Monthly Archives: May 2026

Dear White Evangelical Church: This is Why You’re Dying

Insights, Others' stuff
This entry is part 29 of 30 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

Here is a profound essay by the brilliant John Pavlovitz, which mirrors closely what I have been saying recently in my work over the last year or so. It especially reflects some of the thinking and the points I made in my recent piece, ‘I Was a Stranger‘.

While some of John’s points are more related to the Evangelical church in the USA – for example, he mentions a President, and we don’t have any of those over on this side of the pond! – still it is worth sharing in its entirety because a) people all over the world will read this, and b) the UK Evangelical church has always had political intentions[1] and I can easily predict that UK Evangelicalism will copy its USA relatives – they always copy others – and I can already see signs of this happening.

I have not shared this with the intention of it being a political piece, except in that it indirectly highlights[2] my assertion that the Kingdom of God is not of this world and that Christians can live above and beyond the considerations of mere worldly power. I wrote about that point of view in the essay linked to here. As I have said in previous essays, I do not discuss politics on this blog. At the same time, however, I did not want to detract from the power of John’s words by breaking his flow or his logic processes. He’s a passionate man with a passionate message, and he deserves to have it published unabridged. Some of what John writes about is indeed leaking over into politics, and that’s unsurprising because the thinking of a righteous person who has the mind of Christ (1Cor2:16) will naturally rail against the systems of the world that lack righteousness[3].

Over to John:


Dear White Evangelical Church,
I have some good news and some bad news.
The bad news is you’re dying.

If you’re paying attention, you’ve probably noticed the symptoms.

Your buildings are slowly clearing, your pews gradually emptying, your congregations visibly aging away, your voice carrying less resonance than it used to.

The reasons for this are complicated and interconnected, but here are a few broad strokes:

You’re dying because of your hypocrisy.

People see the ever-widening chasm between who you say you are and what they regularly experience in your presence.
They see the great disparity between the expansive hospitality of Jesus and the narrow prejudice you are so often marked by.
They see Christ’s deep affection for the poor, hurting, and marginalized, and either your quiet indifference or your open hostility toward them.
They’ve listened to you preach incessantly about the immorality of the world, the dangers of greed, the corrupt nature of power, the poison of untruth, the evils of sexual perversion—and watched you willingly align with politicians embodying all of these.
They see that you are so often the very kind of malevolent ugliness that you forever warned was coming to assail the world.

You’re dying because of your wilful ignorance.

People are tired of your war on Science.
They are sick of your arguing with Biology.
They are exhausted by your attacks on women.
They are disgusted by your justifications of racism.
They despise your narcissistic nationalism.
They know the Earth is round.
They know it is billions, not thousands of years old.
They know dinosaurs walked it.
They know that it is warming rapidly.
They know people here don’t choose their sexuality or deserve their poverty.
They know whoever and whatever God doesn’t appoint Presidents or hand out weapons or attack people with tornadoes.

You’re dying because of your devotion to cruelty.

People watch you dig in your heels against others because of their gender identity and their sexual orientation; the way you continually exact violence upon them, the way you try to blame God and the Bible for your mindless bigotry.
They’ve seen your intolerance to other religious traditions: how you vilify anyone who finds spirituality and meaning outside of your precise expression of Christianity, how you so easily disregard the faith stories of those who don’t mirror your own.
They’ve watched you so revel in being the bully to those you were originally called to protect.

You’re dying because of your complicity in violence.

Good people have seen you so often be a haven for misogynists, domestic abusers, sexual predators, and white supremacists, who more often receive protection rather than condemnation.
They’ve heard your explicit silence in the face of a brutal and rising flood of open racism, of hostility toward immigrants, of anti-Semitism, of attacks on Asian people and Muslims.
They see your pastors and leaders misuse their positions and leverage their influence to victimize the most vulnerable and make them scapegoats for discrimination.
They’ve watched you be the last, hateful holdout in matters of gender equality, racial diversity, sexuality, and theological difference; lagging behind almost everyone in the world in the kind of goodness you say you aspire to.

It’s easy to be fooled into believing you’re well because you have the political power of a presidency behind you, because you can temporarily impose your will on this nation. But this frantic flurry of cruelty is actually the death rattle of a doomed and dying thing. The empty bombast and blinding lights of your megachurches are a hollow rally that may momentarily anesthetize you, but they cannot stave off what is coming.

Yes, Evangelical Church, the bad news is that you’re slowly but surely expiring as you are now.

The good news is that in your passing, something else is being born.

Rising in these days is a sprawling movement of disparate people, not bound by denomination or tradition or nation, who want to create something redemptive and life-giving here, who don’t care what it’s called, who gets the credit, or what building it happens in.

Its makers are conscientious objectors in your unending holy wars, choosing to step away from you in order to create loving spiritual communities, grow deeper in personal faith, escape tribal partisan politics, craft a healthier planet, reflect the character of Jesus, and hold onto their souls.

These newly emancipated sojourners are creating something of compassion and generosity and hospitality; a radically inclusive faith that opens the table, a spirituality that welcomes the world, a religion that does no harm: a working theology of love. These open-hearted human beings are unearthing the beauty buried beneath heavy layers of rigid dogma, ornamental religion, and institutionalized discrimination.

The soul is leaving a body that no longer serves it, and you are that body.

The bad news for you, White Evangelical Church, is that you are certainly dying.

And it’s very good news for the rest of us and for a Jesus you have long ago murdered in your midst.

Here’s the link to the original piece.

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 They want to influence society
⇧2 For those who have the eyes to see it, and the ears to hear it, anyway!
⇧3 This is very different from how Evangelicalism want to influence society; their ultimate political aim (although some of them won’t realise this) is at its end a society which is a theocracy; a society run by nutcase Evangelical leaders who believe they’re doing god’s will (and ruling on his behalf!) by imposing their version of ‘god’s’ rules and laws onto its citizens. This would be a completely evil outcome.

A Dark Testimony VII – The ‘Bad Apple’ Vicars

Insights, Others' stuff, Asperger's/Autism
This entry is part 28 of 30 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism
A story of deliberately dishonest leadership in the Church of England

My last church was a Church of England (CofE) church, and I never had any major problems there.

However, my friend’s experience in ‘their’ CofE church was very different. They have written up their story for inclusion in my blog as a ‘guest post’, and I thank them for both their efforts and their courage in doing so. And they want to remain anonymous – fine by me! – and I am honoured to present my friend’s story below.

I’m not going to comment on the story[1].  I don’t think I’ll need to.

Right, that’s all from me; over to my friend:

My experience at the hands of a charismatic evangelical Anglican church, and its leadership.

I should preface this by saying that I am autistic – and although I have only known this for a couple of years, that isn’t to say that I have only been autistic for a couple of years; autism is a life-long condition. In common with many (or probably most) autistics, I was horribly bullied at school – simply because I was ‘different’ (in ways I shan’t waste time explaining here and now – the differences are, at most, only peripherally relevant to this tale). Those who were, in effect, ‘in loco parentis’ during the school day signally failed (with a few notable exceptions) to discharge their duty of care towards me; indeed, a few colluded and even, on occasion, joined in. My own mother decided, with no evidence whatsoever, that the reason I was bullied was that I wasn’t tough enough. So she decided that she would toughen me up. YAY!! Great stuff, I was bullied at home as well as at school. It should come as no surprise that I finished my school career pretty badly damaged, and with a complete distrust of authority figures.

During my last year of school, I ‘gave my life to Christ’ and became an evangelical Christian, thanks to a person who became a dear, dear, friend. I absolutely don’t hold her responsible, in any way, for the things which I shall describe below – she has never been anything other than a true ‘Follower of the Way’ (of Jesus Christ), and always loved me unconditionally, as who I was, rather than as a ‘project’ or someone who needed to be ‘fixed’.

Even so, it took me more than thirty years to learn to trust anyone enough to share the secrets of my abused past. That I did, eventually, ‘get there’ was down to the patience and care of very good (church) friends, who were consistent and ever-faithful in their love.

So that’s a bit of background, which may serve to illustrate why what I describe below was so devastating – when it may seem quite trivial if read without the above caveat.

Several years ago, the Anglican church I belonged to at the time ran the ‘Living in Love and Faith’ course, alongside most of the rest of the Church of England. It was billed as a conversation around the topic of whether or not LGBTQIA+[2] people could fully belong to the church, and receive all the sacraments (including marriage). Cutting a long story short, our particular course started out as a conversation, but once the leadership discovered that most people on the course disagreed with their ‘conservative’ (reactionary?) stance on the topic, and were far more ‘liberal’ and ‘inclusive’ than the leadership wanted them to be, it began to be turned into some very heavy, uncompromising, and essentially ‘tone deaf’ teaching (I’m not sure teaching is the right word to use – hectoring might better suit what happened). Things were done, during the official sessions, to try to ‘colour’ the result – in direct contravention of the ‘rules’ under which the course was meant to be run.

