The Heat Is On: The Rinse & Spin Cycle of Xenos/Dwell
By Rev. Rafael Martinez, Spiritwatch Ministries
And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.
For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret.
But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light.
Ephesians 5:11-13
When it comes to the eternal struggle between good and evil, the spirit of our present age demands that we don’t make waves, to let things slide, to realize that one guy's poison ivy is going to be another one’s spinach. Getting up tight about what’s right and wrong in the arena of public discourse is a rather intolerant excess no one should resort to. And yet the apostle Paul’s command shouldn’t be lost on those who say they are believers in Christ. Christians or really, any God-fearing people who truly believe will let a devotion to exposing evil and deception be a part of their faith-based lifestyle. Wherever error rears its head around them, professed Christians must ultimately avoid crawling between the sheets with it, while warning others about its bewitching lures.
Such has been our position when observing the power of evil as displayed through contemporary cultism in our crumbling society today. It’s why Spiritwatch Ministries has the words of Christ as our mission statement, “take heed that no man deceive you!” We continue to speak out as Paul did, to shine the light of truth upon the dark and secret things working in our world today to expose them, and make manifest to all just how blackened with wickedness they are. Paul’s admonition changed a world and is even now more critically needed for direction in these final days before Christ’s return by those wanting to be ready to see Him coming in quite literal clouds out of a sky split with His blinding glory.
And there’s no middle ground in this affair - while a bored and disconnected world yawns when it sees the spectacle of good versus evil, those committed to the struggle do well to remember that it really is an ancient war, as C.S. Lewis observed a few generations ago: “There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God, and counterclaimed by Satan.”
The sobering reality Lewis speaks of is quite real. Human existence is in a field of spiritual combat and all of creation and the immortal souls of all civilization are just as much on the line. The blazes of live fire everywhere around us are meant to take us out in what truly is a spiritual warfare mounted against humanity, with Paul’s revelation of this cosmic combat in Ephesians 6:12 as a starkly present reality ignored by too many: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” We’re not dramatic, just telling it like it is. Know this: all of humanity aren’t just spectators - we are choosing one side or another by how we choose to live and believe.
Such a silent and hidden struggle is part of the human condition, therefore: it includes the social scourges of cultism and the amassing of abusive power that energizes the battlefield God meets Satan’s challenges so ably upon. Yet it is ignorance of that struggle that contributes to the bondage of people everywhere to the dark powers behind all forms of enslaving spirituality.
Our ministry seeks to enable those on the front lines against cultic aggression to resist them. It has included our engagement of several cults in the greater Cultworld over the years as well as our assistance of those abused by their influence. We’ve never looked back, looking to the example of Paul and other apostolic leaders of the early church who also battled deceptive spirituality while establishing the Christian faith. Two millenia later, at present, Spiritwatch MInistries has turned from one front to another as needed to help the victims of two different cults in Ohio that have been shamelessly spreading a whole lot of deceptive darkness there. In 2023, we’ve given the lion’s share of our efforts to the creation of an online expose of the communal Gladstone/Madison cult in Cincinnati, Ohio which you can read at your leisure with an Ebook version soon to come.
We are quite pleased to see that while our research was going on, a critical perspective upon the spiritual continuum of Columbus, Ohio involving the abusive Xenos/Dwell movement has been exponentially growing. There’s a vast segment of credulous Christendom that views Xenos/Dwell as a Christian ministry of innovative Evangelicalism, whose leaders and shakers are name dropped repeatedly as a token of discerning approval of their doings. You hear the names of Christian luminaries like Lee Strobel, D.A. Carson and others cited as those “drawn” to Xenos/Dwell by its bandwagon of hip and cerebral spirituality. Their beautifully pious fantasy has been slain by the ugly gritty reality of it’s well hidden heretical authoritarianism. Long before our own personal examination of this movement began, many groups and people have been speaking out very publicly about its real nature.
