Brother Trickster:
The Cultism of Zac Kijinski's Gladstone Neverland Part 4 of 6
By Rev. Rafael D Martinez, Director, Spiritwatch Ministries © 2023 (All Copyright Reserved)
Zac The Emperor With Crocs And No Clothes
“I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it? Time is chasing after all of us.”
For years, the heartless rapacity of the Gladstone Community Church’s cultism which included its ability to shoot its own wounded so anonymously while parasitically feeding off the local church culture kept grinding ever onward. Even with its collective social misfires and turnover, the abusive cohesion of the group endured. Through the ups and downs of its existence, the cultic church kept fielding enough appealing recruitment and compelling indoctrination that ensnared enough new members to stave off the attrition that took place. The back door of the church, however, was grimly well oiled by the blood, sweat and tears of those who quit and left, and the hidden curricula behind the hidden agenda of the group reigned unquestioned and unseen.
It might still be doing so today if it hadn't received an unexpected media accolade in 2016 it neither sought or wanted.In the spring of 2016 the entire Gladstone community of Zac, the Gladstone elders and their twisted network of local church accomplices found themselves in a spotlight not of their choosing. In April of that year Justin Williams, a senior editor of a local publication called the Cincinnati Magazine broke a story called “Houses Of The Holy” with a rather intriguing byline: “Gladstone Community Church fully embraces the phrase ‘church family’ though not without some controversy” (the irony of coverage of Gladstone in a special edition of the magazine devoted to examining the state of Catholicism in Cincinatti is priceless). Williams had sought first person interviews of those who’d been involved with Gladstone, some of whom contributed to our Spiritwatch Ministry expose, His article was the first effort to cast a critical eye upon the community’s doings as it briefly reviewed the emergence of Gladstone as it morphed from interdenominational Bible study into what he tersely called “Cincinnati’s own Haight-Ashbury of radical Christianity. “ (139)
The report even touched upon the dissent of former members and parents who had been eyewitnesses to the abuses we’ve already well documented here. It even cast a critical light upon the teenaged Zac’s slayer cult past and the deep connections to the deeper pockets of mainstream church support for his work. The article interviews also included none other than Pastor Dennis Beausejour, whose glowing commendation of the group scrupulously sanitized their excess and bears repeating:
“I would say if you look at the continuum of zealousness and maturity, they have been pretty steady in their zealousness but increasing in their maturity,” says Beausejour. “They did have some people who left and [the church] didn’t handle that very well. They made some mistakes, they are learning, and they are getting better.”
It’s still a radical Christian community, but just like any church or organization, it’s evolved over time. “I would say most of them are two degrees off center,” Beausejour says affectionately. “We believe that what they’re doing is certainly not perfect, but definitely orthodox Christian.” (140)
We won’t belabor Beausejour’s unwillingness to publicly unpack any further his own rather complicated connection with Zac and Gladstone. It’s understandable why he wouldn’t say anything other than that Gladstone was “definitely orthodox” when it definitely was riddled with unbiblical teaching and religious abuse.
Nor will we fault Williams’ article when it offered an assessment of Gladstone’s beliefs and lifestyle based upon a rather superficial and tentative review of their public positions. The reporter was given sweetness and honey by a minister who could effortlessly filter the evil and the vinegar out of what he and his church were awash in. The MCC pastor certainly wasn’t going to admit they’d been so grotesquely played by a pack of barely adult kids and his positivity about Gladstone’s perversion was certainly contagious:
Despite the community’s isolation, they are fairly transparent in what they believe: They post audio versions of their sermons on their website (gladstonecommunity.org), and their services are open to the public. Still, most of the problems and criticisms stem not from doctrine, but from a lifestyle that is simply anathema in our society. Members are used to it. They expect outsiders to be puzzled, and to some degree seem to welcome it. (141)
Even as he pointed out Internet sites that documented the concerns of those who were eyewitnesses to the abuse we’ve discussed in this expose, it just didn’t occur to Justin how depraved it really was. Transparency in belief is no assurance that it is true or beneficial, however. Back then, Justin - like many others - seemed unaware of the depths of deceptive and destructive excess that Zac and Gladstone were committing even then in 2016. The depths of depravity which cultism can sink isn’t a phenomenon most people are intimately aware of, much less able to objectively identify and respond to. It’s outside most people’s experiences, particularly those whose lives don’t intersect with it regularly. It led most of those who encountered the shadows of Gladstone around them to make all kinds of room for it using all of the standard forms of human reaction such as rationalizing, conflict avoidance and uncertainty.
There was even a remonstrative tone in one university academic’s quip about “psychological abuse” being “a very hard thing to measure.” Williams’ suggestion was that most of Gladstone’s trouble just came from people not understanding them, and that the “accusation” of the church being a cult was “an accusation (that is) somewhat hollow.” It is doubtful that Williams knew of just how solid the evidence is as to Gladstone’s hard core sociopathy, let alone spiritual elitism. And even then, we’ve found, people can still see the weak brutalized by the strong and still criticize the helpless for bruising the fingernails of those who backhand them across their faces.
Still, Williams dutifully noted Gladstone’s extensive networking with clueless churches, it’s siphoning of souls into its communal operations and the willingness of Zac to let other elders be the spokesmen and apologists. Yet he - like the many - was still like the proverbial blind man who’d never seen an elephant before and upon grasping it’s trunk to describe it by touch alone, proclaimed the beast to be like a great snake - unaware of its vastly greater corporeal bulk. He knew there was something not quite adding up about Gladstone which his reporting reflected well. So despite his soft pedaling around the plain evidence of innumerable and certifiably traumatized people, his work hit the collective nerves of multitudes of people within and without the church. The piece set off a firestorm of inquiry and curiosity in the region about the young zealots living off Grace Street which they’d never faced before.
While the spare article was written with just under 3,000 words, Williams’ wordsmithing packed the punch of a 100 megaton blast in the Christian community of the region. For the first time, the whispers and rumors about the oppressive side of Gladstone began to be corroborated by a member of the media who had come with no other agenda than to ask questions of a spiritual phenomenon in the Queen City and who found so much more. Williams had noted that there was enough smoke there to suspect that a fire was burning somewhere among Zac’s world. People began to hear of an alternative perspective about Gladstone’s “anathema lifestyle” and from virtually every quarter, the inquiries came.
And the hardest of these questions began to be asked about the very nature of the group, in many a colorful conversation among churches, families and the public at large. This was especially true on the one medium with an eternal memory, the World Wide Web: within a couple weeks after the publication of the Cincinnati Magazine article, a Reddit thread went up online to flatly ask “Do you think Gladstone Community Church is a cult?” (142). It had been preceded in December 2015 by the blistering comments of a former member offered at the end of a shamelessly self-promoting article that Zac had written about Gladstone on a local web page
Reader beware! Not all is as it seems in this article. What’s not said is there’s a group of people who have left this community after disagreeing with the teachings of this group. The group was not “blessed by the church to form their own congregation”. The group was asked by the church to disassociate with them because they didn’t believe what they were teaching was healthy. When I personally left the group, I was told I was going to be out of God's will and damned to hell, and many others had the same experience.