The course culminated in an extra session which the vicar tacked on to the end of the course, ostensibly so that we could ‘discuss’ where ‘our’ church was going to land on this particular topic. When we all arrived, we were surprised to find that the doors (two sets of double doors) had been wedged open (which was definitely not how they’d been on any other evening). The first thing the vicar told us was that the doors were open because if any of us disagreed with anything he said it would make it easy for us to leave – ‘other churches are available’ being his exact words, reeling off a list of churches he thought might suit us better.

He then proceeded to harangue us with his interpretation of the situation – riding roughshod over the careful groundwork the course had laid, starting by expounding the Church of England’s definition of marriage, and carrying on to tell us exactly what the (English) Bible has to say about homosexuality (and telling us to ignore anyone who cast any doubt upon the correctness of the English version he’d chosen). Faces across the room became gradually stonier – from ordinary folk through to eminent theologians who work at the university. Eventually, he wound up.

The curate completely misread the room, and launched into a fulsome vote of thanks. There was a little desultory applause – from probably a fifth of the room; and a lot of upset and very angry faces. I had, over the course of several years, worked hard to learn Ancient Greek, so as to be able to understand the scriptures in one of their original languages; I’d also made a particular study of the verses of scripture which (so-called) theological conservatives used to deny membership of God’s kingdom to those who were LGBTQIA+. I had become convinced that actually, there was nothing in scripture which could possibly preclude their being full members of the church – indeed, if they couldn’t be members, then neither could anyone else! Being told I was wrong, so vociferously, by someone who I knew was only parroting what he’d been taught, hurt. It was easy to understand the naked anger of the academic theologians in the room, whose hard-won professional opinions had been dismissed over the course of a few minutes by sheer ignorance.

Afterwards, over the next days and weeks there was a steady queue of people making appointments to see him, to tell him why they thought he was wrong, and also to protest at the way he had treated us; that queue included me. When it came my turn, he flatly denied having wedged the doors open, or that he’d suggested any of us leave, or that he had harangued us with his interpretation. He suggested that I had misremembered not only the tone but that facts of what had happened and what he’d said. So passionate and definite was he that I began to doubt my memory of the event.

I met one of the theologians the next day for our regular fortnightly coffee date, and he asked how it had gone. I told him, and he assured me that my memory of the events was well-nigh perfect – and that what the vicar had tried to do to me was classic gaslighting.

Bear in mind here that the first ‘authority figure’ I ever really trusted was a clergyman (it took decades before I shared any details of the abuse I was subjected to as a child with anyone, let alone anyone in authority), and you might get an inkling of the sheer devastation caused by the revelation that I’d been gaslit by my vicar – a man I’d worked alongside closely (as one of his churchwardens) for six years and had learned to trust.

That vicar left, not long after – ‘shuffled sideways’ by the bishop into a role which kept him away from public ministry – the volume of complaints about him had proved too much for even the ‘tone deaf’ functionaries at the diocese.

His replacement was said to be a very ‘pastoral-minded’ man (which was what we all felt the church needed after the earlier debacle). All seemed well, for a few months, and once I felt I might be able to trust him, I made an appointment and told him about my previous experiences. He listened, expressed sympathy, and assured me that he was open-minded and that he wouldn’t hold any of my ‘less conventional’ views against me – in fact he was rethinking a lot of stuff himself, having a sister who had recently ‘come out’. So that all seemed fine.

We run a group for a bunch of students – they come round every Wednesday during term times (and those who’re here year round come every week whether it’s term-time or not); we feed them, listen to their woes, and hold open-ended, open-minded, theological discussions in which ‘anything goes’; it’s all run on ‘Las Vegas Rules’ – i.e. what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas; to our pretty certain knowledge, everyone has always respected those rules.

The vicar sent a message to tell us that he needed to see us urgently. When we met, he revealed that ‘one of the students’ had complained that we were teaching them heresy during the discussions. He wouldn’t tell us who’d complained nor exactly what they’d actually complained about, but that we had to stop doing it, or he’d stop us running the group (how the heck were we meant to stop doing something when he wouldn’t tell us what the something was?). We would meet again to review it in a couple of weeks when we’d had time to repent and rethink what we’d been doing – oh, and from then on we’d have to follow strictly a programme of discipleship he would set…

Because, after all, he was responsible for what was taught in his church and he would have to stand before God on Judgement Day and explain why he’d allowed heresy to be taught in his church. (And this is one reason amongst many why I don’t agree with the idea of an ordained priesthood. Maybe I’ll talk more about that another time!)

We were hurt and confused. We tried really hard, over the following weeks, to work out what the complaint might have been, and who might have made it – so as to at least try to meet his demands. Our conclusion was that, in the absence of any evidence, and knowing ‘our’ students as well as we do, actually, he was making it up, for reasons best known to himself!!

When the time came for the second meeting with him, we insisted on there being an independent witness present; we’ve known one of the current churchwardens for four decades or so, and trust her; happily she agreed to be present. In the face of this ‘witness’, his tune changed and he ‘backed down’ almost entirely from his previous stance – he didn’t go as far as admitting that there hadn’t been a complaint, but he might as well have done.

But I can’t trust him any more… Despite his best efforts to be friendly and ‘open’, I’m not playing his game… I’m keeping my distance, and not falling for his ‘niceness’ – I know it’s an act – all he’s interested in is having power over others, and in building his pathetic little empire of sycophants. I remain unsure of where I stand, and not a little hurt. I’ve more or less stopped attending – unless someone we know is being baptised, or something like that. We’re still running a group for students – but almost entirely independent of the church’s scrutiny; recruitment isn’t a problem – ‘our’ students bring more students, who become ‘our’ students in turn.

A short time later, that same clergyman also ‘received’ (or so he said) an allegation of ‘inappropriate sexual behaviour’ against someone who, as a student, had been part of our group, and had stayed in the area and become a close friend. He was henceforth banned from all ‘ministry’ (even from serving on the tech team, presumably in case he ‘corrupted’ anyone by the way he changed the words on the projection screens or something). We know our friend; we knew, right from the very first moment, that this accusation had to be false. The situation got really messy, until, eventually, in the face of opposition from our friend and his fiancée, and with us acting as ‘chaperones’ at a meeting, the vicar again backed down.

The very next day, he revealed that ‘the diocese’ had now determined that the allegation was false and there was no case to answer (and no, none of us were allowed to know who’d made the allegation, what it was, what evidence there was, and nor were we ever party to the supposed ‘report’ from the diocese). Nevertheless, our friend would not be allowed to rejoin any church ministries until he had receiving counselling (from the vicar), to educate him on what constitutes ‘appropriate behaviour’. Our friend has since left the church, and wants nothing whatsoever to do with it – and I absolutely support him in that.

Personally, I think it all points to yet another ‘fantasy’ on the part of the vicar, and I don’t suppose he ever reported it to the diocese… He just wanted to exercise control over someone… And who cares whether he hurt them, destroyed their trust, or anything – so long as he had his pathetic little power trip. And I wonder – was the second incident a further attempt to ‘get at’ us, via our friend?

At this point, personally, I have decided to adopt an old saying as my ‘motto’ for dealing with clergy: ‘fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me’.  It’s not happening again – I’ve lost all trust in them.

Fuck the lot of them.

I hurt because the trust in authority which I’d ‘learnt’ over so many decades in the church has gone; I’m angry that clergymen of all people have been the ones to betray my trust; I’m grieving because I’ve effectively lost the family I’ve been part of for over forty years; I’m lost – I don’t know where I belong any more, if I belong anywhere. And all because of the ‘power trips’ of two ‘little Hitlers’.

I’m still passionate about Jesus Christ, and I still count myself as a (rather flawed) ‘Follower of the Way’ (to use the ancient phrase), but I think I would consider being called a Christian insulting, if that’s really what christians are like.

Header image shows a suitably dark picture of York Minster, one of the Church of England’s cathedrals.

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Except just a single, general, observation regarding my main and ongoing reason for including this essay in my blog series: This kind of disgusting behaviour in churches is exactly why I began this series, and exactly why I will continue to share stories of people doing dreadful things to innocent people, in the very place where, more than anywhere else, individuals should be cared for, honoured, nurtured and above all loved. There is no excuse. These stories need to be put out there!
⇧2 The ‘LGBTQIA+’ acronym means ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (or questioning), Intersex, Asexual’, and the plus sign refers to other sexualities that are not specifically mentioned in the acronym.

