I volunteered at the Institute in Basic Life Principles‘ headquarters in the summer of 2009. I was 13 years old and should have been spending my summer at home like any other kid, but I’d been invited by Bill Gothard himself, and my parents and I were just too tickled to say anything but “Yes! Of course!”
How did I know Bill Gothard? I met him at the organization’s annual homeschool conference in Sacramento, CA, called the Advanced Training Institute International (ATI). My family had attended every year since I’d turned 8, which had been the year that all of our lives changed. We stopped attending the church I’d grown up in because it “wasn’t good enough” for our level of spirituality anymore, we smashed all of our CDs of contemporary music with hammers in our backyard while rebuking Satan, my parents pulled my brothers and I from the homeschool co-op we’d been part of to take full control over our educations, and we all began to consider ourselves holier than everyone else.
Suddenly there were debates between my mom and other moms over whether Catholics really went to Heaven, and I spent hour after hour guiltily racking my brain to remember and confess every single sin I’d ever committed to my parents. Even after I confessed everything remotely “sinful” the guilt didn’t leave me. This distressed my parents. “Just be a kid! Go play!” They told me when I moped around and worried there must be more I was forgetting. They didn’t understand what ATI’s teachings were doing to their children.
But I did love the ATI conferences. That was the only place where everyone was deemed good enough by my parents to be my friends. It was at that conference in July of 2009 that I stood in line to meet Mr. Gothard. When it was my turn I went up to him, said hello, and he took both my hands in his, peered into my eyes, and said beaming, “Your eyes are beautiful. They shine with the Holy Spirit.”
I’m sure I sputtered and blushed and didn’t quite know how to take that. “I’m going to Journey to the Heart this summer!” I told him. Journey to the Heart is a 10-day summer camp for young adults that starts at IBLP headquarters and then continues in the North Woods of Michigan at their other property. It was where every ATI teenager wanted to go because it promised to transform us all into amazing, spiritual, better-than-everyone else gods–err, I mean, really strong Christians.
“That’s wonderful,” Mr. Gothard exclaimed, still holding my hands. It was sort of creepy how long he held my hands, but then…it couldn’t be creepy. This was Dr. Bill Gothard.
“My brother, Liam, is currently volunteering at Headquarters,” I said.
“Oh! Liam is great! You know, after you finish with Journey to the Heart, you should stay at headquarters and volunteer for the summer.”
“Wow, really?” What an honor it was to be invited. You couldn’t just invite yourself, you had to be invited by Bill, or sent by a parent so Bill could fix your rebellious spirit or whatever problem you had.
So I went. I remember enjoying Journey to the Heart, particularly the quality time I got to spend with the girls in my group, but I also felt insecure that I didn’t have a strong testimony by the end. That is, everyone else there seemed to be broken with big problems that needed forgiveness or redemption. Me? I was 13. I’d hardly lived yet. I didn’t have anything to weep on the floor over. Everyone made a phonecall home to their parents to make some kind of confession while at the North Woods. I called my parents and told them what I knew they wanted to hear, that I was sorry I argued with my little brother, Weston, all the time.
After Journey to the Heart was over, I moved into headquarters. When I think of that time in my life, my mind runs wild with memories. I loved it. The HQ campus was a huge property, well-curated by the many volunteer gardeners. Looking back now, I think about how ridiculous it was that people volunteered their time at HQ “for the Lord” just to keep the trees and hedges pruned and the miles and miles of lawn mowed. Bill Gothard cared a lot about appearances, because someone’s first impression of you is your chance to testify that you’re different from “other people.” You were one of God’s People. And maybe your perfect smile and enthusiastic “hello” and eyes shining with the Holy Spirit would make people ask, “how are you so different from everyone else?” and we were supposed to glow and say, “I’m a Christian.” And they would look on in wonder and say, “Wow, I want what you have!” Then you could say, “You can!” and save their souls right then and there.
But that never happened. It was just one of Bill’s big ideas.
The campus had several large buildings, and entire cul-de-sacs of houses owned by IBLP. I moved into a little yellow house with four pretty girls. Actually, it seemed like all the girls at HQ were pretty. The ones who interracted with Bill on a regular basis either as secretaries or as problem-cases for Bill to fix lived in the flat right next to his office. It wouldn’t be until 2014 that I learned of the sexual abuse allegations against Bill, but looking back, I would be shocked if many of the girls Bill abused didn’t live in that flat. It was located only 20 feet from his office, convenient for keeping girls up late working on a book with him or giving them counseling, with their bedrooms only a minute’s walk away.
My day started at 6am every morning and after getting dressed in a skirt that went at least past my knees and a blouse that covered my shoulders and hid any suggestion of the female figure, I headed to Staff Meeting at 7AM.
