The Fellowship keeps a public account of itself and a private one, and the gap between them is written down. In public, before the tax authorities and in court, the network of Potter’s House, Door, and Victory Chapel congregations describes itself as a loose association of totally autonomous churches with no legal ties to one another or to Prescott. In private, the Potter’s House contracts that its pastors and members are required to sign tell a different story, one of submission to a single man and the surrender of every asset on command. The documents span three continents and nearly three decades, and read in order they trace the conversion of a claimed fellowship of independent churches into something owned from the top.
1980: the bylaws that promised autonomy
Start with the founding-era bylaws, a page signed by Wayman O. Mitchell and dated by the Fellowship’s own critics to around 1980. Its language is the language of congregational independence. The churches, it says, are “totally autonomous and responsible for their own affairs,” bound only by a common bond of vision and relationship, and any oversight is “purely relational and functional, not legal.” The same page explains why that framing is useful. Citing the January 1982 revision of IRS Publication 557, which places the document at 1982 or later whatever its nominal date, it notes that a church meeting five basic requirements is automatically recognized as tax exempt, owes no Form 1023 application and no annual Form 990, and can operate without the corporate structure most groups need. Autonomy was not only a claim about church government. It was a posture with tax advantages and, as later events showed, a legal shield.
July 2000: the letter that changed the structure
The pivot has a date. A later covenant refers back to a letter “from Pastor Mitchell to the fellowship at large, dated July 10, 2000,” which set out “a basic structure for dealing with conflict resolution and the discipline of errant pastors.” Whatever independence the bylaws had promised, by the summer of 2000 Mitchell was circulating a structure for disciplining the men who ran the churches. The Potter’s House contracts that followed put that structure in writing and asked for signatures.
The pastor contract: submit, and surrender everything
The Potter’s House pastor contract, drafted for the Arizona corporation Christian Fellowship Church Inc. doing business as The Potter’s House Christian Fellowship, opens with a subscription to the bylaws and a submission “to Pastor Wayman Mitchell or his successors.” The signer commits to resign quietly if he ever decides he can no longer work with the leadership, and to cause no further disruption in that church or any other Fellowship church. Then comes the operative clause. Should the leadership remove him for “moral indiscretion, financial insolvency, doctrinal error, or a disruptive spirit,” he agrees in advance to “surrender all church bank accounts, buildings, equipment and assets and go quietly on to redirection, discipline and relocation.” The document is notarized. Read the removal grounds again. The first three are specific; the fourth, a disruptive spirit, is whatever the leadership decides it is. A pastor who questions the structure has, by signing, pre-agreed to hand over the building his congregation paid for and to leave without a word.
January 2004: the Leadership Covenant
Four years after the July 2000 letter, the Leadership Covenant of January 2004 made the arrangement explicit and named it with care. The leader acknowledges that he acts “at the behest of the fellowship and not as a proprietor or as an independent agent,” binds himself to the structure in Mitchell’s letter, and agrees that if he ever leaves, “all human and financial resources at my disposal at that time will remain in the fellowship,” with all claims relinquished. The covenant then says the quiet part in one sentence. It reads that “in our ongoing effort to avoid a rigid legal denominational structure it is necessary that we bind ourselves together in good faith by solemn covenant.” The purpose is stated without embarrassment. A denominational structure would carry legal obligations and legal accountability, so the same binding is achieved by a spiritual covenant instead, which asks everything of the signer and concedes nothing on paper about central control.
The shell game
The 1980 bylaws, with their totally autonomous churches, were superseded by a covenant that reversed the stance and moved ownership to Christian Fellowship Churches, which in practice meant to Wayman Mitchell. The public documents kept saying autonomy while the private documents took the assets. It is the same split that surfaced under oath in the Steve Schoner case, where a Door pastor swore his church was “solely independent” with “no affiliation” to Prescott, then acknowledged that Mitchell had ordained him, assigned him, and received a share of the church’s income. The Potter’s House contracts are the paper behind that testimony. They also explain the leverage. Pastors who draw their living from the churches cannot afford to lose them, so a clause that surrenders every asset on removal is not a formality. It is the device that keeps a financially dependent man agreeable.