Changing Their Tune

Insights, Humour
This entry is part 34 of 34 in the series About the Bible - Inerrancy, Infallibility, Inspiration and Revelation
How Evangelical Christians move the goalposts.

Some Christians, including most Evangelicals, move the goalposts in regards to what they claim the Bible says about, well, anything really, when evidence is presented that refutes one of their tenets they hold fast to[1]. That is, at least, if they actually believe the evidence –  many people simply ignore it because they don’t like it. A common human failing, in fact.

It’s not that they don’t believe something; it’s more that they say ‘Well, that’s not what we meant!’ or ‘We’ve never believed that!’, rather than just admitting they were wrong. Again, a common human failing.

A great example is this.

Many Christian preachers used to say (and indeed some still do) that ‘Jesus spoke more about Hell than He did about Heaven’.

When people found that a simple concordance search reveals this to be a lie[2], they changed their tune, and claimed that ‘Jesus spoke more about Hell than He did about any other subject’.

When this too was shown to be false[3] – and also incompatible with the previous assertion since if He spoke more about Hell than any other subject, then that would include Heaven, and we have already shown that to be false – they changed it yet again, to ‘Jesus spoke more about Hell than anyone else in the Bible’.

That too is almost right, except that in the passages where they think of Jesus as speaking about Hell, He wasn’t speaking of Hell in the way we understand it today. In the one instance where it was actually there, it was being used as an illustration – the Rich Man and Lazarus story – and even that does not fit with modern Evangelical doctrine on just about any level.

But the point is that they change their tune. They move the goalposts. And the really irritating thing about all this is that those who listened to, believed and proclaimed the earlier claims have now completely forgotten about them. They went on to the next claim without a second’s thought. And so on down the line. For more on the ‘Jesus spoke more about Heaven than He did about Hell’ thing, check out my earlier blog post here.

Another funny one is where they say the Bible is inerrant, infallible, perfect and yada yada yada[4]. Then, when they are challenged about the many different translations and how they say different things in some places[5], they’ll say that the Bible is perfect in its original manuscripts.

Which means that:

1) Since no surviving original manuscripts have yet been discovered, we have no way of knowing what was actually in them; and

2) Since any translation of the Bible is neither the original manuscript, nor of course translated directly from an original manuscript (because none exist), then it follows that no Bible – modern or older – is completely perfect, inspired, infallible or any of the rest of it; therefore

3) The authority of the Bible cannot be held to be complete in its absolute sense, because such a concept is based on a premise that does not exist (there are no original manuscripts) and also because by them claiming that only the original manuscripts are perfect, then it follows that other manuscripts are not perfect;

4) Many believers also don’t know that in the passage in 2Pet3:16, Peter refers to St. Paul’s writings as ‘scriptures’, even though they hadn’t been widely published yet, and were certainly not part of any recognised canon. The Greek word translated as ‘Scriptures’ in that verse is the word γραφας (graphas) or ‘writings’, as it is in 2Tim3:16, and the word ‘writings’ is translated usually as ‘Scriptures’ – which is an inferred translation influenced by the translator’s personal leanings. So in that way, we can surmise that even back in Peter’s time, the ‘writings’ were seen as inspired and sacred, but not necessarily Scripture as such. The only Scriptures they really had back then were the Hebrew Scriptures, roughly what we would nowadays call the Old Testament;

5) Another logical flaw in this is one that I have stated in other places, which is that if it takes someone to tell us that the Bible is the absolute authority, then this is self-contradictory because we are relying on the authority of the person/organisation telling us that the Bible is the ultimate authority. In this way, their vouching for the Bible simply means that they themselves become the higher authority. Ultimate, supreme authority does not need anyone to vouch for it; we should not have to be told[6]

6) Saying that the Bible is perfect and holds ultimate, supreme and absolute authority means that it is placed above God, Who alone is really the One with supreme, sovereign power and authority. This is in direct violation of the first of the Ten Commandments: You will have no other Gods before Me (Ex 20:3 and Deut 5:6), because the Bible is placed before God in order of authority.

So, in those ways, the Bible is not perfect. And it’s the reason why a) Jesus Himself contradicted Scripture (e.g. Mt 5:43) and b) Jesus sent the Holy Spirit in order to lead us into all truth (Jn 16:13). Only when He explains a given Scripture passage does it become ‘infallible’, which is fine because then it’s God Who is doing the teaching, yes using the Bible as a ‘tool’ or ‘channel’ for that teaching, but it’s Him Who does it.

Anyway I just thought I’d point out that ‘moving the goalposts’; thing.

Can’t let them get away with it, even if only because it needs to be reiterated that it’s about time Christians started using their brains!

Grace and Peace to you all!

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Modifying what one believes, in response to evidence or experience, is actually a virtue. But in the way I’m describing and explaining it here, it’s not a virtue by any means!
⇧2 I was going to soften that and simply say it’s ‘untrue’ or ‘incorrect’, but the fact is that many preachers still deliberately claim that it’s fact despite knowing it’s not true. And so it’s a lie.
⇧3 And indeed only believable by people who do not know the New Testament
⇧4 I actually found a church website the other day where the Bible was the first thing they mentioned in their Statement of Faith. Not God, Jesus or any of the, you know, like really God things that should be mentioned first, but the Bible. Yawn 🤣 .
⇧5 The oldest manuscripts available also contradict each other in places; they never tell you that in church…
⇧6 Some might argue that we need to be told, by others, about authority. For example, the police, or the Government, are authority, and we have to tell each other that, but that does not make us a higher authority than the Government. But that’s fine; they can speak for themselves, plus it is stated in national law that they are the authority, and in essence they have placed themselves – or in a democracy, we have placed them there – and so it’s self-evident. This is not the same as an inanimate book. It cannot speak for itself, even in 2Tim3:16, where the Biblical claim of authority (misinterpreted verse in my view!) is set up by believers as claiming authority using a circular argument.

Van’s RV-9A

Aviation, Personal
This entry is part 23 of 23 in the series Beautiful Destroyers
…and my Bembridge, Isle of Wight, Flying Adventure.

Last time I posted an article in this series was in 2020, in the midst of the Covid pandemic. The article was about G-VIZZ, the Sportavia/Fournier RS-180 Sportsman aircraft that I and a number of friends owned as a syndicate.

Sadly, we no longer own that aircraft. Since she was the only British-registered example of the aircraft, of which indeed a total of only eighteen! airframes were ever built, she was really expensive to maintain for various reasons, not least of which was the cost of spare parts, her age, and all this as well as our being a captive market to the very few specialist engineers in the country who were actually certified to service her.

And so, we sold her[1]. But, from the figurative ashes of our syndicate arose an even more beautiful flying experience.

Because we decided to build our own aircraft.

Allow me to introduce Alpha-Mike[2], a Van’s RV-9A[3]; a ‘kitplane’ aircraft of a class known as a ‘homebuilt’. The idea is that you get a series of boxes (very much like a giant Airfix kit), and a little tube of glue, and you build yourself an aeroplane in your garage 😉 Of course, it’s not quite like that, but essentially it’s that any halfway-competent engineer, including people who have learned basic car servicing and repairs and whatnot, anyone like that can build an aeroplane for themselves. They are less expensive to buy than an already-assembled plane[4], and you can customise the aircraft to your heart’s content as you build it.

Once it’s built, you then get in a qualified engineer from the UK’s ‘Light Aircraft Association‘ (the LAA), who checks your work for you. And then he gets in the aircraft, complete with his nerves of steel[5], and takes it for its first test flight. Wow, that takes some guts!

On an ongoing basis, then, we now do all our own servicing and repairs, and we have Alpha-Mike’s ‘Permit to Fly’ reissued (after an engineer inspection) once per year. Think of the Permit to Fly as being like an MoT test, if you will; it amounts to the same thing.

The aircraft is owned by Nigel, one of the former G-VIZZ syndicate members. Members of the group (we can’t really think of it as a syndicate because we don’t jointly own the aircraft) can fly her whenever they please. We even have a proper booking system. And this is the cheapest powered flying I have ever had, by far, so I can afford to fly more often[6].

And what flying! I’m going to get on with the main article now, and showcase this lovely aeroplane which is so much better in every way than any other aeroplane I have ever flown[7]. I’ve previously written about the Piper Warrior, the Cessna 152, and the RS-180; all aircraft I have flown on a regular basis. But the RV-9A is in a different league entirely.