I have been approached by many parents whose children are in this group, and they never see them anymore. They feel they’ve lost their kids to this community. One parent recently was unable to have her children over in her home for thanksgiving because the community told her children no. The original elder of this group was forced out because he and the leader of the Gladstone community had a disagreement on their teachings. This group is very good at manipulating people with their knowledge of the bible and spinning things around to make it seem like what they believe is true. \This is a dangerous community with cult-like tendencies. Once you’re in, it’s very difficult to get out, as they force you to cut off all ties with people not in the community. (143)
This unknown contributor would soon be joined by many others who issued their own bold online challenges to Gladstone’s existence. Many online forums attracted and documented many complaints, anger and brokenness of former members and neighbors of the group and the article was the match applied to vast groves of tinder dry kindling. The online outrage would only mount, using internet anonymity to provide a way of sharing concern, horror, and even more insights into it’s doings that were entirely consistent with the reports of those who’d left and shared their testimonies of abuse.
So Gladstone wasn’t unaware of what was coming since Justin had first contacted the group for comment upon his article and research in the latter part of 2015 and into 2016. One can only wonder at the impact this revelation made upon the self-anointed might of Zac and his sycophant leadership. At first they rejected any requests for comment by Williams, but then they reversed their attempt to ignore the controversy. Both Cebastian Hilton and Benjamin von Korff, two of the most prominent elders of the community, stepped forward to face the music and were interviewed by him for the article:
Initially, Gladstone offered an open invitation to their worship services but politely turned down any interviews for this piece, referencing 1 Thessalonians Chapter 4’s call to lead a quiet life. But a few weeks later, members Cebastian Hilton and Benjamin von Korff volunteered to speak on the church’s behalf. We sat down over coffee in the lobby of Mariemont Inn. ..
.. When asked about being denounced as a cult, von Korff grabs the Bible and flips directly to Matthew 5:11–12: “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
“We never want to be accused of anything for the wrong reasons, but I think we’re in pretty good company,” adds Hilton. (144)
With cheekily self-righteous dismissal and bravado over cups of joe, both Hilton and von Korf embraced a presumptuous identification with Biblical prophets who were targets of persecution and false accusation from the hostile ancient culture of Israel they confronted .. just like they supposedly were. In fact, they drew a perversely self-righteous pleasure from their identification as martyrs for the Christian faith and it showed pretty readily.
That was in serious contrast to how Zac Kijinski approached his public appearances after the article came out on the Tuesday of the first week of April. Ernie and June Stickler were there at the Thursday night Bible study that was held two days later when Zak finally stepped up before the group.
In April 2016, when the “Houses of the Holy” article came out in Cincinnati Magazine about the Gladstone Community detailing their living together, sharing a common purse, and raising the question as to whether they were a cult (leaving it to the reader to decide), we could tell it was disturbing to Zak. He choked up a bit in addressing the article before he went on with his regular teaching for that Thursday night. It was pretty much treated like Christians should expect to be criticized and misunderstood. I remember it was a rare occasion (if not the only one) that his mother showed up for a service. She sat front and center showing her support of him. … Zak mentioned it again at the beginning of the Sunday worship service. Both times were more like acknowledgements of the article, maybe a bit sad that some questioned whether they were a cult. (145)
Zac’s reaction was typical of the narcissist when challenged by those outside their ability to socially manipulate. Williams’ article exposed him in a way he’d never had to deal with, not at least since his Knights of Isaiah days. His warped psyche was described by Dutch psychologist and therapist Alexander Burgemeester, who wrote that a narcissist’s “sense of self has not developed beyond that of a young child and cannot cope with a truth that shows them to be less than perfect.”
Unlike alcoholics or other abusers who may eventually ‘see the light’, a narcissist just does not have the ability to look inside himself and perceive the truth. Self-reflection is not a tool in the narcissist’s toolbox of skills .. (when getting) a confrontation with their behavior. (146)
Zac’s Peter Pan flight of fantasy and all of his local lordship in Cincinnati had just been grounded, found out by the world around his empire that his pixie dust was all in his head and worked only around his inner circle. His tunic had been ripped clearly from him and he had no idea how to deal with the questioning looks of his Lost Boys and Girls within his Neverland, much less the big world outside it, who’d just seen him crashing to earth in a humbling nudity.
We’ve seen how, for him and those he led, life was a playtime where he dominated all attention and direction. He could brazen out his gross failings as a teenage cult leader among his teenage followers and disappear from among them. But this crisis was a sobering reality, a lingering kiss of an existential concrete he had fallen face first upon and didn’t quite know how to rise from. He was now an enshrined figure of worship feeding upon the reverence of adherents in a massive economic and physical compact from which he drew identity, meaning and accolades - and the luster upon his shiny finish now was scuffing off.
So, ever resourceful, Zac reached out and responded in the only way he could. He reached back through his inner inventory of damage control to don his mask of the injured martyr in his public time among Gladstone’s rank and file. Zac just couldn’t understand how anyone could misunderstand his Christian empire! But as Burgemeester had written, narcissists have no real way to objectively view their own manipulation and abuse for what it is. They are usually quite puzzled when considering that people actually might think and act outside their own proscribed approach to life. Zac certainly has been no exception.
He instinctively took the form of the wounded bird at the mercy of the real predators outside their Gladstone nest and did his best to spin that where he could. The conditioning of the Gladstone flock to uncritically accept whatever Zac and his elders told them about the alarming article worked well. There was no sudden breakaway of disillusioned people from their group, no mass exodus of any disillusioned who dwelt there. For despite any inner struggle over the hypocritical outrages any of them might have entertained, their daily personal subsistence was reliant upon their relationship to the community. Where else could they go? Their “real family” was who they shared bunk beds with. Who else would accept them? Their relationships with their real past life had been spurned and shattered and they’d been taught they weren’t “sold out for Jesus”. Home was, after all, where the Gladstone heart was.
Disenfranchised and utterly dependent upon the lifestyle corner they’d been painted into, their vote of confidence was cast by their showing up to work the next day, their clapping of Zac’s shoulders in fellowship, their murmured “amens” to the standard defensive pomposity of talking points uttered by the elders and house leaders. Despite the graciousness of his following, Zac laid low and was conspicuously absent after the article was published and hid around his home for about two weeks (147). It’s interesting to note how the false prophet Zedekiah in ancient Israel, whose bold and dramatic oracles about the country’s victory in war were proven false, went and hid himself when his lies were exposed by military defeat (1 Kings 22:25). The parallels between an ancient and a modern false prophet are incredible. The shame of falsehood exposed always is the same, everywhere.
Regardless, for all of the feigned innocence Zac and the leadership could summon among Gladstone to embrace their roles as martyrs for their pure faith, there was still an impact, however blunted, by all accounts. Even if life just seemed to go on as if nothing had happened, a corner from within was turned and many would start to reconsider what they were involved with there. The cognitive dissonance stirring in many a mind was ratched up several acute levels which no one could ignore and the shaking it brought was a temblor that rocked them to their souls. Yet the visages were of trusting youth even if deep within, a shaking of their foundations was being wrought.