For the record, we will again say that for the past fifty years, the Xenos/Dwell organization continually represents itself to the world as a non traditional church organization that commends itself as genuine New Testament Christianity, as the only real example of the faith. The gospel of its founders Dennis McCallum and Gary Delashmutt is to make all of their movement’s disciples into zealous evangelists of their exclusive model of spiritual community all across the planet, using all of the tools of religious marketing at their disposal. Believing their work to be the only true manifestation of the Kingdom of God, they relentlessly engage in high pressure recruitment by socialization and indoctrination of unsuspecting college students primarily at Ohio State University, although that has been augmented by their vast proselytizing among other groups of teenagers and youth across Ohio and in other states.
These efforts, as McCallum gushed in his 2022 rebuttal of our first article on this cult, have resulted in their creation of “a wonderful, self-sacrificial, fun-loving community of true followers of Jesus.” Of their “fun loving community,” Dennis hastens to add, “We have never had a financial scandal. We have an “open books” policy, allowing anyone to examine our books. We have never had a sexual scandal. Our elders all practice simple living, owning modest homes and driving used cars. There is no ground of suspicion against any of our current elders, me or DeLashmutt.”
What Dennis will never admit, however, is how he has become the alpha male and dominant influencer in the Xenos/Dwell movement to the degree that it actually has become a creepy personality cult devoted to his worldview. The rankly sectarian elitism of the group is actually a consolidation of his own factionalizing attitudes and views. Dennis’ own perspectives are indelibly embedded into their programs of modeling mentorship which thousands of people have been called upon to emulate, down to his own slang and snark shared in Xenosian social circles between knowing congregants. We’ve heard so many former members raise that point continually, observing how upwardly mobile advancement within their abusive church’s leadership corps is largely dominated by individuals who were raised up under McCallum’s circles of influence and modeling. It's always revealing to hear how striking the cultural differences between his inner circle of acolytes and those languishing under Gary Delashmutt, with his being the decidedly more control oriented and punitive of them all.
The plain truth behind the Xenos/Dwell mystique is that while it calls itself a church it is actually something else entirely. It is a religious machine that has encoded McCallum’s personal authoritarianism into its hidden agenda of toxic spiritual formation disguised as Christianity. This movement is one of the most successful mass marketers of cultism today, aimed at perpetually replicating itself by targeting almost all the young adults in local schools and colleges they can enchant. They are drawn by the wholesome and inviting home-based gatherings of young adults radiating warm welcome, lavished affirmation and instant intimacy. Drawn from the school of Evangelicalism rooted in church growth by small group church dynamics, the Xenos/Dwell movement manages to exude an innocent, even innocuous orthodoxy. Their tribal culture presents Scripture as authoritative, as the answer for any searcher’s question. Yet it’s easy to hide an agenda when you earnestly quote the Bible a lot - something not lost on anyone with sectarian ambition.
This kind of Scripture twisting commends Xenos expositors and their takes on Biblical truth as wise and hip pastoral mentors who can be trusted implicitly as confidants and confessors of young men and women’s inner struggles and failings. This trust is always turned inward into the movement’s inner settings of social influence in a completely closed circle of absolute control over its membership .. just as any authoritarian cultism actually enslaves. It's a diabolically efficient social engineering, a process to isolate them from any recognition that there might be other perspectives on life and faith other than their own that might be as valid or better.
Xenos/Dwell’s own recent history includes its Herculean attempt to regroup when COVID’s disruption of Ohio State University college life undercut their recruitment efforts in 2020 and 2021. Their recruitment initiatives once again target Columbus as well as new markets in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Florida with new infiltration efforts seeking unwary young people to allure. Xenos PR talking points love to continually point to their counseling centers, after-school programs and connections with local community institutions as “salt” being poured out a Xenos/Dwell saltshaker to uplift it. The Evangelical church planting alliances they’ve forged by years of affable ingratiation are legion. And it's not gone unnoticed by a local college community weary of their stubbornly cheery stalking of its souls.
