What follows is Amy Fernandez’s own account of her first love inside the Potter’s House, reproduced here in full and in her own words, exactly as she wrote it. She spent nineteen years in the network, from age seventeen to thirty-six, and this is not primarily a story about doctrine or discipline. It is the story of two people who found each other inside a church that decided, repeatedly and cruelly, that it had the right to keep them apart. Amy asked that her account stand as she wrote it, and it does.
First love broken by The Potter’s House
I first entered The Potter’s House, part of Christian Fellowship Ministries (CFM), with their over 3,000 churches worldwide collectively referred to as “The Fellowship,” on November 15, 1998 as an awkward teenager with loads of emotional baggage. I was seventeen years old and had recently started working at a pet store, where I was invited to a service by a co-worker. I stayed in The Potter’s House for over nineteen years and, after sharing my experiences with others since leaving in 2018, have often been told I should write a book.
Many of my stories are so over the top, they sound like fiction. Sadly, I’ve learned that not only are my experiences not unique, but that it wasn’t only the “outcasts” of the church like myself who dealt with abuse; every survivor I’ve spoken to has their own tale, and each one has been heartbreaking.
I’ve decided to use my voice — which was stifled for nearly two decades — as a voice for those abused by this Evangelical fundamentalist group, starting with part of my own story. This story, however, is not strictly mine but about my first love, covering a season of my life that should have played out very differently for my younger self and that of a then-young man who deserved so much more kindness and compassion than he received. We (and so many others) deserved to be treated with dignity and respect, but were invalidated, silenced, and targeted for cruelty that had a devastating impact on our lives.
I’ll share some background of my life before entering the innocent-looking storefront, one of many branches of The Fellowship which became the center of my life from the ages of seventeen to thirty-six.
I remember feeling “different” from a young age without a clear grasp of why I didn’t easily fit in with my peers. I had friends in my neighborhood as a child and loved to play with them, but I often experienced days when I was depressed and had no mental or physical energy. I remember a day when my best friend came over to play, and I pretended to be asleep in my bed as the thought of any sort of interaction was unbearable.
I was often ill as I’d had medical issues since infancy, requiring surgery to remove half of my left kidney when I was only a few days old. Much of my childhood was spent in doctors’ offices or hospitals. When I started school, making connections with children my own age was a challenge as I didn’t understand social cues, could get overly excited at times, and didn’t share a lot of interests with other kids my age. I was more likely to befriend teachers, crossing guards, and other adults who would patiently sit and have long conversations with me about life.
I’d frequently hyperfocus on whatever I was reading to the point where I’d walk home from school at a snail’s pace with my nose in a book, sometimes even stopping midway to sit down and finish a chapter or two. What should have been a 10-minute walk often took over an hour. I also spent many friend-free recess and lunch periods at school sitting alone, reading. I struggled in school due to then-undiagnosed ADHD, and it was assumed that I was lazy as my standardized test scores didn’t match my classroom performance. I was desperate to please others, especially authority figures, and longed for acceptance and a feeling of belonging. I rarely stood up for myself but took a strong stance when I saw others being bullied. I didn’t have the language or knowledge at that age to understand why I felt that I was somehow broken and “less than,” but now I have more understanding of neurodivergence.
When I was fourteen, I went through a rough time, as so many kids that age do. I was mentally exhausted, feeling misunderstood all the time. I had recently started talking to a therapist in an attempt to deal with my tumultuous emotions. One day, after an argument where I was again criticized for my “laziness,” I grabbed a bottle of pills. I only managed to take seven or eight before my older sister wrestled the bottle away from me. It wasn’t enough that I was in danger of losing my life, but a clear sign that I needed crisis intervention.
I had my stomach pumped and spent two weeks in a psychiatric facility before going home. The high school I was attending didn’t feel adequately prepared to handle my mental health issues, so the plan was for me to enroll at an alternative school for troubled kids the following week. My sister was planning a camping trip with friends the weekend before I was scheduled to start at my new school and invited me to tag along. The antidepressant I was taking made me tired, so I switched cars for the ride home, as one car was heading back while the other stayed behind for a couple of hours of nature exploration.