(All the images in this essay are zoomable by simply clicking on them)

The RV-9A, like all of the aeroplanes I have flown – well, the powered ones, at least[8] – is a single-engined monoplane light aircraft, powered by an Avco-Lycoming engine. In Alpha-Mike’s case, the engine delivers 160hp of power to an aircraft with a maximum all-up weight of 970kg, as compared to the RS-180’s 180hp for 1100kg, or the Piper Warrior’s 1055kg powered by a 160hp engine, so there’s a fair difference in power-to-weight ratio.

Added to that, the clean airframe design, small forward profile (as you can see in the above photo) and optimised wing profile and even a ceramic coating, means that Alpha-Mike is a bit of a ‘hot ship’. She does 140kt[9] in the cruise – that’s about 160mph – and has an excellent fuel efficiency.

This is also, to a large extent, because she has a variable-pitch (VP) propeller. Unlike all the other aeroplanes I have flown, where the propeller blades have a fixed pitch (the angle they are set at on the propeller spinner), a VP prop can vary its pitch so that it makes it more efficient, taking a bigger or smaller ‘bite’ of the air with each revolution according to how it is set. This works in a very similar way to the gears on a car, so that it doesn’t have to stay in first gear all the time, but instead it can be set to lower RPM (and therefore using less fuel) if required. In fact, Alpha-Mike has a flight endurance of something like 4.5 hours on full tanks, assuming correct leaning of the mixture[10] and judicious use of the VP prop. So, not only is she fast but she’s efficient too[11].

So, we built her ourselves, then. Here’s a picture of her in her original hangar, where we did most of the work.

As you can see, we found the upper wing surfaces to be a very handy place to put all the tools and other bits of the stuff we were working on 😉 and she is pretty much complete in this photo, which was taken the day before her maiden flight. Once we’d shifted all that clobber off the wings, and reinstalled the left seat, we took her over to the fuel pumps to fill her up.

We had already done test runs on the engine, we’d calibrated various items like the ‘magnetometer’, which basically does the same thing as a compass, and so we got the brave engineer out to have a look.

Once he’d signed her off, he took her for her first test flight. Here it is, in all its glory:

Immerse yourself in the aviation vibe for this clip: the air-to-ground communications (we had an airband radio monitoring the Tower frequency), and the raw emotion in the voices of the observers. There was a whole group of us there; most of the people who had had a hand in her construction (about eight of us) were present for this maiden flight. You can hear someone near the end of the clip saying ‘Congratulations, Nigel’, and quite right too.

So, we had a brand-new Van’s RV-9A to play with!

Here is a photo of her instrument panel as it was just after construction was complete:

Originally, she had a single Garmin G3X EFIS (Electronic Flight Information System) – that big screen in the middle – and just a few of the traditional ‘clock’-style instruments on the panel: (left to right) airspeed indicator, altimeter, attitude indicator (aka the ‘artificial horizon’). The G3X handles just about everything, including the primary flight information such as airspeed, altitude, rate of climb and all the usual things, plus it has a built-in moving map display that runs on a GPS system, so that you’re never lost. The traditional gauges are there in case the G3X fails, which just never happens. Even in the event of an electrical failure, the G3X has an internal battery that will keep it going for several hours after mains failure.

Later, we refitted the instrument panel with a new layout, with no dials at all – a completely ‘glass cockpit’ – and also added in an autopilot system. Here’s the new panel; the autopilot box is the one at top centre, just under the ‘SmartGlide’ button[12]. Despite the G3X allegedly never failing, we also have two additional independent self-powered electronic displays: the Garmin G5 (the little box to the left of the main display); and the Garmin 720 on the right, the one that looks like a Kindle Fire or iPad. Between them, these three displays give triple redundancy on flight information display systems, even in the event of a total electrical power failure.

Here is the panel in flight, with the moving map display on the main panel (the purple lines indicate the route programmed in for the autopilot) and the PFD – Primary Flight Display, which displays all the important information such as airspeed, altitude, heading and so on. The sunlight today, up here at 4,000ft, is pretty harsh and also at such an angle as to highlight all the dust on the panel. Sorry about that!

What’s she like to fly? Well, in short, she’s gorgeous. Powerful, fast and enthusiastic. Once you open the throttle on the runway this little aeroplane is positively eager to enter her natural element. Before you know it, only seconds from a standing start she’s at 65kt; the ‘rotate speed’ or Vr, and she’s leaping into the air and accelerating as she climbs. Quite astonishing really, far in excess of anything I’ve ever flown before. Whereas with the RS-180 G-VIZZ, we’d routinely use ten degrees of flap for takeoff, and retracting them in the climb-out, we initially used that procedure with Alpha-Mike but we found out that even though we had flaps deployed, with all the extra drag they give, still she rapidly accelerated in the climb to speeds in excess of the maximum flap extension speed, thereby risking breaking something! And so we now don’t use flap at all on takeoff, even on short fields. She’s just too sprightly to need it!

Control harmonisation – that’s another way of expressing the ‘feel’ of the aeroplane – is excellent, with rudder, elevator and ailerons all beautifully balanced and without any of them being more ‘dominant’ than the others. For example, in the Piper Warrior II, another aeroplane I love, the slab tailplane does give a different feel because it has such a large ‘pitch authority’; it doesn’t need much effort to make the nose go up or down. The ailerons on the Warrior, however, are not as decisive as that, so that althought the Warrior is still a great aeroplane to fly, it doesn’t have the same balanced ‘feel’ that the RV-9A has.

View from the cockpit is simply stunning. While the occupants are not sitting as high up as they would be in the RS-180, and the windowsills are not as low as they are in that aeroplane (actually no aeroplane I know has the same view as the RS-180!) even so the view is excellent because of the bubble canopy. There’s only the one frame breaking the otherwise uninterrupted view. Lovely!

Landing can be a little tricky because the nose undercarriage leg isn’t very strong. This means that even though there are many elements such as crosswind, windshear, sink rate, airspeed and all the other multiple factors that the Pilot has to consider in order to make for a good landing, the thing that must remain high on the list of priorities for the RV-9A Pilot is that the brunt of the landing must be taken by the main undercarriage; the bits under the wings. The nosewheel leg, in fact, is not even considered to be ‘landing gear’ as such; it’s more a ‘taxying gear’, only to be used when the aircraft’s speed has decayed enough after landing to allow the nosewheel to be lowered safely[13]. This involves using a lot of back-pressure on the control column after touchdown, to keep the weight off the nosewheel until it’s safe enough to lower it to the runway. And even then, when I land this aeroplane, I only lower the nose when I can’t stop it lowering itself, when there is insufficient airflow over the tail to keep the nose up any longer; the elevator has lost its ‘pitch authority’, if you like. Even then, I keep on a good back-pressure on the stick because it still helps keep the weight off the nose as the propeller wash[14] still gives a little bit of elevator authority even at taxying speeds. But as long as this is kept in mind, flying and landing this aeroplane is a breeze, and indeed a real delight.

Bembridge, Isle of Wight Flying Adventure

Probably the best way to describe this aircraft is to let you see her in action, so here is a photo diary of an epic flying adventure I had in April this year.

As a bit of background, let me explain that my son David is also a Pilot, and he flies from Kemble Airfield in Gloucestershire. He asked me if I would like to do a landaway meet-up on the Isle of Wight; specifically, at Bembridge Airport right on the eastern tip of the Isle. He intended to rent a club-owned Piper PA-28 Warrior II to be his chariot for the day, and so we arranged to meet at Bembridge Airport at about 1045 local time.

This trip was something I’d always wanted to do, ever since I had visited the Island back in 2015, back when Fiona was still alive, and with my daughter Ellie and some caravanning friends too. We had stayed on a campsite right next to the airfield, and so Bembridge has been on my landaway wish-list ever since then![15] So it was arranged that David, his wife Stace, and myself, plus Oscar – David’s toy otter mascot who loves to fly with him and goes on every flight with him – would indeed meet up at Bembridge and spend the day together on the Island.

