Amy Fernandez’s own account, reproduced here in full and unedited, of her first love inside The Potter’s House, and the nineteen years of institutional interference that kept two people apart until a reunion decades later.
In August 2023, the Leeuwarder Courant interviewed a former Door member under the pseudonym “Chris.” That was Joel Crosby, before he had gone public. This is that story, with his name on it.
A current member’s detailed Potter’s House complaints, including a sharp challenge to the doctrine that questioning a pastor is like David raising his hand against Saul, closing on “long seasons of near barrenness.”
A former member challenges Potter’s House beliefs directly, using a lion born in captivity, a “90% Potter’s House and 10% Bible” ratio, and a pointed question about why pastors are never called by their first name.
A twelve-year Australian pastor describes Potter’s House church Australia’s marriage decrees, television bans, and a culture that praised America over his own country, ending in a resignation letter that never received a reply.
A 27-year member of Christian Fellowship Churches describes a pastor cut from Wayman Mitchell’s own mold, public humiliation staged as discipline, a suspected slush fund, and the 2000 exodus that finally broke the silence.
A former Victory Chapel church member in Guam describes a marriage used to trap him for four years, public shaming over a college degree, and his own theory for why some CFC churches call themselves The Door: a painted door on the wall.
A former Door church member describes burnout, a marriage used as leverage to keep him in line, and a second fellowship, Praise Chapel, that could not fully protect the same marriage from the patterns it had inherited.
A little over a year with The Door Christian Fellowship was enough to see the pattern clearly: pressure disguised as friendship, a warning off a critical website, and a freedom she says she finally got out in time to keep.
A 2001 testimony describes bringing reports of child abuse by two church members to leadership at The Door in Tucson, and the institutional response she says followed, an account of a child-protection failure rather than a doctrinal dispute.
A rare forgiving 2001 testimony from a former Australian member describes the Potter’s House warmly, refuses to call it evil, and still names the same pastoral monopoly and conformity harsher accounts call spiritual abuse.
A 2001 testimony from a nearly five-year member directly rebuts the “few bad apples” defense of Christian Fellowship Churches, arguing from multiple congregations that the conformity and guilt she experienced was the system, not one bad pastor.
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