Bloomington-Normal has no shortage of churches, and some in the community — and outside of it — say there should be one less.
Several former members of Foundation Church in Normal, as well as family of current members, say the nondenominational Christian church has caused them harm — and in some cases, spiritually abused them.
The former members, including a former pastor, said the church emphasizes obeying leadership in all matters — religious or personal — even when they disagree.
The church, they said, also monopolizes their time, so the community becomes their whole life, in some cases separating families.
Many said the church, which catered largely to college students, young professionals and youth, has increasingly focused on a patriarchal hierarchy that can be degrading to women, and some said their mental health concerns were directly ignored when raised with church leadership.
The church did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“Most examples of spiritual abuse refer to a church elder or faith leader inflicting abuse on congregation members, often by creating a toxic culture within the church or group by shaming or controlling members using the power of their position,” the writes the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
Toxic leadership
Jessica Poppe joined the church before it became Foundation, and before it, she joined what’s known as simply The Network. On its website, Foundation writes it is part of a “network of church-planting churches that strive to obey Jesus' mission to make disciples in each of our cities,” which now accounts for around a dozen churches both nationally and internationally.
Poppe and her husband said between 2006 and 2018, they saw the church morph from a welcoming and loving environment to toxic.
“I saw more and more controlling behavior,” said Poppe, who now lives in Arizona. She has been speaking out about Foundation and other churches in The Network via TikTok. “I used the word toxic leadership. That's what it felt like, is like this person doesn't really have anybody holding him accountable.”
She said the shift was slow. So slow, she didn’t realize at first what was going on. But she soon realized what she was encountering constituted spiritual abuse. The way she sees it, leadership used her faith in God to make her compliant.
“You don't know if you can trust people anymore. You don't know if you are a bad judge of character. Like, how did I not see that this was happening? How did I stay in this church for 10 years?” she said.
Poppe said she saw the lead pastor asking people to leave the church and publicly berating people.
Jeff Miller was a former pastor at Foundation when it was called Clearview Church. He had moved to St. Louis to help build [known as church planting] a new church as part of The Network, but he and the church both left The Network in 2018 due to differences of ideology.
He said leaders above him in The Network were trying to advise him on his kid’s schooling.
When Miller pushed back, his leaders doubled down, emphasizing that God puts leaders in place for others to follow. He said one leader compared it to a child following his parents. To not do so would be a sin.
“And so I said, ‘Well, that's like a cult,’” he said. “‘That's like totalitarianism. That's like any group that says we're going to do the thinking for you. And I don't agree with that.’”
Miller emphasized he cannot speak to how the church currently operates, but if it still holds ideals about obeying leadership unquestioningly, he would consider it spiritual abuse.
Still demanding obedience
Members who left the Foundation as recently as 2022 told WGLT that obedience and compliance are still requirements.
Additional members of former Network churches have created a website and Reddit community called “Leaving the Network,” where they share accounts of the abuse they have faced. Family members of current members also share about the relationships they have lost with their children or relatives because of the church’s influence.
Poppe said she knows Network churches discourage people from reading these forums.
“Why would the leaders of The Network tell people not to listen to us at all, not to look at the website, not to read anything bad? They're controlling the information that you have,” she said. “The truth should not be afraid of people speaking out.
Many former Foundation Church members said discovering that website helped open their eyes to the abuse they were facing and gave them the courage to leave the Network church themselves.
“When the Leaving The Network website came out, we knew some of those stories, or at least we knew a side of those stories,” said Laura Meador. She and her family were part of Foundation for eight years before leaving in 2022. “We went through this sort of cognitive dissonance of, I can't read this, because if I do, then everything I've committed to has a bad side to it.”
From the moment Meador joined the church, she said she felt love-bombed. Everyone was saying hi and inviting them to dinner, asking for their contact information. Meador said it took more than a year for she and her husband to leave — despite being abused by leadership multiple times, including an incident in which leaders ignored her requests for help battling perinatal depression.
“We thought, ‘This is our family. This is our church community. These are our friends. Why would we leave this?’” she said.
