that organisation listened to complaints and acted on them. My experience of house churches was that they tend to mainly relate to their own movement with limited links outside.
I’ve shared this report with friends from Newfrontiers churches and some of them have said that in reflects their experiences, maybe not all as strongly, but certainly similar in tone. Several of the recommendations at the end would cut across standard practices in their churches.