The Shepherding or Discipleship Movement was established in a few decades ago with devastating consequences. It is a movement whose effects still remain, yet many either don’t know about it or are unaware of how it affects their churches and lives. But its wicked threads of coercive control have crept all over the world of churchianity. It has even invaded reformed churches. It imprisons well-intentioned believers in tight institutionality as a tradition to over-ride the reality of Christ in us.
Both of these adjectives “shepherding” and “discipling” come from biblical terms. And that is how the deception enters the ekklēsia of Christ to rob believers of the truth of their direct sonship with the Lord.
We see today that few have been able to shake off the ideas of a separate priestly role institution in the early centuries. And this was the springboard from which this movement sprang and continues even today. I suggest it is because the institutional church leaders find this a comfortable default, particularly because they have an Old Covenant mindset. Economic security is also a lure into a separate, salaried priesthood. This can only be shaken off by a realisation of the great importance of what happened in 70AD to Jerusalem, the physical high priesthood and the client rulers of that time. We need to understand how the events of the Roman-Jewish war were the final fulfilment of Old Testament, Messianic and apostolic prophecies. But in this knowledge, the church is sadly lacking.
As Jesus and Paul had warned, this wolverine system,[1] the coercive nature of what St Paul called, this “obsolete” system had reared its deathly head repeatedly in the early centuries, and down into the middle ages. It is no surprise then that it reared its head in the Twentieth Century in Charismatic circles. It was of human origin yet based on Bible texts. It was another of the devil’s methods to destroy what was a series of moves of the Holy Spirit. It destroyed families and faith in its wake. It was known as The Shepherding Movement. It sounded so good initially. It created what were, effectively, cults. My husband and I had considerable experience in this kind of “church”. They still exist today, and the leaven continues to spread, even following the repentance of the initiators of this system. We see it has infiltrated many mainstream churches beyond the Pentecostal groups who have tried to shake it off.
When questioned about this coercive control in a church in Victoria, Australia, a pastor replied that some people like to be under such firm control from leaders. His answer didn’t sit right with the Holy Spirit who desires all humans to walk in the liberty of Christ, renewing their own minds in line with Christ’s within.
The leaders, were really practising the control of people and mistrust of the Holy Spirit, usurping the role of Christ in the life of believers. This mirrored the papal hierarchies of their origins and carnal Israel of Matthew 23.
Here’s the history:
A group of charismatic leaders consisting of Bob Mumford, Charles Simpson, Derek Prince and Don Basham, desiring to see more effective discipleship in their churches, founded Christian Growth Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Their meeting and organisation were to have a profound and negative effect on many churches throughout the world in the decades that followed.[2]
With a Pentecostal Magazine entitled “New Wine” in hand they began conferences which drew people into an authoritarian set of hierarchies to “shepherd” the people who had been seen by these leaders as needing discipleship. The motive was ostensibly noble, but the method, unbiblical. It fooled many of us, like all legalism, because it was presented using the Word of God, but with a twist. It was the operation of the enemy come to rob the children of God of their liberty.
These kinds of protocols can easily come into existing churches where people have fallen into a rut by following rituals quite loyally, and missed the continual presence of the Lord in their personal day to day lives.
Once humans have abandoned the pure gospel of Christ, i.e., living as the new creation, the carnal nature rises to fill the spiritual void. Where the spiritual life of believers had been sapped by the erosion of sound discipleship, an external method was now employed to take the life of the Spirit’s place. Where the Life of the Spirit would have set folk free from the law of sin and death, the opposite occurred. How could this be helped when the Bible itself had been misread and turned backwards away from the cross life into the legal doctrine of dispensationalism with its distortion of the work of the cross and belief in a carnal thousand-year reign?
The teaching of the “discipleship” or “shepherding” movement was based on the need for every believer in a church to be accountable to someone above themselves. Many of the words used to sell this “new” idea were biblical; the heart of it was not. In most churches there were hierarchies of varying heights. Small churches had small chains of accountability while large ones grew into multiple levels of clerical castes with the largest group being the laity at the bottom. They became pyramids, selling a product and relationships became stifled. To increase accountability, cell groups were formed, using the story of Moses’ dialogue and advice from his father-in-law, Jethro. The idea was to set up “under-shepherds” who would have small numbers of congregants who answered to these new leaders – and so on, up the ladder.
The method, as explained to us during our Pentecostal Bible College training, was for each aspiring leader to get ten people saved in order to give up one’s day job and draw on the tithes of the saved congregants; this then enabled more of the same, building a “church” upwards.
Tithing, an Old covenant practice, was essential to its success. Malachi’s threat of a curse or a blessing was used to affect the practice. As the ekklēsia is subject to state taxes and is not the Old Covenant theocracy, this imposed hardship on all but the salaried class of pastors.
With a hierarchy in place and the rapid spread of the teaching of tithing as economic security, many churches fell into a pyramid selling business model. It happened by playing on the carnal desire in people for status or personal approval. In many churches cell leaders held the accountability of their little flocks. In turn the cell leaders were accountable to the level above them and so forth up the chain until accountability arrived at the senior pastor who then needed to demonstrate that there was some superior believer either in the denomination or elsewhere whom he submitted to.
