See previous report here (also recently updated).
Many further items: (already updated twice today)
…On Tuesday night, Soul Survivor Watford held a meeting for members, attended by around 200 people, to address the congregations’ concerns and answer questions.
The Telegraph understands that a congregant asked a question “about saying goodbye to Mike” and that the question prompted applause from some other congregants…
I will update this article again if more items appear.
I’d like to say I’m shocked to learn that the congregation of Soul Survivor applauded Pilavachi and the people chairing the meeting saw nothing wrong with that.
But I’m not. Pretty much the definition of a cult is the unshakeable belief in the virtue of the cult leader.
Right?!
There is some disagreement on Twitter as to whether this really happened. Some who were actually at the meeting are indicating that it is a fabrication. I’m not a fan of MP, but some of the reporting and some of the blogging really has been shoddy quality.
Could you provide a link to that discussion? A search for Pilavachi doesn’t immediately show a reference.
It is, of course, open to Soul Survivor Watford to complain to the Daily Telegraph about their publishing defamatory stories, or perhaps issue a signed statement denying it happened. I’m sure we would all believe that they were acting in entirely good faith and their denials were credible, because Soul Survivor Watford would never lie in order to burnish the reputation of their “pastors”.
Like various stories I heard from the various conferences, different people see things in different ways, and may not interpret the events accurately – and they grow, sometimes quite unconsciously in the telling! I’m very careful just how much credence I give to much social media reporting – Christian and otherwise, as so much of it seems to be imaginative hearsay. Caveat Empore, is that the right Latin? Buyer Beware in other words.
Caveat emptor!
Any psychotherapist will tell you of the importance of ‘endings’ and ‘goodbyes’. I hope careful consideration has been given to the need to allow the congregation at Soul Survivor to let go of Pilavachi without in any way condoning the abuse he was involved in. I imagine many of the congregation will be grieving the loss of the person they believed him to be. To airbrush him out will leave an unhealthy vacuum, that some of his disillusioned former followers may find traumatic.
Fr Dean,
your pastoral concern is laudable, but the airbrushing that you speak of is also unhealthy for other reasons, because the person being ‘let go of’ was not working alone. The following link offers a helpful survey of Pilavachi’s network of associations: https://mrsglw.wordpress.com/2023/09/24/soul-survivor-and-those-who-cannot-remember-the-past/