I don’t remember the accident itself, but the car I was in was involved in a collision so severe that it was prominently featured on the front page of the next day’s local newspaper. I was in the back seat of the car, sleeping, when we were hit and the car careened into the guardrail, flipping over and continuing to flip its way down an embankment. I was ejected from the car which rolled onto me before I was flung several yards into a tree. Luckily, no one besides me was seriously injured, but my injuries were nearly fatal. I was air-lifted to the nearest trauma center, where I spent the next several weeks. The car had crushed me, leaving me with twenty-one broken bones, both lungs punctured, a head injury, third-degree burns, and internal bleeding. I was in a medically-induced coma for three days and I had a long and agonizing recovery before I was allowed to return to my original high school, repeating my freshman year. I still deal with daily pain and severe lung issues thirty years later.
I was overweight as a kid but debilitating depression and the physical effects of the car accident caused me to gain a significant amount of weight which I worked hard to lose in the year or so before first attending The Potter’s House where my physical appearance, especially as a woman, was seen as a sign of “carnality” and evidence of a lack of spirituality. I was never “thin” but this was the beginning of years of severe weight gain and eventual loss in a yo-yo cycle that repeated every few years and has continued to this day.
I regained the weight I had worked so hard to lose after falling into a pit of defeat and self-hatred from treatment by my pastor, an abusive boyfriend, and those in the church who followed the pastor’s lead and turned my life into my own personal hell on Earth. I already struggled with self-esteem from years of bullying, feeling misunderstood, and the pain, loss of mobility, and other health issues I dealt with every day. The church increased these struggles exponentially. My self-esteem, which was deeply fractured, completely broke and my belief that suicide would condemn me to an eternity of torment is likely the only thing that kept me alive in those years.
A week or so after my initial visit to The Potter’s House, I met Matt and was immediately smitten. He wasn’t a member of the church at the time, but most of his friends from high school had joined, including the young woman from work who had invited me. I became part of their friend group, and Matt and I immediately hit it off. He had a guitar and offered to teach me to play. I talked my mom into buying me a guitar, though we never actually got around to lessons as whenever Matt and I were together, we would end up talking for hours.
Matt was twenty years old at the time we met, living with his parents who were both battling health issues. We became best friends quickly. In January, his parents passed away – on the same day of unrelated causes! – and I did my best to support him.
A couple of weeks before Matt lost his parents, another member of this friend group whom I hadn’t previously met was invited to the church and immediately targeted me. Though I wasn’t interested in him in any way, and actually found his personality and lack of hygiene repellant, I agreed to date him as I foolishly thought that I was worthless and should “take what I could get,” in hindsight a decision which wasn’t fair to him or to me, and one I regret to today. I found out much later that Matt had been working up the courage to ask me out when I started dating this other man. Despite the clear chemistry between me and Matt, I didn’t believe that someone I liked would or could return my feelings.
My pastor at the time was a man who, looking back, reminds me of a cartoon chihuahua mixed with a schoolyard bully. He was an unintelligent man who would get so enraged when questioned or “crossed” that his face would turn red and veins in his forehead and neck would bulge. He was incredibly controlling and demanded respect and unquestioning obedience, and I was often the target of his rage. Matt and I were treated cruelly by him, and as his treatment of us was so increasingly blatant, many in the church followed suit.
At that point, the church had approximately fifteen members, most of whom were in their teens to early twenties. As I was encouraged to limit interactions with family and friends outside the church with the exception of a mission to “get them saved,” I became more and more immersed in the church, desperately trying to feel like part of the “new family” I was told I was part of. I constantly pressured myself in what became a relentless attempt to gain my pastor’s approval, but he seemed hell-bent on misunderstanding my motives while seeming to fawn over his “favorites.” Matt ended up joining the church shortly after the death of his parents, and now recognizes how his emotional state from such a tragic loss influenced that decision.