The bottom or base of the pyramid provided free labour for the whole to function with the idea that when one had been seen to serve physically, one would have proven faithfulness in preparation for the destiny in God that one hankered after.
The system pressed the button which carnal folk have for power and glory. People who can’t succeed well in the world rushed to this system, because acceptance was initially guaranteed.
While we noticed that top pastors always gave the name of the exalted “one” they were accountable to elsewhere, it was only in hindsight that we noticed there was no evidence of that accountability for the masses at the bottom to see. It was taken on trust.
Eventually, many members of churches who suffered under this regime suffered depression. Ironically, the children of ministers have been some of the hardest hit. There were even suicides, loss of marriages, loss of faith and a great falling away which is evident in the western world today.
In some suburbs in south eastern Australia, we have found more numerous genuine Christians outside the institutional churches than inside. And all the while, a bemoaning in churches of low numbers. They speak of non-attenders as “backsliders”, with no realisation of the extensive wounding of the sheep that went unidentified by institutions who failed in their call to care. More commonly, anyone leaving the shepherding churches was vilified. This is cult behaviour.
A short anecdote from the early 1990s shows the level of control that was exercised. A young woman of around 17 years of age, was invited to join a mission trip of two weeks to a remote Pacific island. Her father was her cell leader, but this meant she needed to ask his shepherd’s permission to accompany the leaders, who were in another church, on the trip. The “shepherd” at this next level was one of the pastors in the church. He would not permit the young woman to make the trip. Looking at the authority structure as outlined by St Paul we see a very different way. The husband is the head of the wife and the children obey their parents, not the local pastor or his deputy. While. perhaps no harm was done in this particular instance, it can be seen that in more serious matters, the young woman would be open to the possibility of abuse which was also occurring with others in this particular church.
What effectively happened in some churches with the shepherding movement was a degeneration into spiritual abuse. Where people had a carnal tendency to want to rise in the ekklēsial ladder, they were encouraged to do a number of things:
- Turn up to every event held at the church in support of their leader. If one was favoured with a subordinate leadership position, that man, his wife and children were often expected at a number of services on a Sunday to set the example of faithfulness. Where personal gifts were noticed, the man became vulnerable because he was required to give more time to the growth of the ministry at the top of the chain. This was said to be faithfulness to God, but in reality, it was faithfulness to those at the top of the hierarchy. Healthy family life was often neglected in this system, with resultant family tension, failure and breakdown. The feelings of guilt when performance is not maintained easily leads to abuses in God’s name.
- Support and contribution to the leader’s vision was an important requirement of being seen “faithful to God”. It was frequently said that one couldn’t fulfil one’s own destiny in God without proving faithful to one’s leader’s vison first. Vision statements and other worldly practices abounded as if the church was a corporation complete with a CEO. Pentecostal churches looked increasingly like businesses, many selling their messages and music to make money to pay for infrastructure and people.
- Assurances were given that support of leaders would be seen by God and rewarded with a fulfilled destiny in some kind of leadership role. The leadership ladder was sold in a pyramid selling style by drawing in more people at the bottom through the establishment of schools, childcare etc., thus creating more intermediate leadership positions.
- One pastor taught planned his church to have everything people needed, including their sporting facility so that no-one need go out into the world to engage in other activities beyond the “church”
- Some schools grown under the authority of these churches had a particularly strong hold over staff members, requiring them to be givers of extra unpaid time and other sacrifices that benefitted the growth of the church, but took the teachers away from their family for greater periods of time on weekends. Time was already committed to multiple lengthy church services, where numbers were seen as a measure of leadership success.
- It can be seen that pressuring others, when practised in the name of God and the use of guilt easily leads to spiritual abuse and the degeneration of a church into a cult. The tell-tale sign is when the immediate family members of congregants are neglected in favour of the organisation. An example of this contravention has been the forced attendance of church cell leaders’ children at youth groups and events contrary to the parents’ wishes, the parents having perceived negative influences in the peer group. It is the father’s role to bring his children up in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord”. No institution should usurp it – especially using the Lord’s name to do so.[3]
The gatherings of believers and respectful relationship with those who teach the word was never biblically intended as control. It is not Christ’s family Way. We see Paul tread very carefully regarding this temptation.[4]
If a woman were to be directly accountable to her pastor instead of relating to her husband in decision making regarding their family[5], then the dual set of accountabilities would be confusing not only for the woman, but it would be demeaning for the husband, as well as for the wife of the pastor, as he would have authority over of a number of other men’s wives. The Bible explains that primary spiritual authority over the woman is Christ alone and Word alone. If her husband happens to fall away from the narrow way, she is directly under the Lord and not a sinful husband as we see in the example of Ananias and Saphira in Acts 5:1-11.[6]
The Scripture which was a key text in the movement was Hebrews 13:17. However, the verb “obey” rendered from “peithō”, does not imply slavish obedience without the use of one’s own conscience and discernment. It means to be reasonably persuadable, to listen to and follow. Paul uses the idea of being followed only in the event that he is following Christ. He says in First Corinthians 11:1, “Be imitators of me as I am of Christ”. The word, imitators (mimētēs) is not intended, therefore, as slavish obedience. Further, elsewhere Paul says we ought not follow him If he is not following Christ. [7] In its Hebrews’ context, verse 17 urges an imitation of faith rather than a following of specifics or directives. These are very different things.
