On April 6, 2026, EO — the Evangelische Omroep, a Christian broadcaster within the Dutch public system — published a 15-minute episode of its series Sektarisch? about Joel Crosby and his 25 years inside De Deur in Zwolle. De Deur, The Door, is the Dutch branch of Christian Fellowship Ministries (CFM), the network known in the United States as The Potter’s House. The episode’s title translates as “Joel on 25 years of sectarian isolation at De Deur,” and it tells one story from inside to out: how an abuse disclosure and the cover-up that followed turned a loyal member into a critic, and what leaving cost. De Deur Nederland was offered the opportunity to respond and did not use it. The episode is in Dutch; this page is a guide in English.
The series and the broadcaster
EO is an evangelical broadcaster, which matters for how the story should be weighed: this is a Christian organization judging a church story worth telling, on the public networks it shares with every other Dutch broadcaster. Sektarisch? profiles people who spent years inside closed communities in the Netherlands and examines the contrast between life inside and after; a podcast edition, presented by Kefah Allush, runs on NPO Luister. By May 30, 2026, the episode counted 24,806 views and 295 comments on YouTube.
Joel Crosby inside De Deur: what the episode shows
The first half describes an ordinary committed membership. Crosby grew up in the Zwolle congregation, sang in the choir, played in the band, served on the drama team, and treated the leaders as his examples; he assumed he would attend that church until he died. He believed that doing what the pastor said was the path to heaven. At the peak he spent 30 to 40 hours a week on church activities. The rules the episode lists were his: no television at home, books subject to the pastoru{2019}s approval, no watching other preachersu{2019} sermons, an instruction not to look up information about the church online, and the pastoru{2019}s permission required before asking anyone in the congregation to court. One English-language sermon clip in the episode needs no translation: u{201C}You owe your soul to church.u{201D}
Serving in any ministry role required signing a document called the conditions for ministry, which declared, among other things, that the signer owned no television. The episode shows what those contracts are for. Legally they mean nothing; in practice they are the instrument for placing members “under discipline,” a period of public probation in which your tasks are stripped and the congregation assumes the worst about why. Pointer’s investigation of De Deur documented the same contracts independently, and this site documents the same rule for the network as a whole in the Potter’s House TV rule.
The disclosure and the cover-up
The turn came when a fellow member Crosby trusted told him what their pastor had involved her in. The pastor had recruited female members for what he called a drama video for the teen camps, a ritual in which an animal was to be slaughtered, and when she asked why it had to be repeated he told her the scenario aroused him sexually; in the episode Crosby notes that the Reformatorisch Dagblad investigated this and reported the fantasy involved a pig. He also states in the episode that he knows of multiple female members the pastor abused. Crosby took the disclosure to the church council. That evening the congregation was told the pastor had been removed for unspecified moral failure, a phrase that could mean anything, and he was replaced by the pastor of Leeuwarden u{2014} his best friend, who closed the matter. The woman who had confided in Crosby was recast as the seductress; two weeks later her house was defaced. Crosby was told it had been a mutual relationship rather than abuse, and for a time he was manipulated thoroughly enough that he no longer knew what was true and what was not.
One fact belongs beside this account, and EO publishes it under the episode itself: in 2022 a court acquitted the pastor concerned of sexual abuse. The court considered it proven that he performed the sexual acts, but found insufficient grounds to establish that he acted in the role of a care provider with the woman in a position of dependency, the element the charge required. The fuller record of that case, and why an acquittal on those grounds is not a finding that nothing happened, is documented in the Zwolle abuse case.
Asking questions, becoming “the rebel”
Crosby did not accept the mutual-relationship framing, and he started asking questions. Inside The Fellowship that has a name: rebellion, a doctrine this site examines separately. He was placed under discipline, gossip circulated, and he was summoned to account for himself. The episode ends that chapter with a meeting at which the new pastor berated him while his fiancu{e9}e sat beside him. He said nothing, because answering back would have confirmed the label. Afterward she asked him whether he had heard how the pastor spoke about him, as if he were dirt, and his answer was that he was used to it: he had done everything by the rules and it had never been enough. That was the moment he understood his pastor was a fallible man rather than his guarantee of heaven, and they decided to leave. Of the four friends he counted as real, two told him by message that he now stood outside the will of God and would not attend the wedding. Both have since left De Deur themselves, and they are friends again.
Speaking out, and what it costs
The episode closes on the work that followed. The story it tells is not unusual; it is unusual only in being told, and many former members do not dare tell theirs to the media or even to their own families. Current members would prefer he stopped, and the episode records that he understands that. It also records the cost plainly: asked whether speaking out is dangerous, he answers yes, and mentions the threat he had received that same week. The work continues through Vrijhartig, which trains care institutions in the dynamics of high-control groups, and through Stichting De Deur Uit, the foundation he started for former members of De Deur specifically.
Still a Christian
When they left, his family asked whether he finally felt free, and his honest answer at the time was no: they left because they could not stay, which is a different thing from a free choice. The episode ends where he is now, and it is worth stating here because Fellowship preaching insists that people who leave have left God. Crosby is still a Christian. What changed is the God: no longer a bogeyman who might punish at any moment, but a father who sent His Son to die for sin, which is a doctrine a person can rest in. The episode is on YouTube — Joel over 25 jaar sektarisch isolement bij De Deur — in Dutch, with auto-translated subtitles available. His first interview, from 2023, is documented here.
