Dennis Crosby, a longtime observer of Christian Fellowship Ministries and a contributor to this site, recently watched one of Pastor Nomdo Schuitema’s online sermons. It was recorded not long after the Reformatorisch Dagblad’s series exposed the Evert Valk cover-up at De Deur Zwolle. Crosby caught something in that sermon worth naming precisely: a textbook case of CFM Bible verses out of context, and not an isolated slip. It is CFM’s whole method in miniature. The Fellowship does not read the Bible to find out what it says. It reads the Bible to make you believe what CFM already says.
A Word Swapped Mid-Sentence: CFM Bible Verses Out of Context
Schuitema quoted this text on screen.
For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. (Psalm 84:10, KJV)
Then, according to Crosby, Schuitema kept preaching and substituted the word “Church” for what the text actually says. The psalm says courts. It says the house of my God. It does not say church, and it certainly does not say the CFM franchise operating under that name in Zwolle. Crosby noticed the swap happened without hesitation, and without anyone in the room flinching. That is the detail that matters most. A congregation trained to catch a substitution like this would flinch. A congregation trained to accept the pastor’s paraphrase as functionally equivalent to the text will not, and CFM has spent decades producing the second kind of congregation.
The stakes are higher than one mistranslated word, because inside CFM, “church” is not a generic term. It means the CFM franchise specifically, since The Fellowship teaches there are no legitimate churches outside itself. Swap “courts” for “church” in Psalm 84:10 and a psalm about longing for God’s presence quietly becomes a psalm about loyalty to a specific religious organization. The listener never voted on that substitution. It was made for them, mid-sentence, by the person standing at the pulpit.
One Office to Absorb Them All
Crosby points to a second, larger example: the CFM concept of “pastor.” Wayman Mitchell took New Testament passages written about elders and overseers and folded them into a single office he called pastor, an office built to hold every function of authority the New Testament describes. Scripture does not actually collapse church leadership into one title. Paul lists several distinct functions in the same breath.
And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers. (Ephesians 4:11, KJV)
Apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors appear as separate gifts Christ gave to His church, not as job titles absorbed into one man’s authority. CFM’s treatment of these categories is selective rather than consistent. It subjugates the prophetic function or denies it exists at all. It keeps “evangelist” as a distinct role, useful for concert ministry and street outreach. And more than one CFM insider has floated, without ever quite saying it outright, that Wayman functioned as something like an apostle, a claim no one inside the fellowship bothered to correct. Meanwhile the terms elder (presbyteros) and overseer or bishop (episkopos) get read as synonyms for pastor whenever that reading concentrates authority, and get quietly dropped whenever a plural eldership might check that same authority.
The New Testament itself treats these terms as overlapping descriptions of one local office, not as raw material for building a bigger one. Paul addresses the same group of men as elders and, moments later, as overseers set to shepherd the flock.
Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God. (Acts 20:28, KJV)
Overseer describes the function of oversight. Elder describes the dignity of the office. Shepherd, or pastor, describes the care involved in doing it. Three words, one job, held by a plural group of qualified men rather than a single figure whose authority absorbs the apostolic, the prophetic, and the kingly all at once. When CFM applies Old Testament passages about kings to justify a pastor’s absolute authority, it is reaching for a category the New Testament never assigns to a local church leader in the first place. Kings ruled nations by divine right. Elders serve congregations under qualification, correction, and, when necessary, public accountability the New Testament itself insists on.
A Prayer That Was Actually a Pledge
Crosby’s third example is the most direct piece of evidence in his account, because CFM leadership produced it themselves. After watching Schuitema’s sermon, Crosby found a parallel damage control series from Greg Mitchell, delivered online in the same period. It sounds fine, Crosby notes, until you notice what Greg means by “church” and “God’s plan.” He means Mitchell’s plan for the organization. The tell comes right after the prayer, when Greg has the congregation stand and repeat a scripted commitment.
“God, thank you for the church. For your great plan. I commit myself to your plan of the church. Forgive me for neglecting or speaking evil against the church. God I repent. I want to see your will brought in the church. I will assemble. I will value the preaching of God’s word. I will invest financially. I will pray. And I will evangelize and be a part of church planting, and world missions. God, use my life in the church. And use our church to reach our nation and the nations of the world. And I thank you for it in Jesus’ name.”
Read it as a member would have to say it out loud, standing, hand raised, in front of the congregation. It opens as thanksgiving to God. It closes as an operational commitment to an organization: assemble, invest financially, evangelize, plant churches, reach the nations, all bundled into one breath with repentance for having spoken evil against “the church.” Crosby’s driest observation lands here. Greg never mentioned financially supporting the expensive, lengthy lawsuits CFM has pursued against its critics over the years, lawsuits Wayman himself once admitted were filed simply “to make a point.” A member who just pledged to “invest financially” in the church, without qualification, has committed to fund whatever the organization decides to do with that money, including litigation the pledge never named out loud.
This is what makes the liturgy a pledge rather than a prayer. A prayer addresses God about what God has done or will do. This script addresses God about what the speaker will now do for the institution, and asks forgiveness in advance for ever having criticized it. No verse anchors the claim that “God’s plan” is “the church” in this specific institutional sense. The connection is simply asserted, repeated by hundreds of raised hands, and never checked against a text.
Reading to Confirm, Not to Discover
Crosby names the pattern underneath all three examples plainly: CFM speaks its interpretation instead of what the Bible actually says, even while appearing to read the Bible aloud. That is not a minor stylistic habit. It is the signature of a movement that has stopped asking what the text means and started asking how to make the text mean what leadership has already decided.
Scripture describes the opposite discipline directly, and commends it.
These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. (Acts 17:11, KJV)
The Bereans heard Paul, an actual apostle, and still checked his preaching against the text before accepting it. The Greek word behind “searched,” anakrino, means to scrutinize or judge by careful examination, the same discipline a courtroom uses to test a claim. Luke commends the Bereans for it. Paul does not rebuke them for failing to simply trust him. Contrast that with the answer CFM routinely gives when someone asks how to know God’s will: through preaching, ask your pastor, pray about it. Every one of those answers routes the question back through the pastor’s office. None of them tells a member to open the text and check.
Paul told Timothy what faithful handling of Scripture looks like instead.
Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15, KJV)
The Greek behind “rightly dividing,” orthotomeo, pictures a craftsman cutting a straight line, the opposite of the bent, self-serving reading Crosby documents three times over in a single week of CFM content. A church that swaps “courts” for “church” mid-verse, absorbs five New Testament offices into one man’s title, and scripts a financial pledge into what looks like a prayer, is not cutting straight. It is making the text conform to the organization, one small substitution at a time. Members lose the ability to tell the difference between what God said and what their pastor needs them to believe He said.