No one was more shaken than the Sticklers. For despite their steadfast confidence in the supposedly maligned integrity of the group, June and Ernie would begin to witness the cracking of the patina surface of Gladstone’s public mask of self-representation and watched them as they began to turn into fissures. Not fully under the spell of Gladstone mind control, they had begun to painfully recognize the toxicity of the community’s abusive group dynamics, and also uneasily realized how they began to mount from that pivotal April day in 2016.
At the time, the article didn't even phase my husband or I. At that point, while some may have wondered whether Gladstone was a cult, we almost laughed it off because from our limited perspective at that time we embraced everything we saw about Gladstone. We only were attending their public meetings and events and all looked fine to us then. ..
The leadership invited us to be more involved with Gladstone by asking us to join a couples’ home weekly group, and also for my husband to be in a men’s early Sunday discipleship group and I to be in a women’s discipleship group. In addition to these, over the years my husband and I were invited to dinner at various house groups and attended just about every community fund-raiser, and holiday parties they had. I also had been mentoring one of the young women in Gladstone for a few years, at her request. It was such a joy spending private times with her, talking with her and sharing scripture and praying together. (148)
Sadly, their perspective began to change, as we’ve already read, when the Sticklers could no longer turn a blind, uncritical eye to what they had been seeing as they interacted with their beloved young Christian brothers and sisters. Beyond their own inner veil of idealism and rationalizing of the abuse they’d seen, the dysfunction there began to be driven home as the “church” began its spin cycle of recovering their shattered public image.
Gladstone started its attempts to rebrand itself with a zealous and pious alacrity. Distancing themselves from their all too visible identity began when Eric Potticary filed an amendment to the church’s incorporation articles with the state of Ohio bureau that regulated non profit corporations that had an effective date of 7/1/2016. It went into effect on July 12 of that year. With 50 dollars and a filing of this paperwork, Potticary put into motion Gladstone’s official attempt to outrun their troubled brand. There was a June meeting of Zac and five elders that passed a measure which the entire community voted to adopt: the change of the name of their community. A letter attached to this amendment reads as follows
To Whom it May Concern
The attached Certificate of Amendment is to notify the Ohio Secretary of State of the adopted name change of Gladstone Community Church to Madison Place Community Church. The name change was adopted by a meeting of the directors on June 24, 2016 and unanimously agreed upon by all members.
We, the directors, want to (sic) name change to be reflected in the Articles of Incorporation on file. .. The charter number for Gladstone Community Church is 2103277.We, the current Board of Directors for Gladstone Community Church, sign this statement as approval for the name change. (149)
The signatures of Eric Potticary, Zachary Kijinski, Alex Seney, Brian Roselli, Cebastian Hilton and Benjamin Von Korff were on this letter: the community quickly came in line with their corporate reordering as June and Ernie related:
In September 2016, Gladstone began referring to themselves as Madison Place Community Church. Without them having to tell my husband and I, it was pretty obvious that they wanted a new name so they could drop Gladstone Community Church after the article in April of that year raised the question of whether they were a cult. Their young people were regularly active out “evangelizing” (actually recruiting) and would often be asked what church or group they belonged to. They did not want to respond with Gladstone Community and people to respond with “aren’t you that ‘cult’ group?”
Interesting, the Gladstone name has stuck. It seems that any who knew of them prior to their name change still refers to them as Gladstone (150)
The ongoing drudgery that the revitalized Gladstone/Madison entity demanded of its membership to redouble their workloads for fund raising and submission to their micromanaged regimens was a smothering reality there. Busy people focused upon labor imposed by taskmasters who smiled and used the Bible and verbal abuse to get results out of them tend to reflect less upon the troubling aspects of the real time slavery they labored under. This is what the Sticklers had been witnessing and they had been noting the escalation of it all to their increasing discomfort as 2016 segued into 2017:
The kids increasingly had more mandates put on them on what they were required to do. They had to get permission for everything. The leadership was taking more and more control over their lives. They were told when to wake up. They all had to be at an early morning meeting at their meeting place (they don't call it a church). If they work inside Gladstone, they are assigned jobs. If they work outside Gladstone, they come straight home to Gladstone afterwards.
Even the small stipend they each receive, they are highly encouraged to give toward Gladstone's mission efforts with some of it. Zak was known to say, "If we have more than a dollar left at the end of a day, we have too much." If they want to change jobs, they needed to get permission, and few were able to, especially when they wanted to. If anyone wanted to change to another house, it required permission -- or someone could be moved to another house, whether they desired it or not. And some would be assigned to tasks within the community that they weren't at all interested in or felt capable of -- but they had to do it anyway.
More and more it seemed like those in Gladstone were being asked to give up themselves and become robots of the leadership. “Only the leadership knows best -- the individual does not.” Only what the leadership wants and says is to happen. (151)
As he usually did, at the start of a new year, Zac penned one of his email missives for distribution to the community’s faithful that outlined the direction that God supposedly had told them to chart. His vision, and therefore Gladstone’s, for 2017 revealed the grind he intended that they would take to continue their remolding of their image:
Date: Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 3:49 PM
Subject: PREPARING TO LAUNCH
Well brothers and sisters, 2017 is upon us and I already feel a sense of expectancy for all the Lord will do among us and through us this new year. (152)
Zac knew the value of keeping his spiritual serfs as indentured to the community as he could, especially with the attrition they felt from those who left and the ongoing scrutiny they all faced. His Work Gospel ensured that their group economic tripod of common purse, community employment slots and covenant housing would more tightly bind them together under his control. And with the regional epiphany about their inner excess that had taken place among so many in the Cincinnati church circles that Gladstone/Madison had frequented, Zak found an opportunity to further sanitize their image by taking a bold direction which would require even greater energy and therefore deeper control over them - working harder than ever:
2017- As we close these events at the end of January we hope, by God's grace, to push hard into local evangelism, Bible distribution, international missions, the Lazarus ministry, the coffee shop construction, adoptions and much more. While we have many great opportunities ahead of us we have to realize that these will come with many difficulties as well as our enemy who seeks to thwart us and discourage us at every conceivable opportunity. This is why it is so important to utilize this time and not to let it just pass by (153).
Zac’s clarion call to the community was to focus them around renewed effort toward already well established traditional ministry projects. The Lazarus Room initiative was approaching its peak usage. But Zac’s directives also reminded them of the diversion of a great allocation share of energy toward the construction of an actual coffee shop intended to help engage the local community. Their taste for the caffeinated was to provide a bit of stimulant evangelism and a new visibility for quiet recruitment efforts in a bohemian urban atmosphere. The purchase on September 11, 2014 for $400,000 had been just another one of the many big ticket checkers that Zac and the elders had been moving around for some time on the community checkerboard of industry. Work had been ongoing on the property. While many cults eschew the purely creature comforts that things like coffee and tea eateries bring, Gladstone/Madison certainly was not one of them.