Such heavy-handed mis-translations distort God’s Word and His character. Having promised intimate guidance- the egg or totally new creation life of Matthew , is He going to give us snakes in suits or robes? Indeed not. This was the very thing that Jesus came against in vengeance in 70AD – the destruction of the enemy of faith in Christ.
Each person has his or her personal accountability to follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance through the Word. John Chapters 14 to 16 make it very plain that the Holy Spirit is actually the Father and Son (Jesus) indwelling the human heart as His glorious temple. It is individual and corporate. It can be both because it is in the new creation heaven or spiritual realm.
Thankfully, the original leaders of the shepherding movement eventually saw the fruit of what they had initiated when criticism of their authoritarian “Christianity” became public. In the archives of the Los Angeles Times we read,
“Charismatic Leaders Concede They Went Too Far : ‘Shepherding’ was often accused by outsiders and former members of being cultlike in requiring members to obey leaders in all aspects of their personal lives….. several leaders have recently admitted to excesses, including Mumford, who said in a recent statement widely circulated among charismatics that there had been an ‘unhealthy submission resulting in perverse and unbiblical obedience to human leaders.’”[8]
Although the leaders left the movement and repented of what they had created, the accountability to a local church or to a spiritual leader still holds sway among many believers, cementing institution over relationship, much to the detriment of marriages and children.
The trajectory that begins with a denial of the complete work of the cross in fulfilling the new spiritual Israel is devilish indeed. Carnality in the church allows people to interpose man between the Lord and the people. Instead of a responsive woman / bride of Christ we have man attracting man. The result is gender confusion in the church and beyond into the world she is intended to salt. In churches where dispensationalism has become highly carnal, we see examples of sexual immorality, monetary greed and leaders who have taken glory to themselves.
Repentance and restitution are needful, with an abandonment of false religious practices, so that the people of God can come out of Babylon.[9]
While Revelation gives us history confirmed by Josephus, we see things to apply to our walk with the Lord today. Come out of Babylon (religious controlling Old covenant ways) so you don’t share in their sins. Stop being the harlot and return to the intimacy of a loving, humble wife of value and genuine business in the earth (Prov 31).
And to those who Lord it over believers as unequal persons, the cry is, “Let My people go and worship in Spirit and truth.”
So do not despair!
What is most comforting in the Scriptures is the complete mercy of God expressed also in the thousand generations imagery.[10] We see this also in the harlot imagery of Revelation which threads back through the Old Testament, though the prophet Hosea. He had the sad task of living an active parable,
“When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord.” So, he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. And the Lord said to him, “Name him Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. 5 On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.” Then she conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. And [c]the Lord said to him, “Name her Lo-ruhamah, for I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel, that I would ever forgive them. 7 But I will have compassion on the house of Judah and deliver them by the Lord their God, and will not deliver them by bow, sword, battle, horses or horsemen.” When she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived and gave birth to a son. And the Lord said, “Name him Lo-ammi, for you are not My people and I am not your God.” Hosea 1:2-8.
Hosea lived the parable of God’s feelings of rejection because of harlotry. It looks like a hopeless case. But in the drama typical of the Lord’s demonstrated faithfulness we see, when we read to the end of this difficult marriage, that what God had promised with the initial prophecy, will come to pass,
“I will heal their apostasy,
I will love them freely,
For My anger has turned away from them.
I will be like the dew to Israel;
He will blossom like the lily,
And he will take root like the cedars of Lebanon.
His shoots will sprout,
And his beauty will be like the olive tree
And his fragrance like the cedars of Lebanon.
Those who live in his shadow
Will again raise grain,
And they will blossom like the vine.
His renown will be like the wine of Lebanon..” Hosea 14:4-7.
Thus, we see God’s constant return to mercy. He chastises to heal. He never changes.[11]
[1] The human system of Lording it over others, denying them the fullness of truth is manifest variously as legalism, humanism, carnality – but always without Christ as King.
[2] For a full explanation of how these errors impacted the body of Christ see, Lambert, S., Charismatic Captivation: Authoritarian Abuse and Psychological Enslavement in Neo-Pentecostal Churches.
[3] Ephesians 6:4.
[4] 2 Corinthians 1:24-2:11.
[5] In the case of a married woman or her father in the case of a young girl.
[6] See also 1 Corinthians 7:12-16.
[7] Galatians 1:8 “But, even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed /anathema.”
[8] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-03-24-ca-667-story.html accessed 28/10/2025 See also chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://jamiebuckinghamministries.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Jan.Feb-1990-The-End-of-the-Discipleship-Era.pdf The pdf contains an apology from Bob Mumford, one of the architects of the shepherding Movement. Also https://www.spiritlifemag.com/the-discipleshipshepherding-movement/
[9] “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins” Revelation 18:4.
[10] Deuteronomy 7:9; Psalm 105:8.
[11] Hebrews 12:3-11