And for decades, this cultic church has projected many a dazzling effort using its well honed churching to winsomely allure prospects through efforts of friendshipping and event. Their well honed public image rounds off the corners of McCallum’s abusive formation quite well, so well that those embraced by its relational razor wire become convinced that their struggle with Xenos demands on their life are a sign of their own spiritual defectiveness.
Once personally invested there, however, one learns how being like Jesus is actually to be like Dennis, making his worldview their own without ever really being told. It’s a formation that is not taught but caught within Xenos/Dwell circles of adulation. His likes, dislikes, focus of approval and disgust drawn from his own affable wise bearded guy temperament are smoothly modeled by a vast tribe of Xenos disciplers. Beginning with senior pastor Ryan Lowery, they do a heck of a tap dance through the BIble to commend McCallum’s presence as a last day sage of sages as evidenced by his supposedly impeccable and suave approach to Scriptural exposition. This unique bit of hidden curricula woven into Xenos/Dwell culture is a foundational truth Dennis’ bluster can’t blow away and in a future podcast and article, we will discuss that in further detail. For now, it’s enough for us to emphasize just how the gospel according to Xenos/Dwell is really a projection of Dennis' warped approximation of quasi-evangelical truth with a really culty skew.
We’ve seen how this has been practically manifest in the day to day operation of the Xenos/Dwell heresy. The sect compels generations of young men and women raised within the church itself as well as recruited OSU college students into joining a network of social engineering piously described as “every member ministry.” The cult’s home-spun romantic ideal of it being a divinely inclusive and chill Christian tribe established as a refuge for searchers on the edges of a corrupt world has been the tantalizing carrot at the end of a long Xenosian stick. That stick is projected by the furtive relational culture found in hordes of home churches and arranged living crash pads called “ministry houses” all across Columbus. It’s in these hidden places where the trust and submission of recruits is shiniest that the recruited innocence is speedily lost and where all of the coercion of Xenos/Dwell cultism takes place. It’s executed through well concealed and yet well documented realities of abuse, religious terrorism and mind control that are staged within their social boundaries. Whether they are in private discussions or highly public beach game shenanigans, that long stick always remains so tantalizingly reachable and evisceratingly crushing when finally applied with their grossly jovial group dynamic.
You can listen to any podcast featuring a Xenos/Dwell survivor’s testimony which we’ve produced in the past 2 years. You can also watch any of our streaming videos on YouTube or Vimeo in which many of them discuss the abuses and manipulation they’ve experienced and beheld. It’s quite evident that the crush of mind and violation of conscience are real. The cruelty and deception is real. Only their church masks of virtue are abominable falsehoods.
And the people who escaped this exploitation aren’t a bitter and anonymous conspiracy of losers seeking to destroy Xenos/Dwell as Dennis and his henchpersons demonize them. They are the very children birthed out of the many wombs of Xenos who have names, hearts and souls that were never nameless but were known and groomed by it. They are its spiritual progeny who have been rigorously shunned and castout by their own brothers and sisters upon their failure to fit the group mold.
Many who remained in Xenos/Dwell have fearfully watched this religious abuse and have even found themselves contributing to its punitive group dynamic of twisted authoritarianism. This feral dogpiling is expressed in a particularly brutal manner which the self-righteousness of zealous youth colors it with and it is an ugly, horrific thing to behold. Many of those who have been on our podcast have provided seriously disturbing testimony to what is enthusiastically yet deceptively called “Body life” and “discipline” behind the cult’s four walls that dot Columbus in their “ministry houses” and beyond.
it has happened. It is happening now. And it will continue as surely as the arrogant denial of the cult trying hard to absolve itself of any blame.
All cults harbor an anti-social perversion of community while maintaining a winsome self-representation of themselves as just this sweet band of hard working and cute Christian disciples who are so horribly misunderstood. That species of Xenosian spiritual traumatizing is no different than in an abusive Indian guru’s ashram, the apocalyptic phobia indoctrination of a Jehovah’s Witness Bible study or the fanaticism of an extreme Islamic Jihadist rally. Their manipulative socializing brings to mind the example of the International Churches of Christ and the Asian University Bible Fellowship and JMS cults. These three other college-targeting cults use the exact and same strategy in attracting young, idealistic and pious men and women into their fold, and that’s saying quite a bit right there.
