Where Are We Going? A Spiritwatch Podcast

To experience religious abuse that stunts and damages the soul, not to mention the mind and body is one of the guarantees of membership in the Xenos/Dwell cult movement. We are thankful for Roni, a former member who stepped forward to offer her own perspective on this excruciating reality she experienced just wanting to be a part of a movement supposedly preaching the "gospel". Manipulation recurs...

Joe Nelson, the founder of one of the first online communities for former members of the Xenos/Dwell cult, stops by today in our podcast with a brief yet insightful reminiscence about why the stories of the religiously abused there are not confessions of spiritually deficient people who can't hack the Xenos claim of standing for Christian truth .. but are real expressions of a church that's become...

A time of prayer for the ministries we've offered over the year and for all who we have met, confronted and shared with. This is a time of prayer and we will be praying and praising God.

The Weigh Down Diet is at the heart of the foundational dogma pushed by the Weigh Down Workshop, created by the now late Gwen Shamblin Lara. If you are seeking to jump start your life and health by engaging in this "faith based" diet program, we'd encourage you to listen in and find out why the Weigj Down Diet is a dangerous, imbalanced and unsound discipline meant to enslave all who join it. Feat...

Our brief and unplanned hiatus ends with this new episode, the longest we've ever produced out of an interview with former Xenos/Dwell member Megan McGowan. This is a powerful, disturbing yet ultimately liberating sharing she provides as she details her search for God and meaning , even as she struggled with great personal pain and clinical depression during her four years of intense activity with...

The audio of our second Vimeo stream project with perspectives on the culture and legacy of the Xenos/Dwell cultic movement. With Shawna Jones and Justin Stapleton, who had contributed in two previous podcasts .. and a teachable moment contributed by Rev. Martinez' granddaughter quite unexpectedly.

The first of an ongoing set of conversations with those who have been a part of the Xenosverse, which we describe as the culture, legacy, past and present of the Xenos / Dwell.cult movement in Columbus, Ohio.

We're joined by Jeremiah once again, who recently was on our podcast and who has emerged as one of several people who have organized the creation of a place of healing community among the hundreds of wounded people whose lives were devastated by the Gladstone cult. He discusses some of the exit strategies now in place to help those seeking to leave. Jeremiah also shares with us about the site's cr...

Earlier this year, a billboard went up on the corner of High/Kelso in Columbus, Ohio that has sent a signal to the cult hidden in plain sight there called the Dwell Community Church, "formerly" the Xenos Christian Fellowship. The nonprofit LLC Leaving Dwell created this and supports its ongoing messaging to the cult's membership that there is a life outside of it. Leaving Dwell CEO Keri Pucovich s...

With the unsurprisingly misguided move of Xenos' founder and cult leader Dennis McCallum's to post his shrill screed in response to our article on Xenos which our ministry posted months ago, we see the ongoing signs which are clearer and clearer. Xenos/Dwell has no inclination of doing anything but spinning the controversies it's abominable years of abuse have spawned for it and demonizing all tho...

An update on our ministry focus and a discussion on how aberrations like cultism can somehow still flourish all around us despite how advanced we like to think we are, when the truth is we learn nothing from our past.

Like any other cult worth it's toxin, the supremely hypocritical practice of recruitment called "love bombing" is ardently practiced by the Gladstone cult in Cincinnati. Our podcast with Rebecca, a one time Gladstone prospect, brings today the remembrances of their uniquely wicked and cruelly deceptive approach to the practice that would make even a Jehovah's Witness pioneer or a Xenos house leade...

Cultism and cheese don’t actually have much to do with each other and blue cheese isn’t evil. However an old proverb about the Blue Cheese Cult will be used to bring clarity to an often misunderstood dimension in the challenge cults present to society and the church. We will be examining how cultism harms victims through religious abuse, the Bible’s perspective of God’s passionate concern about th...

Our podcast today features the testimony of Samantha, a survivor of the Gladstone movement located in Ohio which is essentially a communal cult that has successfully enjoyed a parasitical career drawing people, resources and good will from far too many unsuspecting churches and ministries for almost twenty years. Samantha came forward to offer her own insights after 3 years of involvement with the...

Xenos/Dwell’s skunk work leadership cadre, who thought they could deflect and roll away from trouble, is clearly under a scrutiny they’ve never had before from so many quarters. For all of the parents and loved ones who have fought long, lonely battles with Xenos/Dwell over it’s deceptive recruitment of their children and for those still in and who quietly amen this corner, this next podcast we’ll...

We’re so glad to feature a very special visitor on our podcast today, Naomi Wright who is the founder and director of Be Emboldened Ministries, a Christian organization based in Denver, Colorado which is devoted to helping those impacted by cults with their very refreshingly unique approach of public education, post-cult survivor assistance, counseling and mentoring from that spiritual perspective...

Justin's story never set out to become a testimony to the abuses of Xenos. He just wanted to become a part of a movement to make the world, himself and others better. Excommunicated well over 10 years ago, however, his sharing reveals just how mechanically perfected and mundanely predictable the manipulation and abuse of this cultic movement truly has become.

In 2013, the irresistible idealism and youthful energy of the Gladstone Community drew two older Christian believers named Ernie and June Stickler to fellowship with them. Both parties embraced one another readily in what seemed to be a "peaceable kingdom" where all was in a holy harmony. Four and a half years, the Sticklers exited after bearing witness to community discord that the group's sancti...

At the center of the Xenos / Dwell heresy is the cunningly calculated consolidation of social influence and authoritarian power by it’s founder Dennis McCallum. His example is a hidden curricula that dominates the soul and the mindset of the Xenos/ Dwell culture and subcultures. Our guest today on the podcast is Vicky Hodgdon Coss, a former Xenos leader whose life was wholly given over to what she...

The "little community" of the Gladstone cult in Mariemont, Ohio at one time had a purity, sincerity and charity all it's own as it sought to live out Christian community. But as the testimony of Biblical counselor Jody Liske who worked closely with them for several years will assert , a far more grim reality has materialized among them as Gladstone eldership plays God in the lives of those there i...

Our interview with Eric Kraus, the fourth survivor of the cultic Gladstone movement shares courageously about what it’s really like to live as a resident of what Gladstone believes is the most perfect example of Christian life on earth, a place so perfect that no one feels there’s anywhere else to go even if the sweet fellowship there sours .. as it has for so very many.

Another survivor of Xenos, Erin Kreiter's formational years were spent being filled with the "church's" indoctrination that was both unbiblical, manipulative and starkly hypocritical. Her reveries of life raised as a Xenos "baby" being taught to spread the "Gospel" to those who really deserve it are painfully informative.

This is our third podcast on the outrageously well-concealed extremism of the so-called Ohio "fellowship" that presently calls itself the Madison Community Church, after trying to outrun it's twisted history while it bore the names of Gladstone and the Community, among others. Christy, a survivor of this cult shares the dark backstory they will not be sharing with you in their new coffee house dow...

The public outcry to the tone-deaf leaders of the Xenos / Dwell movement continues to fall on their stopped ears and hardening hearts. But the testimony of Eric Smith, a former Xenos leader and church planter about their abortive attempt to replicate itself in Cincinnati is proof that despite a ruthless cult's organizational pressure, men and women of conscience still push back from within.

Another former member of the toxic Gladstone Community movement visits with us on his own years of life under the control of the group. Jeremiah found what he thought were going to be his "forever family" become something entirely quite more distant and hostile when he committed the sin of thinking for himself.