When my relationship with the young man I started dating turned abusive quickly, Matt was my anchor. While I didn’t share all of the details of how I was treated, he was a faithful friend, someone I knew I could count on, and that meant a lot. My ex was clearly threatened by my relationship with Matt, often making comments about how he was stronger than Matt, better than him, and so on. When my Junior prom came up, my ex didn’t want to attend. He told me I could go if I could somehow find someone who wanted to take me. He loved to tell me how nobody else would ever want me or put up with my refusal to give in to sexual pressure. When Matt enthusiastically offered to take me to the prom as a friend, my ex suddenly decided that my attending with anyone else was unacceptable. My pastor was anti-prom as he believed proms were an excuse for teens to “have sex behind the bleachers,” but didn’t explicitly forbid it, so we went. My ex was cruel to me the day of the prom, and my normally peaceful mother had car keys in hand, ready to drive to his house to confront him as I was sitting at home, hair and makeup done, wearing my sparkly blue dress, sobbing uncontrollably because of one of his “jokes.”
I was eventually coerced into losing my virginity in what was a traumatic experience. I opened up to Chihuahua Pastor’s wife, and she told her husband I’d lost my “V card.” I was never asked my side of the story. I was never given the chance to disclose the abuse. People in the church were told I was immoral, and I was sat down and shown scriptures about how I, a traumatized seventeen-year-old who had been emotionally, physically, and sexually abused, was a whore who couldn’t be trusted around men. I was put on “probation” for six months, which included rules such as not being alone with or speaking to men on the phone who weren’t blood relatives.
The rules of my probation were strictly enforced. As an example, I twisted my ankle at a church picnic and couldn’t find a woman willing to drive me home. I asked the pastor if I could ask an older man in the church who was a neighbor for a ride, and I was publicly rebuked. I was told that I knew why I couldn’t be trusted and that I was lazy for being unwilling to walk a couple of miles. I was also not allowed to speak to or make eye contact with my ex for six months, which was incredibly awkward as we were both in the church and the church was still small. While I’d never fit in and was often ostracized, I quickly became a complete outcast who was no longer invited to social gatherings. Matt was the only one in the church who didn’t alter his treatment of me. My ex was given similar restrictions but blatantly ignored them (except for shunning me) and was still invited to hang out with everyone and enjoyed a thriving social life, while I was blatantly excluded.
Eventually, in November of 1999, the six-month “probation” was up, I said “hi” to my ex in an incredibly awkward exchange that ended with a young woman in the church loudly drawing attention to the situation with a crowd gathering. We awkwardly said goodbye, and our interactions from that point on were minimal. He eventually left the church, and I’ve only seen him a couple of times over the years.
Matt was my best friend, and the chemistry we’d had from the beginning was still there after this breakup, despite my pastor’s attempts to discourage our relationship. I was pulled into the pastor’s office and warned that Matt was enamored and to stay away from him, but I wasn’t about to cut off my best friend. I still didn’t believe that Matt was interested in me romantically despite the clear evidence. In December, I flew from Pennsylvania to Louisiana to meet my brother’s new baby. My brother’s ex-wife suggested I call Matt to ask how he felt about our relationship, if the feelings were mutual or not, as I spoke about him in a manner befitting a lovestruck teenage girl. I bought a calling card and called Matt, who was staying at my parents’ house to take care of our pets. We spent eight hours on the phone, skirting around the issue for the first six hours as we were both scared our feelings weren’t returned. Eventually, he told me he loved me, and I was elated. We spoke for six hours the next day, gushing about how in love we were and sharing fantasies of a future together. I didn’t know until years later that we racked up a massive long-distance bill that my parents never mentioned, as they saw how happy I was and didn’t want to kill the first real joy they’d seen in me in a long time. With the fears about Y2K, Matt told me he had a bag packed in case I was unable to fly home. He said he’d find a way to get to me if he had to.
While Matt and I never “officially” dated due to our pastor’s overly watchful eye, we were basically in a relationship from our first meeting, and it was solidified after these conversations. He was waiting for me at the airport when I arrived home, a surprise I wasn’t expecting, and I remember feeling elated when I saw him.
Matt asked to take me to my Senior prom, but I was too scared of my pastor to agree, though I did get us tickets to the After Prom party at the school. We both remember that night being magical. I won a TV in a raffle, which I gave to my sister, as TVs were actively preached against and referred to as “one-eyed demons.” We spent as much time together as we could. I still feel a bit sad about missing my prom, something I believe would be a memory we’d still cherish if we had been allowed the freedoms that are common to young people who aren’t in controlling religious groups. My Senior yearbook was lost in the recent clean out of my childhood home, but I still remember the message he wrote: “As Fenton Robinson once said, I love you pretty girl and want you to be my wife.” A classmate from the church who later saw the message grabbed my yearbook and wrote her own inscription with an arrow pointing to Matt’s: “Tell it to Pastor.” It was yet another reminder that my life and choices were not my own, and that I was constantly being watched.
