14-Apex Airpark

 

Some who left the Assembly of the Body of Christ (ABC), and then found peace, remarked that looking back they must have been wearing rose-colored glasses.  I have pondered this statement for quite some time and have often felt the same. One day I realized these glasses were not rose-colored...they were actually polarized. These "polarized" glasses masked the glaring errors that were right before me, even though they were plain to one not viewing them in a polarized manner.  There have been many glaring problems, and upheavals, over the years. We in the ABC just put on our polarized lenses and pretended they did not exist.

As I look back at my life in the ABC, and how I and my family were treated, I realize how much fallacy I  just blocked out. There have been several periods in my life when I could escape all, or most, of the ABC's influence and it was during these periods I found times of peace. Why I left that peace and returned to the ABC is not really a mystery as I returned the second time out of a sense of imposed guilt. More on that later.

Much of the "under the surface" tumult; glare if you will; is invisible to the newcomer. They are deliberately shielded from it as they are "love bombed". This way, by standard practice in the ABC, the "new babe is not harmed". It is impossible to keep these glaring problems hidden forever though, and when it finally does come to light the new person is advised, "for the sake of unity" to put on polarized lenses, ignore the glare of problems and upheavals all around you, and continue on in the same direction.

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by them that make peace. James 3:17-18 

The goal in life should be peace. There is not a great deal of  peace in the ABC.

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I lived just a short time in Santa Cruz after my dad and Yvonne suddenly left. The restaurant where I worked shut down and I found myself in an even worse financial situation than when I first arrived. My single option was to call my dad. I was surviving only because my neighbors were very generous and were providing  me with food and companionship. I had been ordered by my dad to have nothing to do with these neighbors since they would “pull me away from the body” but they were kind, generous and very good friends. It was no longer just  a matter of food. I was now no longer able to  pay my space rent and was soon to be evicted to the street. I knew I could not rely on others generosity forever and I had two choices left. Live on the street or return "home".

I called my dad and told him about my situation. He told me to come back to the Seattle area to the Apex Airpark in Silverdale Washington where they were staying but offered no assistance to get there.  I was told if I could find a way to Silverdale someone would buy my trailer from me and he would help me out until I found work.  I borrowed $40.00 (about $260.00 in 2022 dollars) from my charitable neighbor with the promise to repay them when I sold my trailer. I headed north up I-5 to the Apex Airpark arriving two days later after a brief stop in Grants Pass. 

The Apex Airpark is a small private airport community then owned by a sweet woman named Roberta Walker.  Most called her either Mom or Grandma, depending on their age, since she was so generous. Roberta's husband had built Apex Airpark from a raw piece of ground decades earlier and had unfortunately died before his visions of a planned community were completed. Roberta now ran this private airport all on her own with a little help from a few of the residents.  They have now paved the runway but back then it was just dirt and gravel with crude lighting.  

Roberta was  introduced to "the group" through her daughter Janet who was one of the original group members in Mountlake Terrace. Roberta offered my dad the use of a large space next to her home to park the bus and, since the bus was not handling the strain of the additional weight of the conversion, my dad used this as an opportunity to rebuild the engine. He was in the middle of that project when I arrived. 

 

On the very evening  I arrived my dad told me to clean out my trailer, had me sign over the title to him, then told me to tow the trailer over to Ralph and Karen’s house on the back side of the air park.  It was my understanding  they were buying the trailer from me; I had made all of the payments on it except for the first sixty-dollar down payment, but I never saw a dime from the “sale”. By the next morning the trailer had been gutted and converted to a goat shed. It was sad to see since, even though it was tiny, this had been my home. I was angry, felt cheated and lied to, but I still remained gullible, obedient. I felt if I did not do what they told me, God would punish me.

After I dropped the trailer at Ralph and Karen's house I asked my dad where I was supposed to live. He showed me to an old bus that had been left at the airpark by Jim; the man who had help construct my dad's bus. The bus had no bed, no stove, no table, and was basically just a ramshackle space full of garbage and mouse droppings. They threw an old mattress on the floor for me and this was to be my new  home. My dad promised he would help me fix it up later and told me he envisioned me traveling on the road with him. It was a lie. I slept in the bus on the old mattress the first night. Roberta heard of the arrangement and offered to let me live in her back bedroom instead. This would supposedly give me an opportunity to make the bus more livable. I went along but the bus project never got off the ground when my dad reneged on his promise to help me fix it up. Instead recommended I drive it to Ernie’s house so he could work on the engine. I found out later my dad had actually given the bus to Ernie since I was “no longer using it”. On the trip to Ernie’s the bus caught fire and ended up scrapped. Oh well.

Within two weeks of arriving at the airpark I found myself married to a girl I had met only once before, for just a few hours, when she attended a church picnic in Santa Cruz.  There is a much larger story to all of this, but for the sake of this narrative "matchmaking" or "arranged marriages" were common in the early days of "the group" and still is, but to a smaller degree. I was nineteen then, she just seventeen. We had each been counseled separately God wanted us to marry.  We were both young, impressionable, gullible and believed this was something we had to do to "stay in God's will".  My dad officiated the marriage at the airpark, and Roberta's daughter, Janet, made the cake. About a dozen people attended, most of them I had never met.

Arranged marriages in the ABC are no longer arranged in exactly the same fashion but marrying someone from outside the group is frowned upon. I heard recently of a very young child that was already being matched with another for a future pairing so arranging is still happening.  The ABC do not accept marrying someone from outside  as valid. Marrying this person would mean you  had "unequally yoked yourself with an unbeliever". The only solution, to make the marriage valid, is for the person to volunteer to be baptized by the ABC.