So, I booked the aeroplane and checked the weather forecast for the upcoming weekend – this was on the Monday before the Saturday on which we flew out. Looks good on the long range forecast but of course that can all go to trash on the day. Did the PPR request – that’s ‘Prior Permission Required’ – basically an online form you fill in to let them know to expect you. It’s important so that they can account for your aircraft as part of the day’s traffic pattern, but also for safety reasons; if you don’t arrive something like when you say you will, they will have emergency search and rescue procedures that they will implement so that they can come and try to find where you’ve pranged the kite[16]. Planned my navigation route – headings, heights, speeds, landmarks, turning points. Danger areas like military ranges. Checked the NOTAMs – the Notices for Airmen; telling you about important things en route that may affect the way in which you conduct the flight. Things like high obstructions (cranes and stuff) near airfields, temporary airspace restrictions, temporary danger areas maybe because of high-energy military flying exercises (meaning fast-jets doing practice dogfights), temporary airspace restrictions for things like airshows or displays by the Red Arrows, or maybe even ballooning events. Looked up radio frequencies and generated a communications plan. Considered diversion airfields to be used in emergencies. Checked with Nigel to make sure the aeroplane was serviceable. Briefed about the fuel state and what he wanted me to do with the aircraft on my return – like did he want her refuelling ready for him the next flying day, that sort of thing. Comprehensive preflight planning is key to any successful cross-country flight, especially where that will involve a landaway and/or liaison with multiple ATSUs (Air Traffic Service Units, so people like radar services, control towers, approach services and all that sort of thing. Complying therefore with the annoyingly (and deliberately) alliterative Pilot saying, ‘Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance’, which nevertheless highlights how important the planning stage is to the satisfactory execution of the day’s flights. Most people who don’t themselves fly also don’t realise how much planning goes in to a cross-country flight, especially one involving a landaway, and even more so on one involving flight over the sea, which this one did of course. I’m flying to an island, remember! Also, making sure I have the most up-to-date aeronautical chart; checking that my equipment is in good order (like my headset, for instance) and that I have all my pens and flying gloves and baseball cap and sunglasses and all the other bits I need.

Here’s the SkyDemon chart for the route, with the intended track indicated by that thick magenta line. SkyDemon is a brilliant piece of software that aids greatly in the flight planning stage, bringing together all the information that the Pilot needs for the route. Some Pilots I know use it on their phones and it acts as a kind of satnav, a bit like the Garmin G3X system in Alpha-Mike.

Well, the Saturday dawned bright and relatively clear, so, armed with the current met forecast (the weather) and what we call the ‘Actual’ (what the weather is like right now at the relevant airfields including diversions, and their TAFs: Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts; what the weather forecasts are for the airfields in question), off we trot for Exeter Airport.

Alpha-Mike lives in a hangar on the secure and non-passenger-related north side of the airfield, so I need a special (and expensive!) ‘Northside Pass’ to get in, and so I make sure that this is also in my bag before setting off.

Arriving at Exeter, I dragged the aeroplane out of the hangar and did my preflight walk-round inspection, where I look for potential problems on the aircraft, check the oil and fuel levels, make sure the windscreen is clean, and all the other minutiae that make for safe flying. Better to find a fault on the ground rather than have that problem announce itself up in the air! Once done, and once I’d refuelled the aircraft, it’s time to book out – that’s where I tell the Exeter Air Traffic people where I’m going and when I think I’ll be back; a bit like the PPR mentioned above and for the same reasons – and in we get. I had donned a lifejacket and PLB because I’m going to be flying over the sea. It’s only for six miles or so, but there’s a reason why it’s called a lifejacket! And the PLB is a Personal Locator Beacon; a radio device that you activate once you’re down in the drink[17] and floating hopefully the right way up, so that Air-Sea Rescue can find you.

Ok, so start her up, program the navigation computer and autopilot, perform the power checks and pre-take-off vital actions from the checklist, and then call for taxi clearance. Lined up on Runway 08 at Exeter and cleared for take-off, the view gave me the usual (but somehow always new) thrill of anticipation of adventure[18].

There is no finer view in all of aviation; I am going flying, right now, and I am going to interface with – and indeed become a part of – this singularly unique, finely-tuned and indeed beautiful piece of machinery called a Van’s RV-9A. And today she’s going to carry me nearly 100 nautical miles, in under an hour, to meet family for a lovely day out. What can be finer than that?

As always, take-off and climb-out are busy times so there’s neither time nor mental space for photography. But once established at the correct altitude, and in the cruise with the autopilot engaged, I am now hands-free for photography, as well as being eyes-free to keep a good lookout[19]. So here’s the first shot, of the Devon town of Honiton about four miles off my port beam (it’s visible just above the wingtip):

This is the Garmin G3X showing the PFD in full-screen mode, with the aircraft position shown on the mini-map inset on the bottom right. You can see that we are just a mile north of Seaton, East Devon[20].

Axminster, East Devon, just forward of the wing

The view forward from 3,000ft, with Lyme Regis at the bottom of the photo, and with Chesil Beach and Portland Bill just visible. It’s quite hazy up here this morning. But it’s still utterly, utterly glorious. 

Coming up on Dorchester:

Portland Bill and Weymouth Harbour just visible in the murk. Actually, visibility today is excellent for aviation, just not so much for long-view photography.

Coming up on Poole Harbour, Dorset

Brownsea Island, Poole Harbour. This island was the inspiration for the fictional ‘Whispering Island’ in Enid Blyton‘s ‘Famous Five’ book, ‘Five Have A Mystery To Solve‘.

Bournemouth coming up. I’m now what we call ‘feet wet’ (flying over the sea), but I also happen to be within easy gliding distance of the land should the hamster die[21].

See what I mean about the superb view from this aeroplane?

Approaching Hengistbury Head, Dorset, the turning point which will set me up on my new heading over the sea, heading out to the Isle of Wight.

At the same time, Oscar the Otter (whom I mentioned earlier) is at the controls of David’s Warrior aeroplane, most likely somewhere over Hampshire.

…while my autopilot system executes the coasting-out turn over Hengistbury Head for me. The town visible aft of the wing, there, is Southbourne, Dorset.

The view down the Solent through the murk, from just past Hengistbury Head. This is because it’s early morning; this will all burn off later in the day. The entire Isle of Wight lies to the right of picture.

The Needles, IoW

Taking over control from the autopilot for a few seconds, I racked the aeroplane into a fairly steep left bank so as to get this lovely shot of the Needles with their Lighthouse:

Now transitioning to manual control for a lovely sightseeing tour of the south coast of the Isle, I could still use the autopilot temporarily to hold the aircraft straight and level in order for me to take photos as required. This is Ventnor Downs, the steep hill above Ventnor. There are the remains of a WWII Chain Home radar station up there, which was attacked by German dive-bombers at the start of the Battle of Britain in 1940. I visited the site back in 2015, and there’s still a lot of interesting military archaeology up there. For a World War II geek like me, anyway…. 😉 

And now, coming up on Bembridge, the town on the Eastern tip of the Isle of Wight. The Solent, Porstsmouth  and Hayling Island visible in the distance.

Meanwhile, having relinquished control back to David, Oscar is now enjoying the view of the Hampshire countryside out of the passenger side window of the Warrior.

…while I have my target in sight! Bembridge Airfield’s main runway 30/12, just above the wingtip as I roll in to a sort-of ‘crosswind’ leg to set up the circuit. Runway in use today is Rwy 12 which runs in a south-easterly direction, so I’m looking up the opposite direction in this picture. I need to set up so that I will be landing in the direction that, at the moment, is towards the camera. Things get a bit busy from now on, positioning the aircraft, so as to join the circuit while at the same time avoiding annoying the neighbours by overflying their greenhouses, that sort of thing.

Aaaand safely on the ground at Bembridge Airport. Runway is concrete but the parking is on grass, so as I mentioned above, I have been really careful to keep the weight off the nosewheel while taxying on the uneven grass surface. Now I’m parked up and looking across to the Britten-Norman aircraft factory to the north east of the airfield.

This is the Propeller Inn, Bembridge. I spent many a happy hour there in 2015 with Fiona and our friends on our camping holiday. More on the Inn later!

G-CSAM parked up at Bembridge. I was the first arrival of the day; it got a bit busy later on!The Cirrus aircraft with the red tail, parked beyond Alpha-Mike, is a Canadian-registered one. A local asked me if it was my aeroplane because I was wearing a Canada baseball cap… well I need something to keep the sun out of my eyes when up in the sky, and my brother (who lives in Canada) had sent me it a number of years ago, so I use that. You’ll see it in a later picture.

On the way to check in at Air Traffic Control, thought I’d bag this lovely view straight down Runway 30; the footpath passes directly across the extended centreline.

Back on the airfield after paying my very reasonable £15 landing fee, I got this nice shot of Alpha-Mike on the deck with her flaps down. What always gives me a really strange feeling during a landaway is that I look across the airfield at the parked aeroplanes, single out ‘my’ aeroplane, and think like ‘Crumbs, I came here in that, and that’s how I’m getting home too’. Similar to parking a car, I suppose, but evoking an unparalleled sense of wonder at the same time.