What is noteworthy is that nothing was said in his email about an even greater project that would materialize only a couple months later. Cult leadership across time is prone to impulsive launching of grandiose projects requiring everyone’s rapt commitment as a shrewd ploy to refocus their passion, sacrifice and energy. Gladstone is no different and the Sticklers described that for us here:
The spring of 2017, Gladstone purchased a church building a short distance away on Plainville Road. The aging congregation that had met there had dwindled down to about 10 members and could no longer financially sustain the facility and approached Gladstone leadership about purchasing it and sold it to them at a fairly low price. After moving into that building all of Gladstone’s services (Sunday and Thursday) were held there. (154)
Without any fanfare, Gladstone/Madison held its final service at the Mariemont Community Church chapel and moved on. The entire community was familiar with rehabbing and flipping of so much of the physical and spiritual in their lives that the move out of the old Mariemont chapel to the Plainville Road church was a fairly straightforward one that required little more than cosmetic and modernizing touches. MCC was now just another chapter in their scrapbook just as Northstar had been. For their part, the Mariemont elders were probably quite happy to see them move on, even if Pastor Beausejour probably shed a little tear or two over it.
The old church had been the sanctuary of a Church of God (Anderson) fellowship that, like many churches in urban settings from traditional denominational backgrounds, had been in a decline for years and likely were clueless about the history of Gladstone. An unconfirmed report was that their old Northstar mentor Rob McGillivray had been a member of the church since being excommunicated and had a hand in convincing the church to provide the sanctuary at cut rate cost to them, but this is unverified. Perhaps, in a more believable retrospect, there was some vague recognition of who they were but when cool cash wielded by a smiling band of winsome young Christians to buy their sanctuary came into view, they were all too ready to unload it. Public records indicate the sale took place on February 23, 2017 for a purchase of just over $29,000. A church once again made haste to aid a cultic movement in Cincinnati without the slightest pause and denominational officials signed off on the transaction. Clueless is not a word that can be easily used here but it’s fairly close.
And with that, the third chapter of Zac’s Neverland began to be written at 4315 Plainville Road, a place that Gladstone wanted everyone to see as a “church,” except their own members who instead were taught to call it a “Meeting Place.” Their genericizing of a normally sacrosanct identity seemed to fit into their vision of the new site becoming a multipurpose one. To this day, this is where the community hangs their piety out to dry in regular services, where the holiest of days is actually Thursday night according to their oral tradition, and where all of their beautiful rehabbing and renovation does all it can to help them erase their past.
So as 2017 moved on, with the ink on the sale papers barely dry, Zac and the leadership proceeded to keep the community preoccupied with his dizzying reshuffling of its deck of project cards. A May email he wrote underscored a new urgency and strident command of the lives of those in the cult:
We are making some changes to some of our meetings and their frequency. This is in order to help us not have too frequent meetings, but to have space in our schedules in order to actually DO the things we are meeting about. To be clear, we are not clearing the schedule up so that we have more time to relax but to instead that we will have more time to serve in the specific areas and ministries we are each called to. (155)
And after a truly wearisome outlining of the weekly schedule all were to keep (156) , Zac piously dilated upon his favorite life hack drawn from his late mentor David Pawson’s example on how Gladstone was to have its time stringently managed:
2-2-3:This is not a Biblical rule, but a helpful principle and way of thinking about your evenings that David Pawson's church (and many others) used while he was a Baptist pastor: 2 nights a week in the church, 2 nights a week with your family, 3 nights a week in other activities/service.
2 in the Church:
Occasionally, our schedule involves us in many different evening worship services, or ministry meetings, etc, put in general we don't want to be in Church meetings to frequently or too seldom.
2 in the Family:
Whether you are married with a natural family, or live with your spiritual family it is important to have time with these people in your life. This is not only hangout time with them, but also time family business such as taking care of the house you live in, groceries, etc.
*Note: Some people try to maintain too many relationships and end up a mile wide and an inch deep. It is important to prioritize your relationships and give priority each week to your family and closest relationships.
3 in other activities/service:
Time is short and there is much to do for the Kingdom of God. We should be, in general, giving the remainder of our evening in service to the Lord: Evangelizing, serving the poor, helping our neighbors, encouraging and strengthening the flock, and meeting the Kingdom needs (both spiritual and practical). (157 emphasis mine)
Zac’s wearisome wringing of every second he could to schedule his people to an endless sunrise to moonfall lifestyle of labor to fulfill his agenda here perfectly illustrates the kind of slave-drivery his narcissist’s soul required all to follow. His schedule and workforce management were called “needs” required by God for which the greatest of haste was to be extended. He used the dual riding crop of end time anxiety and Christian ministry as “godly” goads to spur his beasts of burden on to the higher levels of participation needed for everything to move ahead.
Zac’s plan, of course, was meant to help bring his vision to fruition and all of the activity actually was part of his plan to maintain group cohesion - people busily working don’t have time to think about the personal costs they daily incurred. They develop unthinkingly the habits and patterns of lifestyle that expeditiously move them along into their assigned tasks, just as a flow of worker ants or bees might in a hive or nest. And as can be seen, the “spiritual family” ties of the community were the priority: not the personal connections with their own biological family or friends not a part of the “work.”
So these “Kingdom needs” of Gladstone/Madison were paramount to everyone’s existence. Between the remodeling of both the old church sanctuary, the multifamily apartment building/shop on 4200 Plainville Road where the coffee house business to be installed and the escalated grind of daily living and organization, the busywork was heartily laid out for Zac’s tribe to get with the plan. Anything else than total commitment and obedience to the community rule and tasks were, as he made clear in a July email “devotional”, a sign of spiritual backsliding:
.. I am reminded of another passage. In this passage, the Lord answers Jeremiah's complaint, saying: “If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?" Jeremiah 12:5. This challenges me because it is already so difficult to keep our love alive here and now, and we are not in the Great Tribulation!
Brothers and sisters, we have great need here and now to keep our love alive and burning in our spirit. As Paul told Timothy we must "fan into flame the gift of God" (2 Timothy 1:6) that is in us.
Jesus warned us that "many will turn away from the faith"... How quickly we turn from faithfulness to Jesus. How quickly we allow our devotion to Him to be empty ritual. How quickly the things of this world and the desires for 'happiness' draw us away. He then said that following this turning of the faith, Christian brothers and sisters will "betray and hate each other."
How easily this follows when we become disconnected from the Vine. We see our dear family in Christ as a nuisance-- an obstacle to our personal happiness. (158)
Zac couldn’t hide in his email that, despite all of his appeal to their Christian sensitivities, there was a hidden unrest among the minions of Gladstone/Madison that betrayed the great unease he had with how they were handling the pressure. The truth was that conflict and dissension over petty issues was rife within the movement. People living together under such stresses where personal space, rest and privacy were at an absolute minimum will show up to their social circles with attitudes and inner struggles that would result in arguments, short tempers and disagreements which were, of course, carefully hidden by those struggling under the community vise grip of the Work Gospel.
