He had my brothers and I working hard when we were kids mowing the lawns, shoveling, raking leaves etc. He had a construction business and was tough but the hardest working person I’ve ever known. I have a strong personality and grew up in a family with a very domineering old school Italian father. Women were second class and expected to behave like little mice. If you touched his shoulder or attempted to “side-hug” him he would scowl at you and lecture you on how the only woman that was to touch him was his wife. There was one pastor who didn’t want another woman touching him. In fact, if you were a male on staff there, you were told that if you encountered a woman alone in the halls or anywhere else, you were to turn around and walk the other direction. One red flag that should have sent me packing was their treatment of women. I never felt like I fit in but tried with all my being. There were things about my time at Calvary that were huge red flags, but I was new to all of this and drank the Kool aid. He was a forward-thinking guy and a little unlike the rest of the Calvary crowd. The head of missions was a pastor friend of mine named Kelly Lyon. I felt led to become a full-time foreign missionary in Africa and I was in the process of praying and counseling on my path to get there. I attended home group bible studies, volunteered with the homeless and even lead a bible study in my own home. I was volunteering in the High School ministry, singles ministry, and mission’s office. In 2005 I started working in their accounting office and then I started going on mission trips. I also enrolled in their bible college and took 30 credits. I attended all their foundations of faith classes so I could be free to serve anywhere in the church. I was sold.įor the next two years I immersed myself in Calvary Chapel. I went to the information booth and left with all the materials I could carry. We were immediately drawn in by the beautiful music and Pastor Bob had us laughing and crying by the end of the service. It was enormous and we weren’t sure what to think of it. First off, we were a little curious about the size of the place. The next day, I looked up Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale and could see how much they had going on and they seemed to be a bible-based church. He mentioned a few names but the only one I remembered was Calvary Chapel. I started chatting with a guy standing next to me and explained I was new to the area and looking for a good church. There isn’t much Christian radio in Boston, so everything was new to me. I had never heard them before, and I was amazed at how good they were. As I started making my way to the stage the last band was announced, “Third Day”. There were huge movie screen’s set up all over the beach so everyone could see the stage. For a Northeast girl, this kind of thing didn’t happen in Christian circles and it really blew me away. There must have been close to 100,000 people there and it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I had no idea where I was going but somehow landed a parking spot next to the entrance of the beach. Fort Lauderdale was packed with thousands of people. Finally, around 7pm I left my parents’ home alone and headed south. My parents had told me about it, and I wanted to go but had no one to go with me. The week I moved to Florida the 2003 Luis Palau “Beach Fest” which was a large Christian concert on Fort Lauderdale beach was taking place. My parents were snowbirds and had a home in Boynton Beach where I could get myself started. I felt that the familiar was dragging me down and keeping me from growing. My career path was not where I wanted to be, and my faith was stagnant. I was 29, single and completely unfulfilled in my life. In the winter of 2003, I decided to move to South Florida to escape the cold and start over fresh in a new environment. We have received reports of the same sort of abusive “discipleship” occuring in Patmos as happened in Potters Field. Lauderdale is the swamp from which Bob Coy, Mike and Pam Rozell and Potters Field ministries arose, along with a similar program called “Patmos” run by former assistant pastor Chet Lowe.
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