Anyway, In the background, there’s the treeline…and behind that treeline is the caravan site where we stayed in 2015 for that holiday I mentioned. Although now it’s all static caravans, not touring caravans like mine.

Listening out on my airband radio, and also watching on my phone app, I could see David’s Warrior aeroplane approaching the Isle from the mainland. Because of this, I was ready to shoot this video of his landing using Alpha-Mike’s tailplane as a rest 😉 You can hear the radio chatter on my airband radio. The strange buzzing engine sound is not David’s aeroplane; it’s another aircraft off-camera that had a weird sort of buzzing noise for its engine sound. Maybe it was powered by an electric shaver or something, I don’t know.

So once we’d met up, hugged and signed them in, we set off on a lovely walk down into Bembridge town proper, including a yummy lunch at the Harbour View Cafe. After wandering along the beach for a bit, we walked back up to the airfield. Many more aircraft had arrived by this time! Alpha-Mike is third from the left in the front row; David’s Golf-India is fifth from the left, next to the Canadian-registered aircraft to the right of Alpha-Mike.

Here’s a close-up of David’s chariot for the day, the beautiful Piper PA-28 Warrior II, G-EDGI.

Now we were back at the airfield, we popped in for a lemonade at the adjacent Propeller Inn. Like I said, I had stayed on that caravan site next to the airfield in 2015 for two weeks, and since then I have always wanted to do a landaway there. Although there’s now that treeline we saw earlier blocking the view from the campsite, and the Propeller Inn is under new ownership – they have sacrilegiously removed all the aircraft models from the ceilings[22] and there was a bartender bot with absolutely no personality whatsoever; couldn’t even call him an NPC as he had no script – anyway things haven’t changed all that much over there. Things hardly ever change on the IoW, except that now they have a decent phone signal.

But we had to leave at some time, so we said our goodbyes and boarded our aeroplanes to fly home again.

Here’s the view down Runway 12, lined-up and just prior to beginning my take-off roll. This view is simply unbeatable:

 

Five minutes after liftoff and already at 3,000ft, here’s a view of Shanklin, IoW, with Sandown just to the right/East. Sandown airfield is visible in the centre of the photo. From up here, I could see the entire Island and the Solent, Portsmouth and Southampton all in one go. Simply stupendous.

Time for another scenic cruise around the south coast of the IoW, and here’s Ventnor Downs again. Note how much the visibility has improved. You can see for miles now.

Coming up on The Needles again, the western tip of the Isle of Wight.

What happened next was almost unbelievable; one of those things that happens occasionally when flying. It was completely unexpected when the Bournemouth Radar controller, from whom I was in receipt of a radar service[23] suddenly called me up and said, “Golf-Alpha-Mike, traffic is a Spitfire, one thousand feet below you on a parallel heading. He’s probably headed for The Needles”. I heartily agreed that looking out for a Spitfire would be a great idea and she told me it was in my 2 o’clock low. So I looked and Tally-Ho! – I’d spotted him[24]; the Spit was very low on first sighting; as she said, about 1000ft below me, and I kept sight of him for about a minute then lost him in the background clutter. A minute or so later, I glanced at the Needles, which I was just passing, and there he was! The aircraft can be seen in this photo if you zoom riiiight in just left of centre, and just in front of my wing. As is always the case with amateur aerial photography, he was a lot closer in reality than he looks in the picture! This was very much a point-and-hope shot which fortunately worked out rather well. The black thing at the bottom middle of the photo is the Needles themselves. Can you see the Spitfire? What a great thing to have briefly shared airspace with such a legendary aircraft! 

After my epic encounter, I still had to cross the Solent! Here’s Hengistbury Head coming up ahead. The black marks on the picture are the way in which the camera picks up the propeller blades whirling around.

Over Hengistbury Head, a lovely shot looking at early evening mist in the direction of Swanage. Poole Harbour to the right of the shot.

Swanage and Ballard Down, with Studland in the foreground. Look how clear the air is.

Portland Bill and Weymouth again. If you compare this photo with the one from the morning, you can see how much the visibility has cleared up.

I don’t often do selfies but here’s me displaying the ‘RV-9A grin’. It’s going to take me a few days to lose that, I think. And there’s my Canada ball cap too:

Final shot of the trip, approaching Lyme Regis to my left. After this, things were a bit busy, so no more photos I’m afraid. Flying almost directly into a low-ish sun, with haze still present over home plate despite the clarity here, and trying to look out for other aircraft in that muck too, also trying to see my home plate at Exeter coming up. Certainly not a time to be mucking about with a camera, even with the autopilot in operation. 

So, like I said, a lovely day out and it took me at least a week to lose the grin! And what an adventure, especially with the Spitfire sighting![25]

The RV-9 grin. What a lovely aeroplane and I am privileged beyond measure to be trusted with flying this little beauty. And also to have been able to share, in some small measure, my adventure to the Isle of Wight. Even now, over a week later, I am still enjoying flashbacks of the things I saw and experienced on that trip. I will go again this summer, I think!

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 She now lives at Lasham, home to one of England’s main gliding clubs. Given that she has a glider-towing attachment, I would not be surprised if it were the case that they were using her for that purpose.
⇧2 The aircraft’s name is given by the last two letters of her registration, so, ‘Golf Charlie Sierra Alpha Mike’, becomes ‘Alpha Mike’.
⇧3 The designer, Richard VanGrunsven, uses his initials to name his different aircraft designs, hence the initials ‘RV-9A’. The RV-9 is the tailwheel version; the RV-9A (like Alpha-Mike) is the tricycle version with the nose wheel
⇧4 Although, Van’s Aircraft do actually sell completed aircraft too.
⇧5 To put it politely 😉
⇧6 I used to fly gliders back in 1991, with the Leeds University Gliding Society, but as that was affiliated with the RAF Gliding and Soaring Association, it was heavily subsidised and therefore very cheap.
⇧7 The sole minor exception is that she has only two seats rather than four, but that doesn’t really matter as I have very rarely flown a four-seater with a full load of passengers, and in any case the logistics of getting four people together to go flying all at the same time is quite something!
⇧8 Over the course of my flying ‘career’, I have flown something like fourteen different aircraft types, including four gliders (Grob Acro, Schleicher Ka-2, Schleicher K-7, Schleicher K-13) and ten powered types (Cessna 152, Cessna 150 Aerobat, Diamond DA-20 Katana, Piper PA-28 Warrior II, Piper PA-38 Tomahawk, Robin R2160, Ikarus C42, Sportavia RS-180 and of course the Van’s RV-9A).
⇧9 As opposed to 90kt (100mph) for a Cessna 152 and 100kt (114mph) in a Piper Warrior.
⇧10 ‘Leaning’ refers to the adjustment of the fuel/air ratio (the ‘mixture’) going into the engine, by using the red ‘mixture’ knob visible on the photos in this article. As the air density decreases with altitude, you can end up with too much fuel in the mixture – known as a ‘rich’ mixture – so you need to make the mixture more ‘lean’ (hence: ‘leaning’) in order to correctly match the proportions of air to fuel. The reverse happens as you come down; the air gets more dense so there will be too little fuel in the mixture (it will be too ‘lean’), so you need to enrich the mixture again using the mixture control.
⇧11 Having the VP prop also meant that the group’s Pilots had to have additional training to get the VP prop rating put on our licences, as we also had to for the Garmin EFIS (the Electronic Flight Information System or ‘glass cockpit’) too. So now we are all VP prop-rated and EFIS-rated Pilots as well as our basic Private Pilot’s Licences (and I have a Night Rating as well, of course). These ratings are lifelong and they mean that we can now fly any aeroplanes with VP props and/or EFIS avionics.
⇧12 This activates emergency glide protocols in the event of an engine failure, including turning the aeroplane towards the nearest airfield within gliding distance. Really clever!
⇧13 Taxying is the term used for driving an aeroplane around on the ground, as opposed to up in the air.
⇧14 Propeller wash, or ‘prop wash’, is the high-speed airflow around the aircraft’s fuselage caused by the propeller acting like a giant fan, which, I suppose, it is…. 😉
⇧15 A ‘landaway’ is exactly what its name suggests: a landing away from your home base. Most private pilots’ sport flying careers consist of simple local jaunts where they take off from their home plate, fly around the local area a bit, and then return to the place they set off from. A landaway is where you fly out to another aerodrome and buy a coffee, lunch or breakfast, then fly back to base after you’ve had a wander around on the ground at your landaway destination. With G-VIZZ, one of my favourite landaways was the short grass strip at Bolt Head near Salcombe, Devon. I’d land there, go for a lovely cliff-top walk, then return to the airfield and hop back into the aeroplane to fly back to base at Exeter.
⇧16 Where you’ve crashed 😉
⇧17 The sea!
⇧18 The blue hangar in the middle distance, to the left of centre, is the hangar in which we built the aircraft.
⇧19 I could really get used to that autopilot!
⇧20 For those who are used to interpreting a Garmin G3X display with autopilot, you may be wondering why the autopilot is executing a descent when we are below the requested/preset operating altitude. That’s simply because I am still learning to drive the thing; using an autopilot is not as simple as just pressing a button and it takes over. Well, not once you get under the hood, anyway. I had sorted it all out within a few minutes!
⇧21 Everyone knows that light aeroplane engines are powered by a hamster running on a little wheel, under the engine cowling; this makes the propeller go round very fast.
⇧22 Sacrilegious, because how can you have a pub right next to an airfield, keep its name as the Propeller Inn, have a giant propeller stuck on the outside of it, and then remove all the pre-existing model aircraft from the ceiling in the bar?? Seriously, someone needs to be shot for that!
⇧23 A radar service is basically where the radar station has you on their screen; they keep a lookout for other aircraft in your vicinity and warn you if there’s any chance of getting too close to each other. No substitute for keeping a good lookout, of course, but it does add an additional layer of safety. It’s like having an extra pair of eyes.
⇧24 Tally-ho! was the code word adopted during the Battle of Britain in 1940, which RAF airmen used to tell their radar controller that they’d seen the aircraft (usually enemy!) that they’d been vectored to intercept. While it is not correct radio procedure nowadays to use ‘Tally-ho!’, still I do use it occasionally and they know what I mean 😀 I think I used it on this day, but I can’t remember for sure!
⇧25 Only twice in the past have I seen anything similar; on both those occasions I was flying in the same bit of airspace as the legendary Red Arrows. Once was in 1991 at RAF Dishforth near Ripon, where I used to fly gliders with the Leeds University Union Gliding Society, which was affiliated with the RAF Gliding and Soaring Association. Just as I was completing a winch launch at about 1000ft above ground, two Red Arrows Hawk jets flew over me about a thousand feet higher up and going in the opposite direction. There was an air display going on that day at RAF Leeming, ten miles further up the A1. So I could legitimately say I’d flown with the Red Arrows! 🤣 The second time was a couple of years after I got my licence. On one day in August 1999, I was flying solo circuit practice at Plymouth Airport when a voice came over the Tower frequency, “Plymouth, good afternoon, The Red Arrows!”. Tower was unfazed. “Station calling Plymouth, say again your callsign”. So funny. I’m afraid I don’t think he’d misheard, nor was it that he couldn’t believe his ears; I think he was trying to wind them up. I suppose you had to be there. Anyway, the unflappable Red One calls back, “Plymouth – The. Red. Arrows! Crossing ten miles north abeam your airfield”. And so both I and the controller looked, and there they were, a close group of little aeroplane-shaped dots in the distance which were nevertheless, very distinctly, red. I think they were on their way to display at Fowey in Cornwall, they do tend to display there at least once a year even to this day – although last year (2025) it was at Falmouth.

