In Episode 8, Adam & Melissa get into how spiritually esoteric beliefs and practices in the hyper-charismatic churches (such as Bethel, IHOPKC, & MorningStar) have harmed many people's lives. They open up about the impact of this on their own experience, and how so much of the teaching is actually unintelligible, pie-in-the-sky nonsense. Also, Adam & Melissa hone in on how the impact happens at the intersection of human agency and spiritual abuse. Beyond that, they explore how gaslighting and spiritual bypassing is harmful when survivors try to tell their story of what happened to them, at the hands of spiritual leaders who deny it.

In this episode, Adam & Melissa share more openly about their ongoing process of working through layers of grief 14 years into leaving church and in the deconstruction process. They seek to give all of us permission to make space for our own process and journey, no matter what it looks like or where each of us are.

In this episode, Adam & Melissa talk through the impact of the Firefly investigation report findings on the abuse at IHOPKC by Mike Bickle and others. They also process through the Shawn Bolz prophetic manipulation at Bethel, and specific ways that high control groups tend to condition us to check our brains at the door. In all this, baked into the system are illusions of hope (i.e. a Pot of Gold) that were promised but never a reality.