These were the issues that the Sticklers had grimly documented which we’ve shared in which people were reduced to automatons whose only authorized emotion could be pious pleasantry. Zac was fully intent on leveraging the full weight of the Work Covenant everyone had signed, which essentially were the iron fangs of his Work Gospel. The quiet pushback by the slaves of Gladstone/Madison were also punctuated by the occasional departure of one or more people who would vote with their feet by leaving the community altogether, typically on Thursday nights when the Bible studies gathered everyone to their “meeting place” at the church and they could have time to wrest their belongings to a car, an Uber or a taxi and exit the system.
To head off such serpents in their urban Eden, the ongoing witch hunt by the elders to ruthlessly ferret out and isolate any disharmony went on and on. Zac’s email here is just a plain testimony to the human misery of his slaves, whose desire for “personal happiness” was castigated as a sign of spiritual rebellion that those who valued their faith were to internally extinguish. And for the most part, the slaves bit their tongues, kept their smiles intact and ran the Gladstone/Madison maze very well, as any well conditioned lab rats might.
By 2018, even as the rebranding kept going, Ernie and June - who’d seen all of this oppression from their intimate fellowship within Gladstone/Madison - finally came to a crossroads moment in their lives and could no longer bear the dissonance between their Christian ideals and the antichristian realities they were living among:
For over four plus years, the Gladstone Community was a huge part of our lives. While we had gradually seen some changes take place within Gladstone during those years, from about September 2017 onward some practices dramatically changed which caused my husband and me to have very serious concerns.
We agonized, discussed, and prayed for 4 months about what the Lord would have us do. We felt led by Him to address our concerns with the entire community in a written letter to all of them. Thursday, March 15, 2018, was our final time of meeting together with the Gladstone Community. Our letter to them was emailed on Saturday evening, March 17, 2018. (159)
It’s fascinating to see a curious synchronicity between the Stickler’s exit and the time it came forth.
March 17, 2018 was St. Patrick’s Day. Patrick was a real historical figure whose life was spent in bringing the Gospel to the people of ancient Ireland in the fifth century A.D. In his personal “Confession”, his own written testimony, Patrick wrote that “those held in slavery work hardest – they bear even terror and threats, but the Lord gives grace to so many .. who serve him.” He spoke of the Christian women who gave their lives to Christ and took on celibacy to serve God at their own choice, which caused great displeasure to their fathers. But the ancient Irish apostle easily could be speaking of the bound captives of Gladstone/Madison, who were staggering under an imposed celibacy, to please their “shepherds.”
Like Patrick, Ernie and June knew they had to declare truth and grace to those they loved, especially those who “voluntarily” submitted to the bondages of what they realized was a cultic movement, but which they still couldn’t quite characterize it as such.
The letter in full is linked here. But excerpts of it follow, which detail the profound concerns the couple had they could no longer ignore
We find ourselves as time has gone on, however, in disagreement with some practices of Gladstone. Because we love you, we have been very much before the Lord in recent months with our concerns, and feel it best to write them down for the sake of clarity, and for all of you to hear it directly from us. …
After listing and critiquing in unblinking detail through Scripture several of the major issues they could no longer remain silent about:
We have defended Gladstone against claims of being a cult, but we have growing concerns that the community is slipping into cult-like behavior. We know that all who have joined Gladstone are there voluntarily of their own free will and choice. We also understand that for a group to function smoothly and cooperatively, rules are necessary and that the larger a group becomes or circumstances change, sometimes more rules need to be made and become more specific. ..
For a group to be a cult in the social sense, the group is too controlling. We want to caution youconcerning them, that you not go beyond the bounds of limiting the rights and freedoms that adult believers have both in Christ and in our society.
Certain social controls raise red flags in people's minds and cause them to think “cult”, such as:
1. Extremely busy schedules with work, meetings, events, fund-raising activities, etc. based on the community's agenda.2. Needing approval of the leadership to change employment.
3. Limiting contact with family and outside friends, having a community member accompany them on visits, arranging to meet in a location other than their home; or limiting visits to inside the community at community events.
4. Control over who lives where and with whom, and how long; requiring members to participate in activities or ministry involvements whether or not individuals are gifted or comfortable doing so.
5. Needing permission to develop a relationship with someone of the opposite gender to pursue a marriage partner.
6. Don't make it easy to withdraw from the community should any believe God is leading them elsewhere by being overbearing or mockingly expressing they are being disobedient, losing their faith, telling them they could fall under a curse from God, could lose their salvation, or would fail in some way elsewhere. …
We believe there needs to be more freedom and less restriction. There is a huge difference between expressing concerns lovingly, gently, and seriously about situations, giving recommendations and suggestions versus imposing restrictions and coming down hard on someone, especially if they want to leave. We are not to impose control where God allows freedom (free will), even if our whole being believes and knows they are making the wrong choice. The father of the prodigal son granted his wish and let him go. He also longed for his return and kept hoping and looking for that, and welcomed him with a royal party when he came back repentantly. (160)
If the Cincinnati Magazine article had been a 100 megaton nuclear detonation, the Sticklers’ document that had been quietly sent to the inbox of every member with private email access in the community was a star erupting into a supernova of unimaginable galactic power. That it came from within their own community was no doubt a blindside to Zac’s authoritarian absolutism that had the potential to rock it to its foundations. But for their part, the Sticklers had listed their reasons for leaving, graciously outlined how they could no longer remain due to the spiritually abusive society that the fellowship had become, and cited their Scriptural reasons for their objections. They then just left. It was done in the heaviness of a love for them all, not condemnation, and a desire to see them consider their ways even as they changed their own.
We heard that once leadership saw our letter, they instructed everyone to delete it even if they hadn’t read it, and expressed to them that we both had become mentally unstable. They were all also told to have no further contact with us by any means. (161)
The Sticklers were fully aware that a full on purging of recognition of who they’d been within Gladstone would be directed by the elders, using their own thought-stopping cliches about their alleged instability. One can only imagine just how excruciating this was to them. But their speaking of their mind to establish their independent reasoning is the very thing that threatens any kind of cultic mind control system set up in any human social institution. Their existence had been dispensed with, and the Sticklers became the latest personae non grata to be demonized and excoriated there. They knew intuitively that this would come and they didn’t flinch.
And in the immediate aftermath of their sharing, Gladstone made one more effort to pour a cowlick’s worth of salt into their wounds:
After our letter was sent to everyone in community on Saturday evening, March 17, 2018, Eric Potticary, one of the “elders”, asked if he and his wife could meet with my husband and me. We agreed and invited them to our home on Tuesday evening, March 20, for dinner.
When they arrived, Eric said, “Before we eat, could we sit down and talk about some things.” So we sat at another table. Eric and Anna were very polite and spoke in gentle tones throughout. Eric expressed how saddened they were and how hurt they were over our letter because it was untrue. He said he and everyone he talked with in community were hurt over our letter; they all loved us.
Eric held firm that because Gladstone had no written policy on anything our letter addressed, that our statements were false. My husband said, “It didn’t matter whether there were any written policies on what our concerns were, they were happening in practice.”