Staff Meeting lasted about an hour each morning, and consisted of Bill or one of his MGAs (Mr. Gothard’s Assistants) giving some kind of sermon that induced conviction. We sang hymns that tied into the message. There were continental breakfast options in the back of the room, but I usually skipped them because instant oatmeal, packaged cheese danishes, and weak coffee could only charm me so many mornings in a row. Staff Meeting was one of the chances I had to see my brother, Liam, who worked in the IT department. I usually sat with him.
At 8AM the work started. All the staff dispersed and my housemate, Amy, and I headed to a nearby building to the shipping department. We could be assigned a number of tasks. My favorite was filling the day’s orders that I’d pick up from the printer and place in appropriately sized boxes along a narrow counter with a rubber belt that moved when activated. I’d pick up a box and carry it around the warehouse, filling it with the appropriate books, CDs, DVDs, and worksheets on the order. Once the orders were all filled, someone at the end of the counter pressed a button to bring the boxes on the belt forward. From there, you’d match the order notes with the correct shipping labels, slap the boxes shut with heavy-duty packing tape, and then stick the labels on top. All of the boxes were stacked on a moving pallet, which was then pushed to an area of the warehouse that was accessible to the mailman, who whisked everything away each afternoon.
Other tasks in the shipping department included labeling and packaging CDs and DVDs in their cases, hot off the machines that copy CDs in bulk.
Sometimes I was sent on an errand to the printing department in the same building, where books were being printed in mass, and stacks of Wisdom Booklets (ATI’s homeschool curriculum) were still warm from recent printing.
It was very exciting to be a part of such official business. Because I had work everyday and was mostly responsible for myself, I felt very grown up–a feeling I missed when I returned to 13-year-old life at home.
At noon, we would go to the cafeteria for lunch, which was in the same building as Mr. Gothard’s office. Sometimes I wished I’d been put on kitchen duty because it seemed fun to come up with menus everyday to feed 100+ staff, but it had its problems too. First, there was the clean up–just imagine the dishes! But there were also the limitations of the menu. IBLP accepted donations from grocery stores who would otherwise throw food away, and the chef needed to build the menus around what was available, then supplement the rest.
And another thing: the chef wasn’t allowed to cook with garlic.
I found this out in a conversation over dinner one time when I commented that what we were eating could use a bit of garlic. “Oh, they aren’t allowed to cook with garlic,” my friend said in hushed tones.
“But…WHY?” (Just think: I didn’t eat a single slice of garlic bread that summer.)
“Apparently one time Mr. G was talking to someone who had garlic breath, and he thought it made for a bad first impression. So he banned it.”
Well, that was stupid. But there wasn’t any reasoning with Mr. G.
In 2009 Facebook was all the rage, and while not all of us were allowed by our parents to have Facebook or believed in social media, many of us had Facebook pages. This was all good and fine until Mr. G discovered a Facebook group dedicated to making fun of him. In the header of the Facebook page was a picture of Bill with devil horns drawn on. Soon after that he was talking during Staff Meeting, lunch, and dinner about how Facebook was a bad influence, was a waste of time, was a stronghold in our hearts, blah blah blah. In the IT department or the accounting office where there were computers, if people were caught on Facebook, even if it was during their break, they got in trouble.
During lunch I often sat with Liam. This was one of the few times I could spend time with him, since we weren’t allowed to be alone together, or even walk places together. Not because anybody on staff thought we’d do anything inappropriate of course, but because if anyone new to HQ saw us alone together and didn’t know we were siblings, they would assume we were interested in each other, and flirting or spending time with the opposite sex wasn’t allowed. I resented that I had to sacrifice time with my brother–my only family member in this place so far from home–in order to avoid the “appearance of evil” despite being innocent.
By 4-5PM, work was over. We all headed back to the cafeteria for dinner, where we ate while Bill spoke. He always had new ideas that he was excited about, and it seemed like he was writing a different book every week. IBLP pumped out material at great speed, and each new revelation from Bill–I mean God–turned into a book that every family involved in IBLP ate up. It was a brilliant money machine. We were all hanging on Bill’s every word.
Every few weeks HQ hosted a Journey to the Heart group on campus, which switched between a Journey for girls and a one for boys. Never mixed, of course. The last day before setting out in a bunch of 15-passenger vans to the North Woods, the program encouraged its students to fast for 24 hours and spend the day praying and going on walks around campus. By dinner time when the students were to break their fasts, the staff would let them through the buffet line first, as many looked like they might faint any second. Forcing people to fast and make it mean something struck me as strange. Shouldn’t fasting be something you do when you have something you need to pray fervently over?
