A picture has emerged of a church that was secretive, whose pastor had become paranoid and controlling, driving away many members. Today\u2019s New York Times<\/a> describes it as a \u201clethal sect\u201d. Apparently it was not always so. Somewhere along the way an ordinary church took a dark turn. \u201cWhen I first arrived, it was warm and welcoming. It was encouraging. It was helpful,\u201d said Chadwick Handville, a massage therapist in Phoenix, Arizona, who left the Word of Life Christian Church in June 2000 after 10 years that included a stint as a worship leader and trustee. Things went downhill after founder Jerry Irwin returned from some time away and reclaimed his position as pastor, Handville said.<\/em> (from Yahoo News<\/a>).<\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Several stories have recently outlined a chilling culture of abuse that had developed at the Word of Life Christian Church in upstate New York. 19 year old Lucas Leonard was beaten to death during a \u201ccounseling session\u201d because he was planning to leave the church. \u00a0His 17 year old brother, Christopher, was also beaten and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[286,287,288,285,284,283],"class_list":["post-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections-of-the-fall","tag-abuse","tag-beating","tag-jerry-irwin","tag-lucas-leonard","tag-new-hartford","tag-word-of-life-christian-curch"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":559,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions\/559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nALBANY, N.Y. (AP) \u2014 Former members of the upstate New York church where two teens were viciously beaten paint a picture of a once vibrant and joyous house of worship that declined into a place of fear and intimidation under new leadership.<\/p>\n