My husband also told them that as a former elder, he felt that Gladstone elders were going beyond the role of scripture when it speaks of "not ruling over" or "being domineering."
Anna came back with every group has their own "culture." Eric added that there might be a church where all the men came dressed in suits, so to not look different, a newcomer man might thereafter make sure that he always dresses in a suit for subsequent meetings. Anna said that she is free to wear no make up, free to come dressed casually, free to wear her hair a mess, free to not have to dress up for services. There are "cultural" influences everywhere, she said, they can't be avoided.
Eric spoke of our implying that those leaving are being overbeared upon or mockingly treated. He said they have had occasions to speak to some wanting to leave because for them to leave would mean them falling back into old patterns. Anna said (in the only raised voice that evening and with some tears), "If you knew someone was headed to death, wouldn't you strongly contend with them?! I should hope so!!!" as she slapped her hand down on the table.
I answered that with a question. “Is there anyone within the last 4 years who has left Gladstone who would say they left with your blessing?” Eric immediately said, “Yes.” And then he named someone. I said, "Who?" (I didn't recognize the name). Anna said, “He left longer than 4 years ago.” Eric thought a moment and then said another name. Again I said, "Who?" Anna again said, “He left longer than 4 years ago.”
They could not come up with one name, not one person in the past 4 years who they could say had left community with their blessing.(162 emphasis mine)
We can share the content of the Stickler’s epistles here only in part. But an exchange within the private meeting that Eric and Anna Potticary had with Ernie and June Stickler is probably one of the most insightful revelations about the darkness of the group. When Eric’s defense of Gladstone/Madison as having “nothing written” about the issues the letter raised was answered by Ernie’s prompt response of how irrelevant that point was since the abuses were still being seen, it made my antennae twitch.
There, in the heat of a verbal contention about the nature of the “church” was a real time corroboration of the very observations we’ve been making here about the power of the hidden curricula of Gladstone’s deceptive nature. Implicit in Eric and Anna’s protest about unavoidable cultural influences was that, in Gladstone, theircultural traits were largely unwritten and entirely orally circulated. We’ve mentioned that oral tradition has been the verbal legacy and cruelly wielded scourge of cults within their social settings where their real influence is established. It’s a reality they can readily cover by citing the Bible and their "official" Statement of Faith copy to cover their evil.
The delusional arrogance of the Potticarys, intent on trying to gain submission one last time from former members who’d stopped drinking their own Queen City brew of kool-aid, didn’t find any purchase in the exchange. Anna’s twisted concern about fighting for souls they believed were deceived further underscores just how disconnected from Spirit-led agape that both she and the cult had been for years. Their zeal to correct and rule was not coming from a Godly love of harmony but an ungodly human lust for preeminence. So the cultic couple left an uneaten dinner behind in the Stickler’s home and took with them the last direct contact they had with the group that had once been family to them.
But despite their warped group leaderships censorious demands, a former Gladstone leader spoke for so many as they remembered the rarefied atmosphere within the group which the email blasted away for the raw truth of their existence to crush back into communal full awareness:
I remember this well. I was a house leader at the time and word traveled fast about (this) email. The house leaders were sent an email from Zak not long after. The entire community was instructed to delete the email and block (their) contact. I didn't listen though because I believed it was (their) right to speak (their) mind and what they thought and I valued (their) opinions. I still have (their) email! (163)
It’s our hope that many within the community still have that email within a hidden part of the hard drives of either their devices .. or their cerebral matter.
****
As the years went by, Zac and his leadership were quite aware that their common purse financial engine, which harnessed every individual income within the group, was a vehicle with incredible potential. They had successfully conditioned community members to live upon a monthly, paltry $150 stipend and to fully submit their entire personal monthly budget to monitoring by a finance team empowered to regularly squeeze them to spend less and less. This enforced individualized austerity enabled Gladstone/Madison to not just simply sustain the lifestyle of their multiple homes and their residents: it also provided a positive cashflow for the community coffers to enable the projects they had in mind.
It would be interesting to view the books for all of the individual business entities of the community to see where it all went, an endeavor that likely will never happen. However, it’s not really necessary to trace this down since enough is known about the common purse arrangement that participation in it was seen as a necessary mandate to live in the group. Whether they were laborers or managers, lawyers or accountants the Gladstone/Madison constituency were all required to live by the letter of the law which the common purse arrangement required. Whenever someone was successfully able to decide that they needed to request some of their own money for their own usage and not instead it donate it to the church, the rules were clear on how the process worked - and how readily a third party from Gladstone leadership would be required to mediate it:
A meeting between a house treasurer and someone on the Finance Team is set up to determine the monthly bill(s), debt(s), and/or other finance needs of the individual joining our CP. A form is filled out that lists the current state of the individual’s checking account, which monthly bills have already been paid, and what monthly bills still need to be paid. If there will still be money remaining in the checking account, the individual is to ask the Lord what to do with it. If the individual has a savings account, they should seek the Lord on what to do with it. No one is required to give all of their savings to our CP upon joining. …
Each house treasurer is sent an Income Statement (IS) from the Community Treasurer, Eric Potticary, at the beginning of the fiscal month. The IS includes the monthly amounts for groceries, gasoline, discretionary and other “house” bills that the house treasurer is responsible for overseeing. The income statement also includes the specific bills that are attributed to each member of the house. Bills can include health insurance, car insurance, cell phone, mortgage, etc. The house treasurer deposits the check for the whole house into the house account, and then writes a check to each housemate for their monthly bills. …
What bills are paid through common purse? All of them. This includes current charitable giving before entering into our Common Purse. There are limits for specific bills, but those will be dealt with on an individual basis. For example, if someone wants to join our CP that has $1500/month Porsche car payment, we will require them to sell their Porsche and help them find something more reasonable. …
How do I turn in spending requests (SRs)? Spending requests fall into two basic categories: needs and wants:
A “need” is considered any bill with a due date. This would include medical bills, oil changes, utilities, etc. It is important when filling out need-based SRs to write an appropriate due date. If you are unsure, we recommend a due date that is 1 week before the actual due date of the bill.
A “want” is considered any request that does not have a due date. A few examples of wants are clothes, shoes, weekend trips, etc. Wants are things that do not require immediate attention. * (164, emphasis mine)
With such a group resource at hand that Gladstone governance used to monitor their members’ usage of their own money, they were able to brow beat enough members to live prudently. The finance team’s smothering authority in their consensus decision making concerning the spending of money on any item ensured that their storehouses would swell. Gladstone/Madison members learned how to live on bologna instead of pork chops and it plainly showed as the community’s savings accounts grew.