Journey to the Heart did a lot of vaguely manipulative things like that. The first day of my Journey, all the girls (about 80 of us) received cards to fill out that had a list of “lies from Satan” that you might believe about yourself, along with traumatic things that might have happened to you with tick-boxes to check when applicable. Did you believe you were stupid or worthless or ugly? Had your parents gotten divorced? Were you ever raped? Tick, tick, tick. Get in line and talk to Billy about it.
And we did. We waited in line for hours at the foot of the dramatic stairwell leading up to his conference room for him to open the door, let out a sniffling girl with mascara running down her face, then beckon the next one in. By the time it was my turn it was nearly dinner time. I said “Hi Mr. Gothard!” and sat down across from him, handing him my card. It didn’t have many ticks on it. My parents were together, I’d never had anything horrible happen to me, and I didn’t believe many lies about myself because that had been the theme of the ATI conference I’d attended just a few weeks ago (a recent idea of Bill’s that he went big with). I’d already been cured.
I remember watching Bill’s hands turn my card over and over while he dug with questions trying to find something wrong with me. No dice. My meeting with him didn’t last long, and I think I left him suspecting that I just hadn’t told him the truth. Surely there was something wrong with me that he was supposed to rescue me from.
At the North Woods, we sat through videos of women sharing testimonies of their broken lives, with dramatic music playing in the background to induce tears. After the videos, we sat in small group and talked about them. How were you broken? What strongholds in your life did Satan have a hold of?
I was writing a fantasy novel at the time, very tame in nature due to my parents’ strict prohibition of any magic. My leader asked if I thought my fantasy novel was a stronghold in my life. I don’t know, was it? It was something I really liked to do. I didn’t have many friends at home so I wrote some friends for myself. Was that so bad? Maybe it had been the term “fantasy” that made people doubt its wholesomeness. Mr. Gothard seemed to have old-fashioned ideas about the word when I mentioned to him that I was writing a fantasy novel, seeming to take it in the context of men fantasizing about women who weren’t their wives.
“No, fantasy just means that the story is set in a made-up land,” I tried to explain.
“I’d like to read it sometime,” he told me without smiling, but I never did send it to him. I was scared he’d read it, disapprove, and tell me that God told him I had to stop writing it.
One of the things that Journey to the Heart was famous for was was the 4-Hour Prayer. It was scheduled into each Journey near the end, after everyone had confessed their brokenness and were now trying to be good girls for God. Each group of 12-15 girls would sit in a circle and take turns praying for something based on a handout of recommendations. Pray for your families, for local government, for the country, for the peace of Jerusalem, for the Lord’s return, for all the broken people out there to be saved. Indeed, 4 hours passed, but I was checking my watch every once in a while so I knew what was going on. It wasn’t like some people had described on stage at the ATI conferences, where you just bowed your head and closed your eyes, and a few minutes later you said amen and WOW, 4 hours! How did such a thing happen?!
I’m a skeptic now but I wasn’t then. I just felt bad that I wasn’t experiencing it the way I was supposed to. After we left the North Woods and returned to HQ, the usual post-dinner Staff Meeting became a time for the transformed Journey students to share their testimonies. The line wrapped around the chairs in the audience it was so long, but I didn’t stand up. I remember looking across the room at Liam and shrugging, feeling disappointed in myself. It wasn’t that I was too chicken to speak; I had nothing remarkable to say. I wasn’t broken enough. Or…perhaps it was how unbroken I was that was the problem. “You’re just really young,” my Journey leader told me, which was not very comforting. She seemed to imply that pain and trauma awaited me in adulthood.
I used to think that people who had problems should just join IBLP and get their problems fixed. IBLP’s materials were get-fixed-quick recipe books. How to Tear Down the Strongholds of Bitterness, How to Resolve 7 Deadly Stresses, Making Brothers and Sisters Best Friends, 49 Secrets of Power For Living. Any problem that you had, Bill or someone else important to IBLP had written a book or given a recorded sermon about it and that was what you were supposed to read or watch. If you weren’t cured by the time you finished reading or watching, well, then you must be resisting. Your rebellious spirit needed to be broken! If your problems weren’t gone, it was your fault.
My parents homeschooled me by handing me a stack of books that they had collected for that school year’s curriculum, and I was told to read and work through them by myself. When I was fighting with Weston, mom handed me Making Brothers and Sisters Best Friends. After I finished reading it and still fought with Weston, mom threw up her hands and angrily yelled, “The book was supposed to work!”
IBLP sold solutions. Their slogan was “A New Approach to Life!” and it was an approach of do what we say and don’t ask questions. No wonder there were so many “problem kids” living at HQ sent there by frustrated parents who couldn’t figure out how to fix them. Human problems often aren’t curable by reading a book or listening to a sermon. But if IBLP had told us that, well, they wouldn’t have sold as many books.
Leona Left Fundamentalism 
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