It is 1974 now and I find myself married, living in the back bedroom of Roberta's house with my new wife and unemployed. Seattle is in a major recession and finding a job is difficult. I barely graduated high School, have no college education and am forced to take whatever odd job I can find through temporary employment agencies.  Emotionally, and in every other way, I was not ready for this marriage and neither was my new wife.  The marriage lasted only a short time; less than a month; before things fell apart. She left and ended up living at the home of a couple that had broken off from "the group" to start their own ultra-authoritarian, mostly communal, "Shepherding / Discipleship"  group.  More on that later.

The Shepherding Movement / Discipleship teachings had been  introduced to "the group" when Bob Mumford, and others from his movement, came to Seattle and spoke.  Mumford was directly connected with Derek Prince and Ern Baxter from "The Sharon Orphanage" days (and thus Broadway Tabernacle as well) and it was this connection to Derek Prince that attracted my dad to attend his Seattle meeting.  My dad came back from this meeting excited  about what he had learned about "church discipline".  It is this meeting, and this moment in time, that would paint a great deal of havoc into many peoples lives. It ushered in decades of even more repressive discipline.  

 
The "shepherding movement" affected both mainstream and home-based churches but, regardless of the structure of the church or group, the scripture still states, in Paul's words to Peter:

"…not as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock…" (I Peter 5:3, NKJV)

Below is a short excerpt from an article in the Cephas Library. It is a rather long article, and I encourage those following along on my historical narrative to read the entire article. It explains well the "discipline" abuses still happening in the ABC.  These abuses directly result from this teaching by Mumford in Seattle my dad and a few other men attended.  This excerpt has to do with Bob Mumford's alleged repentance in 1990. There is a sign he did not truly repent however, as many individuals in his movement, have had to seek treatment for severe PTSD, anxiety, depression, etc.   Here is that excerpt:

... in a subsequent Charisma & Christian Life article published in February, 1990, reportedly after having sought the advice and counsel of Jack Hayford and others, according to the article, Mumford spoke more as one who was genuinely chastened, repentant, and willing to deal with the issue in a more direct fashion, accepting full responsibility for his error. According to the article, Mumford read a statement in November of 1989 "to a gathering of pastors at the Christian Believers United meeting in Ridgecrest, North Carolina,"11 in which he said,

"I repent. I was wrong. I ask for forgiveness," Mumford said about his involvement in the discipleship movement.
The article went on to say:
...Mumford decided that he needed to publicly 'repent' of his responsibility in setting up a system where so many people were hurt by misuses of authority. "Some families were split up and lives turned upside down," says Mumford. "Some of these families are still not back together."   

Ripping  families apart has been a recurring theme in the ABC and it is  justified by stating "the body is your family now” and the quoting of this scripture:

And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matthew 10:36-37 

 This is a wrong interpretation. 

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One of the men who  listened to Bob Mumford speak that night, split from "the group" then began his own "discipleship" gathering at his home in Everett Washington. This gathering was not officially part of  'the group" but he still kept in touch and would still attend ABC meetings. This man demanded complete submission, in every way, the setting was mostly communal and all of his followers lived together in his large home. This is the group my new wife would align herself with when she left.

As a single man again I was able to find only a straight commission "job" selling Electrolux vacuum cleaners door to door. That did not go well. I was still broke, and my  future as a "married man" was pretty uncertain. At the time I had no idea where my new wife had gone. Frankly I did not really care. I was not financially or emotionally ready for marriage. I wanted out. After a few weeks, the man who was operating this spun off “discipling” group called me, then visited me, and told me my wife was now living at his house and had "submitted to his authority". This meant they had shared a bed together. He told me I should come and join her and "submit to his authority" as well. I did not. Word of our separation and her joining this other man's group began to get out to people  and was causing scandal so my dad knew he had to take some sort of action.

He called a man named Tom in "the group" who managed a store in Bellevue where I was now living.  Tom searched me out, had me come by his store and told me to use his phone to call my dad. On this call my dad asked if I would come to the airpark and teach on the Armor of God. I agreed. Being asked to teach however was just a ruse to get me to the airpark. My new wife, who was now living in Everett, was also called and asked to come to the airpark "just to talk".  I arrived at the meeting that night and was surprised to see my new wife sitting there. She too was surprised to see me walk through the door. We were both whisked to the back room and "counseled" God had put us together and wanted us to stay together. We were told God wanted us to move to Klamath Falls Oregon where we were told, we could get our marriage stabilized. A couple named Don and Darlene would help us patch up the marriage. Need I say again I was young, gullible and my back was against the wall?

Both my new wife and I, wanting to stay in "God's will", and under "spiritual duress" to stay together, agreed to go. We were very confused kids, broke, dependent on others for our support, thrown together into a mixing bowl and  given a good stir. We had both been trained that what we must do what we were told by “the elders”. Anything else was rebellion and rebels will suffer eternal punishment. We left Silverdale the next day and traveled to Klamath Falls to live with Don and Darlene.  

I had known Don and Darlene since I was about sixteen.  Don and I fished together often in the Puget Sound. We had many good times together.  I babysat their kids often when they went out. They were good friends, fantastic people; gentle, kind and admirable. Our time in Klamath Falls would be just as pleasant and, through their love and encouragement, my new wife and I calmed our marriage and lived mostly peaceably. My new wife and I worked our way off welfare, and I took whatever odd jobs I could find for additional money.  The winter of that year I found a job full time as a cook at Sambo's restaurant and got off welfare, except for food stamps and medical. This would be my second time living in Klamath Falls and it was mostly a time of peace. That would end when I would receive a phone call from my dad which, for a second time, would take me to California.  But this time it would be San Diego, not Santa Cruz, and this time I was not a boy....I was a married boy.

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In the next post, my wife and I travel to San Diego, meet David North (the prophet) for the first time, and settle in to "real" life.

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