I allowed myself to be mistreated with few complaints for years. I was bullied by the pastor and others in the church and accepted it. I heard the pastor and the same classmate who snatched my yearbook making jokes about my weight when they didn’t know I was in the next room. I was regularly called lazy for struggling to keep up on outreaches (church recruitment outings) due to my physical limitations, told my weight and breathing problems were evidence that I was unspiritual. I was mocked for being a nervous driver due to PTSD from my car accident. I would speak up, though, when I witnessed cruelty directed toward Matt.
Matt, like me, was “quirky” and we weren’t pegs that fit into the disciple-shaped holes we were expected to. Despite clearly having a high IQ, he was often treated as unintelligent and dismissed. For both of us, even giving basic common sense suggestions would end in eye rolling and mockery. Chihuahua Pastor unfortunately loved an audience and his cruelty wasn’t limited to within the four walls of the church building. We used to pack like sardines into cars for out of town outreaches and if there weren’t enough seats, Matt was often relegated to the back of the pastor’s station wagon, a clear safety concern in itself. On at least two occasions, I was in the car when Matt asked the pastor, a reckless driver known for speeding, to stop for a bathroom break. This grown man would mock Matt while speeding up and jerking the wheel of the car so Matt would be thrown around while encouraging others to laugh at him. Matt would be begging for this to stop and I’d speak up. This made the abuse worse. Matt was also publicly shamed by people in the church for coming to services directly after working at a construction job for being “dirty” in a Catch-22 situation as he also would have been shamed for missing service. He was friendly but when pushed too far he would respond in kind and was unfairly given a reputation for being argumentative when he’d call people out on their hypocrisy and bad behavior.
At one point, Matt was struggling financially and I was aware he had no food at home and no money. I went shopping with two friends and bought him a couple bags of groceries which we delivered to his apartment and immediately left. Matt’s downstairs neighbor was one of the pastor’s top disciples who “told on me” for going to his apartment after dark. I was called into the pastor’s office and removed from ministry for being “inappropriate.” When I explained that I thought the visit wouldn’t be a problem as I had people with me for “accountability,” I was told that I was also a bad example to my friends. I was also told that the work I did running food drives and raising funds for charitable groups was a sign of my sinful pride and that I should focus my time and energy on “soul winning.” So much for all those scriptures that focus on helping the less fortunate.
Eventually Chihuahua Pastor left to be a missionary and our new pastor arrived. He initially seemed kind and fair, but I learned more about his character over the years. He showed himself to be a gossip who routinely gives damaging “counsel” and has done his share of damage in other ways.
Matt’s treatment in the church got worse to the point that his friends, who he had known for years, fully turned on him. It affected his mental health and, combined with my fear of the pastor, caused issues in our relationship. I was working long hours and felt burnt out. Matt was looking for a job and had lost most of his support system except for me. I started needing to spend less time on late night phone calls while he was desperate for connection and did not want to reduce the frequency of our communication. This caused fights, the first we’d ever had.
Around this time, the friend who had brought us both into the church was being courted by a man who was a walking red flag. Matt was aware of incriminating information about our friend’s suitor and tried to warn the pastor, warn me, warn anyone he thought might listen. I had a bad feeling about the guy but doubled down, telling Matt he was wrong. Matt kept trying to get people to listen to him, as well as confronting our new pastor. He was physically removed from the building and kicked out of the church for six months and, later, told his ban was indefinite.
The church members were told Matt was stalking his friend and had threatened to return to the church with a gun. We were told to avoid him as he was supposedly dangerous. Matt has acknowledged angry outbursts at attempts to silence him, but denies the claims that he stalked or threatened anyone. Having known him as well as I did for years, I believe him and am still surprised I was willing to accept the tales of his “misdeeds.” I remained in the church for another fourteen years, and heard numerous tales of “rebellious backsliders” that I later learned were works of fiction fabricated by leadership. These tales were generally shared with a warning to stay away in an attempt to keep those in the church from hearing why people actually left. I was recently told that after my own departure, which was done with respectful communication and of my own accord, resulted in warnings about my “immoral nature.” I was told the pastor seemed obsessed about this for a time which is keeping in line with how I heard others’ departures discussed over the years.