In the same way, their sacrifice is exploited, they are told what choices in life they should make, and they are threatened with the judgment of God through public shaming to compel compliance to a group hive mind which, of course, they’re able to “freely” choose to follow - no matter what it costs them. No matter that it might end in the dissolution of family ties, abandonment of their college study direction or hasty marriages to other members, it’s the “doing” of this fancifully characterized “freewill” that determines their spiritual destiny, especially when heaven’s gates or hell’s flames are considered the only two offramps their lives will go depending upon their obedience to leadership directive.
All cults make this kind of religious coercion and spiritual slavery the basis for their cohesion and Xenos/Dwell is absolutely no different whatsoever. They may rejoice in their self-congratulation as the best and brightest believers on the planet, but their grotesque example really shows how ungodly and unrighteous their system and set up actually is. We’d have to apologize to a lot of other cultic movements we’ve confronted over the years if we were to swallow the Xenosian sparkly Kool Aid and actually recognize them as a genuine Christian church,
As the years have passed, however, there have been many who have stood up to this deceptive piety of Xenos/Dwell’s authoritarian cultism that stole their loved ones away from them. Often alone and with no support systems whatsoever, there have been parents, families and friends over the years who have sounded alarms about their loved ones who abruptly disconnected from them to heed the cult’s call for them to get rid of their “old wineskins.” Old news reports from newspapers across Ohio as well as personal reveries we’ve been privy to all painfully recollected family divisions that were traumatic and terrifying. They beheld in horror their children, grandchildren and friends submitting to the belief that their rejection of their pre-Xenos relationships was what true Christian sacrifice was.
These high-handed abuses of power were noted by local pastors and parents since the Fish House days of the late 1970’s and onward. When Catholic and Protestant clergy go on record as to how Xenos distorted Scripture and led recruits into what they called “dreadful” experiences as far back as 1983, there’s a history here that needs to be remembered and recounted. Dennis and his Xenos/Dwell sycophants might brusquely dismiss any responsibility for it, but they cannot escape it.
In the last several years or so, these isolated voices of dissent have become a roar of outrage from many quarters. Along with the archived newspaper reports, online interviews of former members about the backstory of Xenos it didn’t want related have emerged, as well as websites and personal testimonies on the internet that detail the institutional imbalance of Xenos/Dwell’s manipulation of its membership. A sizable support group culture right within Columbus, Ohio itself has been created by former members and energized by their banding together. Some even have formed activist collectives that are openly calling Xenos/Dwell members to question its claims and authority over their lives .. and even to outright break from it. Working invisibly are scores of active Xenos leaders and members who have struggled to bring reform from within, only to find their movement quashing all attempts at inner dialogue with an adamant hardening of their positions over the years.
And all of this was going on long before our ministry started to provide our own perspective. Everyone with a stake in this matter is deeply indebted to these courageous people who blazed the trail of defiant discernment of the dark corners of the abusive church from people like Mark Kennedy, Jessica McNulty, Joe Nelson and Desiree Gaylord who’ve paid a serious price for their visibility but have remained unshaken in their desire to see truth prevail in the ongoing public discourse about Xenos/Dwell. Kennedy's deep dive into the hidden doings of Xenos became infamously immortalized with his Xenos Is A Cult website, filled with vast amounts of information about it as well as well over 170 testimonies of people who left it. .