While the ideal of “common purse” economics seemed so appealing, (as seen in a 2012 financial report for the community displaying an ironfisted control over their collective funding) Zac and his leaders were financially shrewd money managers with their own agendas. As leaders, the common purse economy was something they could exploit to make financially secure their own lives and they knew that the common purse contributions alone were not going to be enough to keep powering their ongoing operation. From the very beginning of the Gladstone community, the creation of community owned companies was a top priority, to further supplement the common purse funding. Some of those were directly drawn from the business that the early Gladstone membership engaged in. They were legitimately organized for-profit organizations whose income flowed into the group. These included the Handy Home Guys, the Handy Lawn Guys, Ilan Raw Chocolates, the Handy Plumbing business, and the Meraki Market local artisan shop, among others. Other service industry related operations involving catering and cleaning as well as a bed and breakfast also arose.
Their economic clout in the area hasn’t gone unnoticed by the community, who are keenly aware of the interconnectivity of the businesses to the church as one poster on Reddit observed:
One of the things that bothers me most is that the coffee shop makes Instagram posts touting their support of “local businesses”—especially a chocolate business. But here’s the rub: the chocolate business, their landscaping business, their house-flipping business, the renovated, soon-to-be Airbnb home they hold on Britton Ave, their apartments above the coffee shop and their daycare and their catering, etc. businesses? They’re ALL owned by the same church (controlled by the elders): all the money funnels right into the same source, which has to be legally questionable at best. (165)
There’s nothing illegal about non profit organizations operating for profit businesses, even if it seems dodgy when each business promotes the others. Run by and employed by members of the community, each of these businesses is an incorporated legal entity that enters into business transactions as normally, involving things like payroll, business banking and spending accounts etc. but as one anonymous source stated “inevitably the equity always ends up within the community. The kicker is that the businesses are all run legitimately as far as the profit systems go. The point at which a (Gladstone) individual deposits his or her paycheck into the Common Purse LLC fund is when the profit benefits the community.” (166)
In September, 2016, not long after the Cincinnati Magazine affair, and likely in reaction to the blazing light of scrutiny they felt, the limited liability corporation of Pro 1522 Holdings LLC was formed by Zak, Eric, Ben Von Korff, Alex Seney and Cebastian Hilton who were listed as “Members” who governed it. An LLC is a business entity that for profit and non profit organizations enter into for greater entrepreneurial advantage , particularly in times of business adversity, as an Ohio state document describes:
Many people decide to form a limited liability company because this business type is typically more flexible than a corporation and it is well-suited for companies with only one owner. Although owners have limited liability, this does not mean they are fully protected from personal liabilities. For example, if a limited liability company is sued, generally the assets of the owners are protected because the business assets are distinct from the personal assets, but there are exceptions under certain circumstances. …
A limited liability company may create separate series of assets and liabilities organized under a single LLC. Each series, in its own name, may enter into contracts, hold and convey title, grant liens and security interests and sue or be sued. Each series formation has a separate operating agreement and is authorized by the articles of organization. The articles of organization require a statement that the LLC may have one or more series of assets.(167)
This is a dry and technical exposition, but in essence, an LLC provides for a business owner a maximized ability to cut losses by avoidance of legal risk if a lawsuit is filed against them. The struggle they were engaged in to stabilize their financial foothold during the storms of 2016 was likely the inspiration for their creation of the Pro 1522 LLC , as well as the creation of an LLC for their newest and most ambitious venture, the Madison Place coffeehouse(168) later that same year.
What should not be lost in the midst of this legalese is the plain fact that the Pro 1522 LLC’s operating agreement is quite specific on just who the main benefactors are of their financial profits: that being the “Members” only. A reading of this document shows that the only people who can have controlling stakes in it are those who are “acting elders of Madison Place Community Church on January 1 of each year” (169) . And the verbiage in the document makes no room for the average Gladstone member to enjoy “all things common” whatsoever when it comes to the community businesses they toil in:
For financial accounting and tax purposes, the Company's net profits or net losses shall be determined on an annual basis and shall be allocated to the Members in proportion to each Member's relative capital interest in the Company ..(170)
How the elders distributed profits amongst themselves and in what amounts remains to be seen. But it probably isn’t important for precise numbers to be known. What is vital to see is that in following the money in any questionable organization much will turn up that raise many a red flag of concern. In the case of Gladstone’s leaders, their own enrichment came from a privilege that was hardly “common” whatsoever.
With the help of someone who did the searching, in public records, we found a few months back that Zak and other Gladstone/Madison elders have complete control and even ownership over several of the various church properties and for profit businesses. Research identified monetary amounts of their assessed value, and once the math was done, the total value was just right at 2.1 million dollars (171) .
The loudly lauded "common purse" philosophy behind the group's financials should technically make everyone equal partners and members in ownership and equal benefactors to the value of their properties and assets. Yet there is nothing in writing ensuring the 100 plus people of Gladstone any accountability for or access to the value of what their money supposedly obtained for the good of all - once again, the oral tradition of the group is likely being used to stifle any questions and dismiss any concerns.
Talk is an easy currency to expend since making promises that cannot be verified or challenged in a cult is a privilege that unscrupulous leaders enjoy. They've made these arrangements freely with no apparent meaningful input from church members, other than to hold meetings for them to sit in to provide a corporate presence for rubber stamping the decision they’d made privately. Nothing else was said, since they knew full well what might happen if they overstepped the bounds of community silence upon where their money really goes. The state of Ohio has required them to make certain aspects of their incorporation visible, but you can recognize the barest of outlines and nothing more of the forms of each business corporate entity. That’s only for the financiers of the cult to know.
Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that Zak and other leaders like to come off as living in some kind of hairshirt, austere manner of spare sacrificial living. And yet, it’s well known that they enjoy lifestyles that their elder’s $200 monthly stipends don’t have a snowball’s chance of supporting. It was also well known that the finance team gauntlet of inquiry about their SR’s (spending requests) that all had to submit to was not a firewall for any elder who made them. Credit card usage and pre-authorized expenditures that Gladstone members had to plead for routinely were run by elders with no questions asked. All of the personal stuff of an independent life which a Gladstone/Madison member had before joining became community property, an accumulated equity which Zac and the elders had first call upon.
While personally profiting from this is something they would steadfastly deny, rank always has had its privilege. Even if the showy extravagance of a prosperity gospel preacher’s gilded lifestyle was absent from them, Gladstone’s own unique breed of leadership could count upon a much more upwardly mobile material life than that of Gladstone members. They enjoy it tax free and are well settled down in it all. The elders fingering of the hoard of community stuff and a quiet accumulation of a golden parachute through access to the LLC funding goes on. This well hidden financial impropriety goes on to this day.
While all are subject to the taxation by the IRS as individual taxpayers, individual tax records are outside the scope of our discussion here. Tax records and internal documents on the LLC ownership details which are held by Zac and others would provide answers, but it’s not likely short of a lawsuit discovery that those will ever see the light of day. The church finances may barely be within the bounds of legality, yet the ethical and moral deficits we’ve seen here stink to high heaven.
One such noisome example extends to the fact that out of the fleet of community vehicles, the cars and trucks that had been given to Gladstone to use by members, the elders always had first pick on their usage and used them as long as they wanted. And God always had exceptions for his chief servants. “Eric had a really nice car there for a while that he said the Lord told him he could buy and Zak agreed,” as one anonymous member reported. “A few of them had to find a car from another community member to borrow but they always had their pick because no one would have told them no.” (172) This enjoyment of the elders of this free motor pool at their beck and call was a convenience that the average Jack or Jill in Gladstone/Madison didn’t enjoy, except after a protracted application process that could result in them bringing chaperones along to make sure they did nothing ungodly on the trip.