When Matt was banned from The Potter’s House indefinitely, he was understandably hurt and angry. He wouldn’t acknowledge anyone from the church if they saw him on the street. This was discussed as “evidence” of his bitterness and mental state.
A couple of months after Matt’s ban, my uncle passed away on his forty-seventh birthday under tragic circumstances. He was in the hospital in a coma for a few days before passing. I remembered how my new pastor had recently offered during a sermon to pray for loved ones who were ill, bless people’s new homes, and so on. I asked him to pray for my uncle and he refused. I strongly believe his refusal had to do with my uncle’s sexual orientation based on The Fellowship’s views and frequent preaching about the dangers of spending time with or associating with people who are homosexual. My family was dealing with a number of difficulties as most of them lived in the New Orleans area, and my uncle passed from a massive stroke that occurred while he was watching live coverage of Hurricane Katrina destroying his beloved hometown.
I moved into my uncle’s hospital room, sleeping on a window seat, while my parents worked to prepare their house to accommodate relatives driving cross-country after losing their homes to Katrina’s wrath. They were also trying to reach family members in law enforcement who were assisting with evacuation efforts in addition to caring for my grandmother, who had recently moved in with us and had dementia and two types of cancer. I ended up in the emergency room with chest pain which I was advised was stress-related. After my uncle passed, my pastor pulled me aside to tell me that my uncle, who had medical issues from childhood, was to blame for his own death because he was overweight, and repeatedly and forcefully pressured me to verbally agree with him.
As Matt had become close to my family over the years, I called him to let him know about my uncle’s passing. He didn’t sound happy that I’d called, but upon hearing about my uncle, he immediately became the supportive and caring friend I’d known. He attended the funeral and served as a pallbearer. To my everlasting shame, while grateful, I still believed the lies I’d been told and let him know I had no desire for further communication. We both said hurtful things to one another, then I didn’t see or hear from or about him for twenty years.
I never forgot Matt and the role we played in each other’s lives. I saw a beautiful love story that ended tragically due to his mental health and my need to protect myself. He ended up being right about the man he warned us all about, a man who openly abused his wife for years and still does as far as I know, but gives large amounts of money to the church and is involved in ministry positions. At one point he was running the Children’s Church program and still may be. His abuse of his wife was turned into a frequent over-the-pulpit joke about how many “crowns in Heaven” his wife would receive for putting up with his mistreatment.
Every few months for the past twenty years, I’ve had dreams about Matt where we’d reconnect and then he’d disappear. I searched the internet for information about him every so often with no success. I was worried he’d passed away.
Years ago I texted a number I believed to be his with no response. I tried again recently. A few days later, on September 27, 2025, he responded. We’ve been in regular communication since, and have blown our old phone record out of the water, talking for twelve hours that day and speaking every day since. The quirkiness I found so charming is still there, but it has been toned down from youthful exuberance to a maturity that has come with middle age.
Matt moved to Ohio years ago while I’m still in Pennsylvania. Luckily, technology has advanced over the years so we don’t need to worry about exorbitant long distance bills. Reconnecting is not what I expected. My only goal was to find out what happened to him. He hadn’t responded to the initial message I sent years ago as he thought I was still in the church and would try to convince him to return. The spark has reignited in a way I couldn’t have predicted. Medical issues have affected both of us financially so we’re unable to travel in the immediate future. We are hoping for a face-to-face reunion sometime in the next year.
Our love story may have ended tragically, but is now rekindled with new possibilities. I resent the pastors who interfered in our lives and caused our twenty-year rift, as well as the organization in which such interference is common, but am hoping our story will have a happier ending. We are both facing challenges, but are overjoyed to be back in each other’s lives, despite the 400-mile distance. We are looking forward to our first “official” date, an event that would have happened back in the ‘90s had we been free to live our lives out from under the thumb of The Fellowship’s control.