Our own involvement began when a documentary production team focusing on exposing Xenos/Dwell invited a local NBC investigative reporter to a gathering of it's former members that I and ex-cult member Megan Cox were attending in late December 2021. We had been in Columbus for a whole week prior to that and met and shared with several ex-members who corroborated what had already been on record about the cult’s toxicity. The NBC News team had come to gather information on a story about Xenos/Dwell’s excesses. And with an opportunity facilitated by this same team to present our findings to Xenos/Dwell leaders Kate Mizelle and Conrad Hilario in a thirty minute Zoom call, it became clear they were in total denial about the systemic abuse that their movement has perpetuated. Their half hour of deflecting and dodging became a YouTube video cunningly created by Xenos in an initially private recording for their leaders to use in evaluating what they’d been confronted with. After being contacted by the NBC producers about their reporter’s efforts, Xenos elder James Rochford ruefully wrote in a mid-February 2022 email 
on to the Xenos/Dwell email list that “we anticipate this to be a critical review” but that the cell groups who had watched the Zoom call recording and tuned into one of his talks found that their “morale was increased.”
We must say that watching the light bulbs of recognition pop up in their emails and conversations when they realized a new intensification of exposure was coming was singularly gratifying. Cults don’t like their clothes hampers aired out and they were about to find out it was laundry day in a confrontation they simply were not ready for.
A week later that February 2022, the NBC News investigative reporter Jamie Ostroff’s expose series shedding light on Xenos/Dwell’s questionable doings came out. Our shared findings with her led into their interviewing of many of the people we had met and interviewed. As far as we know, the NBC series was the first major critical coverage about Xenos/Dwell on a local television network there in Columbus and it ignited a firestorm of controversy within the cult. It’s hard to over exaggerate just how much Xenos/Dwell got shaken as well as stirred. Members already asking hard questions within church circles finally started to look beyond the standard talking points of sanitization that their elders were repeating as handed down from Xenos/Dwell leaders like Dennis, Rochford and others. And Columbus society began to see a new round of testimonial that the “cutting edge” of the cult was just exactly that, all too “cutting.” There wasn’t just a huge misunderstanding of their Christian movement’s tension with the world as well as a vocal minority of malcontents who couldn’t cut it in Xenos/Dwell discipline. There was indeed, to quote James, some “evidence unseen” that was being shouted from the rooftops.
A recording of a March 2022 address by Xenos/Dwell senior pastor Ryan Lowery’s to a church focus group was shared with us as part of their attempt to grapple with the crisis. In this following clip of a recording of it, we learn pretty quickly just how that “evidence unseen” was valued by them. It was a cautionary and yet all too expected dismissive refusal to pull their head out of the sand:
No one with any theological sense thinks we’re anything like a cult. It's a pejorative hyperbole that is intended to hurt our members. It's not loving correction nor does it give us any insight into what God thinks about us. I don't think we can expect to learn much about the will of God former members who no longer consider themselves Christians, who don't accept the authority of scripture or have denied the faith. There's no loving correction there. God is not speaking through them. I believe they have painful experiences and some of them may have been wronged but not in the grotesque ways which have been portrayed by the media.
Of course, this flat rejection of any critical perspective by Lowery’s theological chest beating was all quite par for the course. The black/white worldview of a cult boomed from his measured tones. It was an expected speech to the Xenos/Dwell troops that at once explained just how thoroughly their ears would remain closed and how hardened Xenos/Dwell leadership were going to be about it. It showed how they were at once clinging to the fig leaf of wounded pride and also ignoring the plain testimony provided by those whose allegiances they once had enslaved, who they counted as their own people.
Their contemptuously sweeping rejection to anything that we and those of their own tribe said was not a surprise since, for them, their theological orthodoxy was a perfect cover for their abominably heretical cruelty. But we knew they were hearing the outrage, even if they weren’t listening to it. We’ve got a podcast ahead in which we’ll be discussing a lot more of the standard spin doctoring Lowery juggled in that recording at length.