A Dark Testimony VI – Christy’s Story

Insights, Others' stuff, Testimony, Reblogs, Wisdom
This entry is part 27 of 30 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism
Trigger Warning – Contains stories of severe spiritual and religious abuse and trauma. You have been warned!

Here is a heart-rending testimony from my dear friend, Christy Lynne Wood; a lady whom I have never met in person but nevertheless I count as a friend because we support each other’s online ministries remotely.

Christy came from a background in the ‘Institute in Basic Life Principles‘ (IBLP) group, which I would name as a cult in just about every way[1] and founded by Bill Gothard in 1961. (That’s before I was born!) In common with many other Christians with whom I have had positive online interactions over the last decade or so, Christy is therefore a cult survivor. She has had the courage to identify and name the problem, and to do something about it. And now, she blogs about her wisdom and experiences. My heart always rejoices when I see a notification in my inbox telling me that she has published another blog post!

Christy’s post contains things that parallel closely many of the previous ‘Dark Testimony’ articles in my series ‘The Problems of Evangelicalism‘, and so I have now included it in that series. Although not strictly-speaking an Evangelical church, some of the IBLP group’s teachings have been gradually and insidiously introduced into modern Evangelicalism – such is the cross-pollinating nature of religion, even across different denominations – and so their attitudes have also been incorporated into Evangelicalism, including Christy’s old church, where IBLP principles were held by most of the families in the congregation[2]. That’s another reason why this is relevant to the series. In common with all Evangelical or pseudo-Evangelical groups, these are the sorts of things they don’t want you to know about. And that’s the biggest reason of all why they should be shared in public!

Anyway, Christy is herself an experienced teacher and an excellent writer who clearly and indeed prophetically expresses what is on her heart. Other than this short introduction, I need add no more to what Christy has to say. I’m sure you’ll find her story helpful.

Over to Christy:

Seven Years Ago Our Bubble World Shattered

Yet another story of spiritual abuse and religious trauma in the church
Christy Lynne Wood
March 3rd, 2024

Telling My Story

Seven years ago, on March 9th 2017, our little Christian bubble world finally splintered into pieces. But we were forced to pretend everything was fine for two more months.

This is the first time I’ve purposefully and clearly written about this part of my story. I’ve hinted at it, skittered around it, and gave vague suggestions, but today I’m telling the truth. It’s a weird combination of re-traumatizing and validating.

I’ve had seven years to process, seven years to learn I’m not alone, and seven years to try and pick up the pieces so that I can heal. It’s not just my story though, it’s also my husband’s story and he has dealt with it differently.

So today this is for all of you who have faced spiritual abuse and religious trauma and been able to heal and grow, but it’s also for those of you who haven’t. It’s for those who’s faith has been shattered, who’s trust has been destroyed, and who struggle to step foot into a church. I want you to know that I see you and feel immense compassion for your pain. We all experience trauma differently and there is no “right way” to move forward (despite what the Christianese phrases tell you).

I met my husband at a Christian summer camp. We worked together at camp for a couple of years, so going into Christian ministry of some sort seemed like the thing to do. We were young, idealistic, and passionate about serving God. Four weeks after getting married, we loaded up a moving truck and our junky, little Honda Accord and took off for the state of Wyoming.

The town of LaGrange doubled in size for nine months of the year while the students were in town. In the summer it went back to the original 322 residents plus a few married couples like us. We spent three years in the Wyoming prairie surrounded by more cattle than people while studying at Frontier School of the Bible.

Having met at camp, we originally had dreams of doing camp ministry. Then my husband landed a part-time youth pastor job at a “local” church forty-five minutes away. We did everything as a team back then so youth pastoring a bunch of junior high kids was fun too, especially since the church ran a rustic camp for three weeks each summer.

After graduation, we came back to Michigan and started an internship at the camp where we first met hoping to eventually come on as full-time staff. Three summers and two babies later, we realized—much to our disappointment—that there was no potential for a job there. However, the church we’d been attending for the last couple of years needed a youth pastor. It seemed like the perfect open door, so we walked through.

Full-Time Ministry

Within the first few months there were red flags. But we were young, idealistic, and filled with the belief that this was God’s plan. It didn’t hurt that we’d just been used and abused at the camp where we interned, so the church felt healthier to us. It was easy to make excuses. Maybe we were just misinterpreting things. The senior pastor was probably just trying to make jokes and didn’t mean the hurtful things he said about my husband from the pulpit.

Sometime within our first year at the church, the senior pastor took a much anticipated three month sabbatical. I think he expected the church to fall apart without him around. Instead it thrived. My husband was relational, organized, and passionate. He never meant to try and usurp anything, but there was tension when the senior pastor came back that simmered under the surface for the next four years.

We saw flaws pretty quickly at the church, but we hoped that God would use us to help heal them. We knew that no place was perfect and we were willing to ignore or make excuses to keep the peace. Sadly, I’m much more realistic and skeptical these days.

man in black pants and pair of brown leather lace-up shoes sitting on brown carpeted stairs inside room
Photo by Ben White

There was tension between my husband and our senior pastor within the first year of working together. My husband believes that everything should be done with excellence. He is not afraid to push back when he feels things are unethical or wrong which earned him the nickname of “Pastor Picky.” The senior pastor had been in charge for enough time to want to keep power in his own fist. He didn’t appreciate criticism of any kind and had surrounded himself with elders who were either “yes-men” or solidly on his side. I didn’t know it at the time, but this is a pattern for abuse within the church.