As soon as they left the church, Meador said many of the people they considered close friends stopped talking to them.
Alanna, who is being identified by first name only so her professional life is not affected by speaking out about the church, left Foundation Church along with her family in 2022, and tells a similar story of being shunned by current members.
“They only till their own garden,” she said. “They don't care about a community garden. They are only about themselves. That is why a lot of people leave, because they didn't know that that's what they were signing up for.“
Financial abuse and complementarianism
Former members said the spiritual abuse also extends to finances and patriarchy.
Frank Taylor said he and his wife gave well over 10% of their income to the church. From the moment they stepped foot in McLean County, the church was there, helping them move in despite not yet knowing them. Their family member, Jeff Miller, had brought them along.
Once Miller left, Taylor said he spoke to pastor Justin Major, who called his relative a heretic and said not giving a tithe, or a donation to the church, when a leader says to, is tantamount to sin. That was just after he and his wife had decided against giving to a particular fundraiser.
“That was my last Sunday,” he said.
Women who have left the church, including Alanna, report a focus on patriarchal hierarchy — also called complementarianism in a church setting — that was ultimately toxic.
Another former member was even asked to leave the church after she tried to create a women’s mentorship group and started asking too many questions to leadership, she said. The former member was part of the church from 2010 to 2015, which includes when it transitioned from Clearview to Foundation. She is not being identified by name because she wants to keep this information out of her professional life.
Following her departure from the church, the former member said she had to go through intensive counseling.
“I genuinely don't think that there is anything positive happening from that church in our community,” she said. “They think they're doing something so positive, but it's such a mind warp, where really, they're causing a lot of harm.”
Families cut off from children
People outside of the church say it has affected them, too.
Candie and Stacy Shipman said they haven’t spoken to their daughter in months. She is married to a small group leader and moved to DeKalb to start Bright Field Church, another Network group. Stacy Shipman said she posted on the Leaving The Network forum, which is when her child and her son-in-law broke ties with the family.
“If you're going to be a member, you're going to be there all the time, and anything that keeps you from being there all the time, they actively tell you you need to get rid of that in your life,” Candie Shipman said.
Justin Major, still the lead pastor of Foundation, also has cut off his family in recent years, according to his sister, Jayme Major. She said she believes the church has changed his way of thinking, expressing that she wants to reconnect, so their family can heal.
“I'd really like to open that door again, and whatever that looks like, in terms of what kind of opportunities we have to communicate,” she said.
Melanie Hartmann, of Carbondale, said she can’t think of a preceding incident that led her daughter to cut ties. One day, her daughter texted that she felt her family was an “idol.” Several months later, Hartmann stopped hearing from her. She then found out her number had been blocked.
“I am speaking for myself, absolutely the biggest heartbreak of my life,” Hartmann said. “But I'm also going to speak for the rest of the family — her cousins, her aunts, her uncles — everybody has been affected by this. We all miss her.”
Healing from abuse
Everyone who has left the church and spoke with WGLT said their relationship with faith and God has been altered.
Alanna said hers was completely “shattered,” and the church is no longer a “safe space” for her.
Scott Moore, the pastor of Jacob’s Well Community Church in Normal, said his small congregation has around two dozen former Foundation Church members, and he sees hurt among many of them. He emphasized that whether they characterize it as spiritual abuse or not, whether what Foundation is doing is spiritual abuse, there are actions churches can and should take to prevent that type of behavior.
“You can't deny that leaders have authority or that leaders have power, and the real danger comes into play when leaders either deny the power or authority that they have or they're ignorant of it, and that's when abuse just runs rampant,” he said.
Jacob’s Well has taken multiple abuse trainings from GRACE, which stands for Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment. Moore said he's learned that it is important to have accountability. There needs to be some entity, or even the law in some cases, that can determine whether someone is experiencing abuse.
With a lack of accountability, former member Poppe said she is just trying to reach people inside the church with her story.
“This idea that it's just a bunch of disgruntled former members that are out saying things just is not true,” she said. “The reason that we're speaking out, the reason that I speak out is because I still really care about the people that are in these churches.”
