James’ Story, Part One
CFCtoo offers survivors the opportunity to share their stories anonymously or with their real names. In this story, James opted to use his real name for clarity. James alleges that CFC leadership is not only legalistic and dysfunctional but that Rick Sinclair makes demonstrably false claims.
My name is James Harmer. I’m intentionally not being anonymous here, not because I think there’s anything wrong with those who have shared their stories anonymously, but because I already planned to share this and decided that if CFCtoo was willing to share it, I would gladly offer it. The things I want to make clear in this story will only make sense if you know who I am. My wife has already shared a series of blog posts starting here. This story will just cover a few parts from my perspective.
In the summer of 2001, at the age of 14, I had a profound encounter that changed my life forever. I believed — and still believe — that I met Jesus that day and surrendered my life to him. And I did the thing that I figured you do when you encounter Jesus: I dove into church life as much as possible!
I got really fired up about the things that Christian Fellowship Center taught in youth group. For me, that meant Pentecostal doctrine, purity culture, and “radical holiness.” I was praised for wholeheartedly embracing it. I was the guy passing out copies of “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” in back alleys behind all the liberal youth groups that allowed dating, the guy wearing loud Christian shirts in public school, and the guy who started a prayer/worship service once a week in my school during school hours…yeah, that guy.
There’s a lot I could say about myself. There’s a lot others could say too, and many have. About 13 years ago people started an “anti-James Facebook group” that I believe was titled something like “You can’t be a good Christian unless you're friends with James Harmer.” And of course, a bunch of my church friends started their OWN Facebook group titled “Save the drama for your mama, we all love James Harma!” as a way to defend me.
People immediately rushed to my defense, many assuring me that everyone criticizing me must just hate me because of my radical love for Jesus. Now, am I trying to criticize the people who started the second group and defended me? No. It was a kind and good-hearted gesture, and it meant a lot to me at the time, but you know what really meant more? The one friend who looked me in the eye and told me “James, there’s a reason that the anti-James Facebook group started in the first place. To be honest, I kind of get why all those people are mad at you.”
It was not what I wanted to hear, but he was correct. While I loved Jesus, I was basically a narcissist. I really did think that everyone who was a good Christian should want to be my friend. After all, WHY WOULDN’T THEY?! I was SO GREAT and SO ON FIRE FOR JESUS!! That was basically how I thought. I preached a Gospel of “I’m a passionate, not-gonna-compromise, on-fire world-changing Jesus-loving dude…and SO CAN YOU!”
By the time I started to see the problem, it was too late for some people to want anything to do with me, and I can’t blame them. Most of them were never really my friends anyway, they were just people I used to prop up my ego and sense of self-importance. They were absolutely right to refuse to be a part of my life and I was wrong to judge them for it.
To those people, I just want to say: I was wrong, I’m sorry, and I love you.
In 2010, following a bit of a crash and burn experience, I experienced a profound change in the way that I see my faith in Jesus, in particular the way I see grace. It didn’t take long for that to translate into Facebook posts.
As you can see, there’s a 27-comment thread on this post. It immediately provoked some debate among CFC members, and it caused some concern among some of my friends and mentors. The funny thing is, I was really talking about myself – myself from 2001-2009. I was that annoying person who did damage to the Kingdom of God.
As I reflected more, I concluded that while I was certainly responsible for the legalism and dysfunction in my life during those years, I realized that to some extent, so was my church leadership. CFC sermons started to feel more and more like conservative practical life advice and culture war tactics with a moralistic Deism twist.
Now, was I “anti-CFC”? No, not really. I still completely trusted the leadership to be honest and not abuse their power. I just believed they were misguided when it came to certain things and I didn’t hesitate to talk about it, though I always tried to keep church unity in mind and prioritized. Plus, I had started going to Richville Christian Fellowship in 2008 and RCF wasn’t CFC, right? Fast forward to 2013 when I met my wife Britny. I was already regularly posting things on social media that weren’t necessarily in line with much of what CFC teaches.
I was not in any way CFC’s fanboy, but I would also quickly defend them when people criticized them (which was often). If anything, Britny encouraged me to trust the leadership more. She served as the Administrative Assistant from 2015-2019 and we both had regular meetings with Mike Tomford and knew that our voices were valued. We felt like we had built a healthy mutual trust. Our thoughts were always welcome, we often didn’t get our way, and that was fine. We knew that we were valued, listened to, and we were fine agreeing to disagree when needed.
I believed that the leadership had integrity, especially Rick Sinclair. I had gotten to a place where I felt like it wasn’t a perfect church (those don’t exist anyway) but as long as they were willing to have us, that’s where I wanted to serve. That was basically how I felt until a meeting on September 16th, 2021: a meeting where my eyes were opened, creating another moment where I realized that I was wrong, I’m sorry, and I love you.
Britny has detailed much of the story in her blog already so here’s a very abridged version of the story from my perspective, focusing specifically on two meetings that truly opened my eyes. Despite my feelings about the leadership being off on some things, I truly loved the people of CFC and especially RCF where I had served as a worship leader since 2008.
In 2014 Britny and I were both excommunicated and even though I never 100% agreed with the way RCF and CFC did “church discipline,” I acknowledge that I was wrong and hurt a lot of people including Britny. I was being proud and unreasonable and I have no interest in defending my actions in 2014. We returned to RCF in 2015 and I did my best to make it clear: to all I had hurt including my wife: I was wrong, I’m sorry, and I love you.
The RCF members are some of the most loving people you’ll ever meet. They brought us meals and watched our kids while I was in New York City hospitals having seizures and tests and surgeries and almost dying. They helped teach me to drive in my 30s and helped me find work. They helped my wife and me process serious pain and hurt. They prayed with us, cried with us, and celebrated with us. They dreamed with us and mourned with us. They were our family.
As difficult as this whole thing has been for us, we love those people and we fought to keep them in our lives. That’s the first thing I want to make clear: from the very beginning of this whole conflict with the leadership, leaving was simply not on the table as far as we were concerned. In every meeting we had until July 2021, we were determined that “somehow we’re going to work this out.”
So what changed? It’s July 24th, 2021. I’ve already had this email exchange with Bob Dale and sent many emails including this to our Pastor Mike Tomford where I explained that the level of blind obedience that CFC was asking of us was just too much. It was too much unchecked power and would set a dangerous precedent that would someday be abused. I never dreamed that it was already being abused.
To be continued.