We watched with exhilaration and delight as the expose helped galvanize those already exposing its destructive spirituality. Contrary to what a few clueless non-Xenos/Dwell church leaders were crying tears over in supportive emails, the NBC expose was hardly a “Hit Piece” as they lamented. The avalanche was already tearing down from the heights. Not long after that, the Leaving Dwell and Dwell Church Columbus Is A Cult websites emerged that featured serious, probing essays that profoundly exposed even more of the crazy that is in the Xenos/Dwell body politic. They also offer concrete advise on how to break away from it as well for those within the movement who can no longer abide how its social fabric unravels under the weight of its own toxicity. These and other personal efforts in a grassroots network of dissenters became more established, pooling actual resources to help empower members on the fence to actually take the step and leave the group. And they no longer feared setting tables in the presence of their self-assured, self-anointed enemies.
Our Spiritwatch email servers began to groan under the load of correspondence we received. I can’t really tell you how many people wrote to our ministry with epistles of personal, heartfelt agony .. the very things Lowery made clear were beneath their arrogantly focused attention. Many of these were just plain raw, tragic first person accounts of fear and pain by those who found the efforts to expose Xenos/Dwell quite cathartic and a verification of the truth of their own religiously abused personal history, courtesy of the fun loving leaders of Xenos/Dwell. There were so many who also wanted to tell their story that during much of that 2022, we were doing 2 podcasts a week, which is certainly not our output now, but it made that one of the most intense times of production we’ve ever had. We are grateful to all of those who stepped out of their own shadows to publicly identify themselves and name the source of their misery and for those who today are continuing to do so. More are still to come.
So even as they bewail themselves as persecuted martyrs for their faith, Dennis and his elders at Xenos/Dwell have nonetheless been experiencing the greatest and most sustained scrutiny they’ve ever had over their errant ways. We’ve gotten glimpses into this in our podcasts and livestreams we’ve produced with former members who have reported how seriously so many church members are struggling with their leaders’ dismissive and tone deaf rejection of the critical perspectives being shared about it. As we’ve noted, it has been resulting in the defection of many Xenos/Dwell members, some who have been involved since it’s inception.
Remember, that in his March 2022 speech, Ryan Lowery had made it clear that the only critical perspectives they deemed worthy of listening to would come only from long time members. To his chagrin, however, a lot of them have indeed been speaking with a compelling voice that Xenos/Dwell has heard most clearly. We know of long time pillar families of the movement who have been leaving to take their destinies and their donations beyond Xenos’ clutches. We don’t need to identify them when their absences and departures have spoken well for themselves. They’ve come alongside the younger single members who’ve also moved on. With Dennis McCallum’s obsession with the numbering of his flock, their numbers are increasingly difficult to factor into his world plan for domination of the Christian faith. Dennis’ cited fixation on the nice reassuring number of 5,000 as the size of Xenos/Dwell as he speaks and writes about it seems harder and harder to believe.
Many of the defectors are heartened by the “Not Anonymous”, former members who are committed to telling their personal story as well as the greater narrative on their former church’s abusive spirit. Even now, two years later, this past February of 2024, a night of “Not Anonymous” survivor testimony to the scandalous past of the movement filled a church in Columbus on a wintery Sunday night. Along with them have been regular support group meetings and activity in the Columbus metro region with dozens of former members. Their communal fellowship is enabling them to come to terms with Xenos/Dwell’s abusive legacy which they seek to put behind them. It's been a gratifying groundswelling of an opposing viewpoint we’ve observed from afar off as well as in face to face interaction as well.
There is YouTube programming featuring testimonials and retrospectives given by former members being joined by podcasters casting their own perspectives on Xenos/Dwell from all quarters. Message boards like Reddit also detail a vast host of first person accounts and reactions to their deceptive and questionable interactions with the people of Columbus. And aside from the recovery groups, an initiative dedicated to monitoring and exposing Xenos/Dwell recruitment efforts, outreaches and ongoing penetration all around the area is currently underway. It’s been encouraging to see just how deeply this grassroots effort is spreading, and it shows absolutely no sign of slowing down.