It was never a healthy situation. My husband always struggled. But we loved the people at the church. The youth group was growing. It looked successful on the outside. I think we also like the title of being in ministry. It was part of our identity.

It All Started at Camp

I decided to back to camp for a couple of summers as a health officer. I should never have gone back. I knew how we’d been treated during our internship. I swore when we left that I was done. But I loved camp.

I’d found freedom in Jesus there. I’d met my husband there, my babies had been born there, and my dad was currently working on staff as the maintenance manager.

So I loaded up my two small children and we spent two summers riding around on a golf cart, doing clean cabin checks, handing out meds and Band-Aids, and comforting homesick campers. My husband worked at church during the day and then came and spent the evenings with us. Parts of those summers were amazingly fun! I’d always dreamed of being the health officer. I had a golf cart. My children thrived. I loved supporting the young adults on staff. But there were dark clouds too, especially the second summer.

I should have handled everything differently. But I was not the same person back then. I was still stuffing my leadership gift and passionately avoiding conflict. I was still trying to be sweet and not strong.

I should have confronted the abuse I witnessed. I should have boldly stood up for the broken people. I should have challenged the unethical behavior and the potential affair. But I didn’t. Instead I talked to other people who also noticed. We tried to figure out what to do together. And because we noticed a problem, we became the problem. I was labeled a gossip while the true problems were ignored.

I should have quit half-way through the summer. But I didn’t.

People who were involved in the mess at camp were also from our church, so the summer trouble followed us back. Big time.

And Followed Us Back to Church

I was distraught about what I’d witnessed at camp and also about the abuse my dad had experienced. (Little did I know that the exact same things would happen to us.) Seeing that I was a wreck, our senior pastor offered to counsel me. I use that word in the loosest possible way. For six weeks I sat in his office and spilled everything to him. He took what I said, tried to gaslight me, and then instead of protecting me, told everything to the other person who was at camp with me. I’ve never had an enemy before, but I did after that summer.

We tried—my husband and I. I knew that I hadn’t handled everything perfectly. I’d made mistakes, and I tried to reconcile. But it went from bad to worse. I was still reeling from the spiritual and emotional abuse I’d experienced at camp, still broken by what had happened to my dad and other summer staff members. Still upset that what looked like an affair was being ignored. Our pastor was the only one I could share with because he wouldn’t let me tell anyone else. And even though he was also abusing me, at least I had someone to talk to. Then he went on a mini-sabbatical for a month because they were adopting a child from overseas.

I honestly thought he told me that I could tell our new associate pastor and his wife if I needed to talk to someone while he was gone. And I didn’t tell her about the affair, just about the abuse I’d witnessed. She was a licensed counselor and I thought she might be able to help. Like any sane person would be, she was horrified at what I shared. So she told her husband. Who told the senior pastor when he got back. And I got in trouble.

I was called a gossip again. I was kicked out of women’s ministry with no hope of going back. I was no longer allowed to sing with the worship team. Every Monday, no matter what I did or didn’t do, the senior pastor would yell at my husband about how terrible I was and how I wouldn’t change.

Because he couldn’t break me. I refused to take all the blame. I knew that what happened at camp was wrong. And that what was currently happening was wrong. I refused to stop noticing the problem.

These were the hardest months of my life. They nearly destroyed me. I felt like the woman caught in adultery just waiting to be stoned.

We Should Have Quit

We prayed about quitting. We should have. But we loved the people. We loved the teenagers we worked with. We believed that God could work a miracle in the heart of the senior pastor. So we stayed. Until we couldn’t stay any more.

Eventually my husband was called into a meeting and told that we didn’t have chemistry with the senior pastor and therefore we were being forced to resign. It was March 9th. He was informed that the elders wouldn’t be telling the church until May and that if we said anything before that, or told the truth about what had been happening, we would be kicked out immediately with no severance package.

person looking out through window
Photo by Noah Silliman

We should have quit right then and there. But we didn’t because we were poor, emotionally ragged, and had two small children to feed.

For two months we carried this horrible secret. And every Monday my husband was told how awful I was being even though I was just literally hiding in the church basement making coffee every Sunday. It was the only ministry I was allowed to do. My husband endured verbal, emotional, and spiritual abuse during this year from hell. But we didn’t have the words to describe it as abuse back then.

During these two months, our pastor decided that I was such a mess that I needed professional help, so he sent me to Miriam. At the beginning of the first session I had three questions for her. I wanted to know if she was familiar with Bill Gothard’s teachings, if she thought they were wrong, and if she would promise to keep everything I said confidential from my pastor. When she confirmed those things, I poured out my heart for forty-five minutes. At the end Miriam looked at me and said four beautiful words, “Christy, you’ve been hurt.”

It was the first time someone validated me instead of blaming me. The church paid for eight beautiful sessions with her. I finally realized I was being abused and not going crazy. Sure enough, our pastor called after the first session, but Miriam had heard enough and refused to talk to him.

The End

Eventually they told the church. The senior pastor called a church wide meeting to announce “God was calling us elsewhere.” People were upset and confused. But we didn’t tell them the truth. We stayed quiet. The church originally asked us to stay through July, then it changed to the beginning of June. Shortly after our resignation was announced, we were told to stop coming to church at all because we were too sad and it was making everyone else sad. So it all just ended.

We got our severance, they got our silence, and we lost our community, our friends, our children’s godparents, and our identity.

Why Tell This Story?

There are plenty of people who question the validity of telling these kinds of stories. They push back by asking about motives, suggesting exaggeration, or claiming that we need to stay quiet “to protect God’s name.”

But the sheer amount of these stories says otherwise.

I’ve realized over the past seven years that for every story that goes public, there are probably hundreds that never get shared. For every one pastor who is exposed for being abusive and controlling, many others will go on abusing without being caught or stopped. This kind of thing is an epidemic in the church right now. I’ve read some wonderful and validating books. My favorites are in the picture below.

Not only do we need to tell these stories for accountability, but we also need to tell the stories so that those who have experienced this type of abuse can recognize that they are not alone. Reading Beth Allison Barr’s story of her husband’s forced resignation in The Making of Biblical Womanhood was eerily familiar—to the point where I wondered if they pass around a script. Hearing the stories on The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill validated my own.

It is helpful to know that we are in good company even if we are all a bit mangled.

Stronger than Ever Before

Personally, I’ve risen from these ashes with new strength. I see through lies faster, approach Christianese with more cynicism, and am quicker to call out abuse. But I’m also gentler and have less answers for those who have been through hell and come back. I have more compassion and empathy. I will sit and cry with you and say nothing.

My own faith in Jesus is more solid than ever. But I will also stand up and quit next time so that I can tell the truth. This abusive control we are experiencing is not Jesus and it needs to stop now.

If you have been spiritually abused, I just want you to know that you are not alone and it’s not your fault. You have been hurt.

Looking for God’s Grace

I’m going to close with Miriam’s ask for me after that first counseling session. She wanted me to look for God’s grace each day. It might be in a sunrise, or a baby’s smile, or a small green leaf poking out of the dirt.

That was something I could do.

Can you find it too?

macro photography of green grass
Photo by Emmanuel Mbala

Thank you, Christy, for your gracious and indeed enthusiastic permission to reblog your post! As you will see, I have just copied it and pasted it more or less straight in to my blog  😊

Here is the link to the original article

Grace and Peace to you all ❤️

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 They market themselves initially as a sort of personal improvement course, but this is just the ‘hook’; the ‘gateway’ to deeper involvement and eventual indoctrination, enslavement and abuse – some of which is of course sexual. They call themselves ‘non-denominational’, which has increasingly – to me at any rate – come to suggest strongly that they are some sort of cult. Certainly, the church I wrote about in my recent article ‘I Was A Stranger‘ would claim to be non-denominational. The term always hoists red flags for me nowadays! Although they are not a fully Evangelical group (they differ from Evangelical doctrines in several ways), their methods are pretty much the same in many respects, and so I am using Christy’s story as a parallel to the exact same things that happen in Evangelical churches. In addition, the IBLP are also strongly into home-schooling which, while a valid method of schooling children where the children can’t otherwise access education (say if they are housebound due to a disability or something), in other cases is simply a means of isolating children from the outside world so that they can be effectively indoctrinated without any interference from reality. It seems that wherever humans gather in the name of Religion, these things happen.
⇧2 It might be relevant to mention at this point that the extremely problematic and yet very popular TV series, ’19 kids and counting’ (or whatever number of kids they’d reached at the time of filming 🤣), was about the Duggar family who were/are still themselves part of the toxic IBLP movement.