It’s evident there are leaders of the church that are doing well for themselves even as they assail their followers with guilting just for wanting their own money they earned. Even though we’re not in any position to do any deeper investigation of the cult’s financial picture, it is far more a shadowy world of fiduciary shell gaming they will ever want to admit to. No elder watching community workmen shooting drywall screws in a hot sun wants to be reminded by any of them that their spending requests were being scrutinized while their own fulfilled cash draws jingled in their pockets or direct deposits.
That’s hardly Christian impartiality mandated to be practices among all believers, regardless of race, socioeconomic status or position .. which the verses in James 2:8-10 speak directly to:
If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well; but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.The rules of the game that Peter Pan practiced among his Lost Boys in Neverland were principles he felt free to change at any time while they rambled about their adventures .. the same way Zac and his elders made the Gladstone community dance without skipping a beat to their changing tempo. This is one of those verses they glossed over and studiously ignored in their Thursday night indoctrination sessions which to this day, they still like to characterize as “Bible study”.
ENDNOTES
(139) "Houses Of The Holy", Justin Williams, Cincinnati Magazine, April 5,2016
https://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/citywiseblog/houses-of-the-holy/
(140) Williams, ibid
(141) Williams, ibid
(143) http://www.mariemont.com/gladstone-community-religious-group/
(144) Williams, ibid
(145) “Gladstone Community and Our Involvement”, Ernie and June Stickler, unpublished document
(146) https://thenarcissisticlife.com/confronting-a-narcissist-with-his-own-behavior-what-will-happen/
(147) Anonymous ex-member 3.(148) Stickler, ibid
(149) https://bizimage.ohiosos.gov/api/image/pdf/201619400734
(150) Stickler, ibid
(151) Email, June Stickler dated Thurs, July 27, 2023 at 1:42 AM
(152) Email, Zack Kijinski dated Wed, Jan 4, 2017 at 3:49 PM
(153) Kijinski, ibid
(154) Stickler, ibid, “Gladstone Community and Our Involvement.”
(155) Email, Zack Kijinski dated Tues, May 23, 2017 at 10:19 AM
(156) Email, Zack Kijinski, ibid:
NOTE: This is an actual community schedule from 2017
MONDAYS
Lazarus Ministry Meeting (2nd Mondays quarterly) - We are changing the Lazarus Ministry meeting from a monthly meeting to quarterly. The next meetings will be in July & October.
Pastor/Coordinator Meeting (3rd Mondays monthly) - These will continue to occur monthly.
Evangelism Meeting (4th Mondays quarterly) - The evangelism team will now meet all together quarterly. However, meetings for the individual teams (Rahab's Friends, Shalam, etc) will be arranged on the off-months. The next Evangelism Team meetings will be in August & November.
Maintenance Mondays - Soon we will be canceling Lazarus Room construction nights on Mondays and replacing them with "Maintenance Mondays" where all men in CP will be on a rotation to help work on various maintenance needs around the fellowship. BvK will communicate more details, but you can estimate being on the rotation every 15-20 weeks or so as most teams will be pairs.
TUESDAYS
Lazarus Room Construction - We have ended Tuesday evening Lazarus Room construction.
Family Home Groups - The Home Groups have moved their weekly time together to Tuesday evenings(from Sundays). More about this under Sundays.
WEDNESDAYS
Prayer & Care Changes - Once the offices at the Meeting Place are complete we will be making changes to the Prayer and Care evening.
Location Change- The location will change from the Potticarys house weekly to the Meeting Place.
Open worship - In the sanctuary we will open space for open worship and prayer. Worship leaders can volunteer to play music and lead worship spontaneously through the evening.
Elders available - Elders will continue to be available each week at this time to talk and pray with you. We will be in the sanctuary and when you want to talk we can go back to offices to speak privately.
SATURDAYS
Service & Ministry - The Lord has given us many things to do in His service, and it requires all of us, serving with our gifts, in order to be faithful to His call. Saturdays are perfect for us to serve in ways we don't have time to do during the week: Evangelism, acts of service, fundraising, etc. A few cultural points about our Saturdays:
For Others, Not Self: It is very easy to adapt our culture's view of Saturdays-- a day for us. A day for us to relax. A day for us to take care of our personal check-list, etc. We need to see Saturdays as days devoted to Jesus' service-- a day to be about the business of the Kingdom.
Get Committed and Involved: Many people have too relaxed a view of Saturdays, and they get involved with things as they feel like it. I encourage you to be committed to the different missions the Lord has given our family, and see them as a holy duty to be involved. Join a ministry team, or a fundraising goal, or service to neighbors, or evangelism target.
(157) Email, Zack Kijinski, ibid(158) Email, Zack Kijinski, dated Jul 13, 2017 at 10:00 PM
(159) “Gladstone Community and Our Involvement”, Ernie and June Stickler, unpublished document
(160) https://spiritwatch.org/media/Letter.pdf
(161) ibid
(162) “Meeting with Eric and Anna Potticary”, Ernie and June Stickler, unpublished document
(163) Anonymous ex-member 5
(164) "Common Purse", Community document, n.d.
(166) Anonymous ex-member 5
(167) https://www.ohiosos.gov/globalassets/publications/busserv/llc.pdf
(168) https://bizimage.ohiosos.gov/api/image/pdf/201626702448
(169) https://bizimage.ohiosos.gov/api/image/pdf/201625103426
(170) ibid, p. 6
(171) An anonymous contributor did this research into the properties of Gladstone, their valuation and ultimately, who is actually in control of them:
Location Assessed Value Owner Notes 4105 Watterson St $62,150 Koinonia Real Estate
4200 Plainville Rd $478,850 Gladstone Community Church Coffee Shop 4315 Plainville Rd $265,570
Madison Place Community Church Church address. Address for Essene Press 6811 Bramble Ave $97,400 Koinonia Real Estate
6817 Grace Ave $126,880 Matthew Wikoff & Jacob Grace
6818 Grace Ave $124,850 Nathan T Standeford & Benjamin C Swanson
6819 Grace Ave $118,130 Emily M Stegman Koinonia Real Estate’s tax address 6905 Grace Ave $88,350 Zachary M Kijinski
6908 Cambridge Ave $121,720 Brian Roselli
6909 Grace Ave $149,850 Zachary M Kijinski Zach’s residence, Pro 1522 Holdings Tax address 6916 Grace Ave $150,000 Cebastian Scott Hilton
6922 Windward St $98,270 Koinonia Real Estate
6936 Grace Ave $128,100 Koinonia Real Estate
6937 Bramble Ave $94,470 Koinonia Real Estate
7002 Grace Ave $78,700 Eric M Potticary Eric’s residence
Total Assessed Value $2,183,290
(172) Anonymous ex-member 7
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