We’ve shared a revolting encounter our ministry has had with one of the dozens of depraved local pastors who aid and abet the Xenos/Dwell cult in the region in a past podcast or two. They’ve been an example of what kind of grotesque Evangelical dupes that ministers can be when trying to emulate a happening cult in their midst that is being more “Christian” then they allegedly are. We’d really encourage you to hear the podcast we created on this and realize that this ugly reality is in dozens of non Xenos/Dwell churches across the nation. It shows that all viruses know how to replicate, and that quite organically. These external connections to people and institutions which Xenos/Dwell relies upon to maintain a legitimizing of their doings are part of the larger story of its contagion in Ohio and beyond and also deserve an article and podcast all its own.
But at the moment, the Xenos/Dwell cult is currently in bunker mode, waiting for the most recent storm of outrage over its long established abusive career to die down. Even as it engages the outside world with its churchy busy work, they lay low. All cults, in their crisis events that intersect with tension brought on by their own antisocial agenda, go through days of furtive hope that the howling gale of trial will change. It hasn’t happened yet and with more media scrutiny coming, the heat is truly on. To the dismay of some who thought they actually might change their ways, the cult's selective silence to the recent sharp escalation of outcry against their doings has remained unbroken - except to strategically target some portion of their checkered record they deem necessary to straighten out. It's a lamentable precedent they've already well established, one which has legal, moral and social consequences of staggering proportions that Xenos/Dwell isn't ready to handle.
Further underscoring a cold tone-deafness impossible to understate, back in 2016, Dennis McCallum issued an email missive to Xenos/Dwell dismissing recent tragic suicides of young disciples who couldn’t take their totalitarian control as hellbound reprobates “giving God the finger”. His contemptuous attitude pretty much guides their cult’s thinking .. even as the suicides continue today, student leaders are directed to read his paper about it (which is how “counsel" is provided to troubled people). With their never ending alienation and division of families as a result of their deceptive recruitment practices, Xenos/Dwell has found it more difficult to gain 
social traction as its’ welcome is wearing thin all around. It’s long standing summer sieges of Holden Beach in North Carolina that for years became witnesses of their faith building indoctrination events became curtailed. Perhaps having not one but two students die in swimming exercises there to reinforce blind trust in their discipler’s authority had something to do with the dulling of their welcome there. Maybe not, but this truly disturbing loss of life there definitely is worth another podcast to come.
The cult’s well documented examples of its leaders who heap shame upon their own membership who question their doings as backslidden infidels haven’t exactly helped them sound like innocent yet misunderstood people of faith. If I were a Xenos/Dwell leader during this time, I think I’d hide my head in shame or lay a bit lower. But if I wanted to continue any effort at a career within their hallowed compound halls, there's a lot of hardening of my heart and mind to the sizzling temperature of public scrutiny of my church I’d have to be daily doing. It’s part of the SOP there, it seems. And that's something any cult worth its salt routinely conditions its leadership to do, to take the outrageous barbs and fire upon their naked chests for the greater goal of, as they would put it, “protecting the work and God's Church. “
One might expect a full throated response from present Dwell/Xenos leaders, but it really hasn’t happened. As well observed by Oliver Long, a former Xenos leader we interviewed, the movement’s ad hoc reaction to the sharp escalation of criticism in 2022 has little coherence, rhyme or reason. While the defensive content and tone of their reaction is certainly expected as he points out, there’s been no one voice speaking for the movement collectively. Reaction to the challenges made upon the movement has been largely limited to the quotable sound bites that individual leaders have been able to offer to skeptics and reporters who inquire about their questionable doings in well curated media contacts. They offer what apologia for their doings in private meetings with those clueless Christian leaders around them who insist on identifying with them as a persecuted and misunderstood group of “Christ bearers”.
Therein lies an intriguing question as to just why they have spun their wheels with what is really more of a hodgepodge of almost knee jerk reaction. The answer, as we see it, puts a penetrating perspective upon just how Xenos/Dwell really functions. We will examine more of their leadership machinations, focusing on Dennis McCallum's reaction to our first article on them in 2022.
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