Australia: the same paper, plus a liability shield
The template traveled. The Australian version, a Pastor and Missionary Contract for The Potter’s House Christian Fellowship of Australia Inc., adds a second name to the chain of submission. It binds the signer to “Pastor Payne or his successor” as well as to Mitchell and the Board of Elders of Christian Fellowship Ministries, and carries the identical surrender clause covering bank accounts, buildings, equipment, and assets. What it adds runs the other way. The pastor agrees that he is “not an Employee of The Potters House, but a self-employed minister,” responsible for his own medical costs and insurance, and that any support, settlement, or relocation money is “simply an offering given to me at the discretion of the Potters House,” not a salary. The organization claims total authority over the pastor and total ownership of the assets while disclaiming the one thing an employer normally carries, which is liability for the worker. It is control without responsibility, put in writing and signed by the person who loses on both counts. The Fellowship’s own record frames the Australian contract as an international and successful attempt to seize control of the entire organization.
Zwolle 2007: control reaches the members
The contracts are not only for pastors. The Dutch congregation in Zwolle, Evangelie Gemeente De Deur, issued a Voorwaarden voor bediening, a conditions-for-ministry form dated May 2007, for ordinary members who want to serve, which in this system can mean anything down to cleaning the building. The signer promises to attend every service, Bible study, and revival meeting, to report any absence to the coffeehouse leader or pastor, and to clear vacations well in advance. The signer promises that the household owns no television, watches no worldly videos or DVDs, keeps an internet filter, avoids the cinema, and abstains from tobacco, alcohol, and drugs. The signer promises to tithe faithfully and, if married, that his wife will comply as well. The exceptions are as telling as the rules. Where a television is present in the home, responsibility falls on the husband, and a wife may still serve if her objection was overruled by the man who chose to keep it, which locates both the authority and the blame exactly where the doctrine wants them. A form the church calls a mere formality reaches into the living room, the marriage, and the wallet.
What the Potter’s House contracts prove
Taken together, the Potter’s House contracts document the machinery of a high-control group with unusual precision, because the group wrote it down and asked people to sign. There is behavioral control, in the required attendance, the television ban, and the cinema ban. There is financial control, in the tithe, the asset-surrender clause, and the self-employed disclaimer that leaves the worker exposed. There is control of exit, in the promise to leave quietly and cause no disruption, which converts every departing critic into a covenant-breaker. And there is the concentration of all of it in one office, the submission to Pastor Mitchell or his successors, layered through every level from the Prescott board down to a volunteer in Zwolle. The signed instrument is also insurance for the leadership. A man who has put his name to all of this has handed the church the means to discredit him later, which is the leverage an ex-member had in mind when he described it as blackmail.
Concede the Fellowship’s case at its strongest. None of this is illegal, adults signed willingly, and a church may set conditions for its ministers. The problem is not legality. It is that the arrangement is the inverse of the eldership the New Testament describes. Peter tells the elders to shepherd the flock “not as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock” (1 Peter 5:3). A covenant that takes the buildings, the bank accounts, and the television set, and demands silence on the way out, is lordship over the heritage with the language of shepherding laid over the top. The bylaws promised autonomy. The contracts took it back.
Sources
- The Potter’s House pastor contract, Christian Fellowship Church Inc. doing business as The Potter’s House Christian Fellowship (notarized template)
- Leadership Covenant, January 2004, referring to Pastor Wayman Mitchell’s letter to the fellowship dated July 10, 2000
- Christian Fellowship Church bylaws page, signed Wayman O. Mitchell, citing IRS Publication 557 (rev. January 1982)
- Pastor and Missionary Contract, The Potter’s House Christian Fellowship of Australia Inc.
- Evangelie Gemeente De Deur, Zwolle, “Voorwaarden voor bediening,” model Zwolle, May 2007
- Members from The Door Have to Sign a Contract and the U.S. pastor contract
