On November 6, 2025, Pointer, the investigative journalism program of the Dutch public broadcaster KRO-NCRV, published a 26-minute documentary on De Deur — The Door, the Dutch branch of Christian Fellowship Ministries (CFM), the network founded from Arizona as The Potter’s House. The film’s finding: 25 former members from different Dutch Door congregations independently describe being cut off from the outside world and psychologically manipulated. The reporters examined internal contracts, played a recorded pastoral conversation, and ended with the network’s Dutch head pastor calling the police rather than answering questions. By late May 2026 the De Deur documentary had passed 514,000 views. It is in Dutch; this page is a guide in English. Joel Crosby was among those interviewed, and the recorded conversation in the film is his.
Who made the De Deur documentary, and how
Pointer operates under the published journalistic code of the Dutch public broadcasting system, which binds it to accuracy, verifiability, and balance. The film was presented by Jos de Groot, reported by Emma Brink, and researched by Marthe Menses. The team held long interviews with 25 former members of several Dutch Door churches; many appear anonymized because, as they say on camera, they fear being confronted over what they disclose. Two participants speak under their own names, Rosalie and JanWillem. The team also reviewed internal church documents and audio recordings, and offered the church’s lead pastor the opportunity to respond twice by email before approaching him in person.
What the 25 former members describe
Every one of the 25 told the reporters that De Deur closed them off from the world outside it, and every one described psychological manipulation. The film shows the mechanisms. Parents told a daughter they wanted her to have no friends outside the church. One man says the church destroyed his relationship with his unconverted father, who was counted with the kingdom of darkness. A woman who left says her closest friend ended contact to protect her own heart and thinking. A former member who once held responsibility says he advised people against outside contact himself, and is ashamed of it.
The rules reached into media and the home. Sermon footage in the film presents television as an opening for demonic attack and names popular music as involvement with witchcraft. Members who volunteered in the band or served coffee signed contracts declaring that they owned no television and used internet filters; Pointer shows the documents. Rule-breakers were placed “under discipline” or barred from services for a period. In 19 of the 25 conversations, former members described physical punishment of children as normalized in the church’s earlier years — JanWillem, one of the two named participants, says on camera that he regrets how he raised his children, a practice corroborating what this site documents about the network’s written and unwritten rules.
The film also establishes the structure. De Deur arrived in the Netherlands in 1978 and counts 63 locations, planted by members without theological training. At the head of all of them stands one man, the pastor of Zwolle. Interviewees describe his word being received as God’s, and local pastors seeking his approval before acting.
The recording: permission to marry, granted and withdrawn
The film’s midpoint is a conversation Crosby recorded, with his wife present. The pastor had given him permission to propose to her, then reversed himself because Crosby was asking too many critical questions about the church. On the tape, translated from Dutch, he tells him, “Joel, you don’t listen to me very well,” and asks what he still wants in this church if he thinks that way about leadership. My wife cried through part of that conversation. The film plays it because it captures the doctrine this site examines at greater length: a marriage treated as something a pastor may grant and revoke, and disagreement treated as the offense.
Church or cult? The researcher’s answer
The reporters put the definitional question to Mirjam van Schaik, an associate professor of constitutional law who researches closed communities. She declines a hard boundary between church and cult, and points instead to the characteristics the literature offers: strict norms enforced by sanctions, authoritarian leadership, a self-image of being the elect, and distance from a world the group regards negatively. The film then shows those characteristics in the interviews, including the constant pressure to evangelize, with members taught they bear responsibility for the souls of those they fail to reach.
The legal segment explains why a state cannot dissolve such a group: Article 6 of the Dutch constitution protects freedom of religion, and the government can intervene only against demonstrably criminal conduct. The film notes a Dutch bill, expected in the spring, that would criminalize psychological violence and is intended to cover coercive control, along with the difficulty of defining those terms precisely enough to prosecute.
“Psychologists themselves need help”
Nineteen of the 25 former members said seeking psychological care was discouraged. Sermon audio in the film poses the choice directly between listening to psychiatrists and listening to a man of God, and former members recall the phrase “psychologists themselves need help.” Several interviewees answer yes, on camera, when asked whether their years in De Deur left them with psychological damage. Why that teaching persists, and what it costs, is documented on this site in why therapy feels forbidden after The Potter’s House.
The confrontation in Zwolle
The pastor at the head of the Dutch churches, Nomdo Schuitema of Zwolle, declined two emailed requests to respond to the allegations. The crew then approached him from the public road after an evening service. On camera, he asks whether he should call the police, wishes the reporter a pleasant evening, and makes the call; the officers who arrive confirm that the press may film from the public road. He answers none of the questions. Declining an interview is anyone’s right; the film documents the manner of the refusal, and it fits a documented pattern — his response to the Evert Valk abuse scandal dismissed the reporting rather than engaging it.
How the Netherlands received it
By May 30, 2026, the De Deur documentary counted 514,225 views, 5,861 likes, and 2,696 comments — an unusually large audience for a Dutch-language investigation of a church. The comment section extends the film’s record: the most-liked comments come from self-identified former members, including one who spent the 1990s inside and describes the church taking his identity, and from viewers thanking the named participants for going on record. One interviewee’s line in the film became the summary commenters repeated, translated here: “it is a warm community, as long as you are in it.”
Where to watch it, and what came after the credits
The film closes at a peer-support meeting of Stichting De Deur Uit, the foundation Crosby started, which organizes support groups and (RE)CONNECT gatherings for former members and refers people to qualified care. The documentary itself is on YouTube: De kerk die alles bepaalt, zelfs met wie je omgaat: De Deur. The audio is Dutch; YouTube’s auto-translated subtitles make it watchable in English, and one sermon clip needs no translation at all — a preacher, in English, telling the congregation that “rebellion is a demon spirit.”
