New Life Fellowship - the Story of a Cor...

New Life Fellowship - the Story of a Cor...

Audio by Paper to Audio

New Life Fellowship - the Story of a Cortland Cult Part Two

[Find part 1 here: facebook dot com U.R.L

Note: The following account including the first part may not be reproduced or shared anywhere or to anyone outside this group without permission from the author. Please respect this, thanks.

Years later I would hear much more about Freed's past, from Covenant Love members who were around when he arrived and from friends who knew him as a teenager and young man in New Jersey. I can only pass along what they told me; I have not been able to substantiate any of these stories independently, but they do fit with the Paul Freed I came to know.

The accounts say he was a difficult and rebellious teenager, angry at how much his father's work took hm away from the family. There were rumors of drug involvement, and even of incidents of bizarre behavior, such as showing up at Christian youth meetings rolling on the floor screaming that he was demon possessed.

In one of his attempts to distance himself and thereby try to punish his father (according to these accounts), he ended up on Love Inn's doorstep. Scott Ross took him under his wing as a personal project to try to help him. But soon Freed insisted he was especially called and gifted, and had a birthright to leadership. It became easier for Ross to appease him and give him postiions in the church rather than to constantly butt heads with him, something several other leaders and allegedly Ross himself later admitted was a big mistake.

Not long after Freed formed his group of elders for Cortland Covenant Church, he told us in secret of his real vision. He believed that he and our church were destined to beome one of the premier churches in our movement. And because we believed our movement would eventually take over the entire church, and then the world, he actually told us that we were destined to become world leaders. As ridiculous as that sounds now, it was pretty heady stuff for a group of small town 20 and 30 something men, and we ate it up. Freed was so confident in his vision that it was easy to get caught up in it and want to believe it.

Aside: if any of the teachings and practices I've described sound somewhat familiar, I'm betting you saw the Netflix documentary The Family, about the super secret group of evangelical leaders who have come to weild tremendous influence in the Republican Party. The movement I am describing was the genesis of what would become The Family and indeed of the shift of much of Evangelicalism into its entanglement with right wing politics. I was there at the beginning of what would eventually make Donald Trump President.

Back to my story: As the years passed I not only continued as an elder in the church, but eventually came on to work full time for the church, as a teacher and then the principal of its K twelve school. Along the way Freed captialized on the shepherding teachings to set himself as the absolute ruler over every life in the church. Through the discipleship hierarchy, he knew everything about every family in the church.

Every adult male in the church was required to meet at least once a month with his discipler. In addition, we had to write a monthly “State of the Man” report with explicit details of everything happening in our lives, marriages, and families. These reports got passed up the chain to Pastro Freed, who could then exploit any weakness or failing in any of the members to his advantage.

He also set up an extremelty competitive situation among us elders. He always made sure that there were three or so of us who were clearly his favorites. The favorites goe extra time with and favors from Paul. So we all vied with one another to get into those coverted spost. If one of the favored elders displayed the slightest failing or perceived disloyalty to Freed, he would demote them and move someone else up into their place. As a result we were constantly on edge, constantly worrying about our position in relation to Freed and what we might do or not do to change it. Everything in the church revolved around one's status in relationship to Paul Freed.

As we came into the Eighties, Freed began to make moves to become a figure in the Cortland community. At first it was by relatively friendly ventures, such as joining the local ministerial association. But he would return from each meeting sharing his disdain of the “weakness” of the other pastors, and how easy they were to dominate.

As far as most of Cortland was concerned, New Life Fellowship was a bit odd but acceptable part of the community. While members tended to be somewhat insular, spending most of their time with each other, they seemed to be nice people, with lovely families and well-kept homes. That image came crashing down in the late 80s or early 90s (not sure on the exact date of these incidents).

As the church and school grew, space became a problem. Our church contracted a purchase with the owner of the land behind our propety (between us and the backs of the buildings on Main Street) to expand our sanctuary/school building. At the same time, the city of Cortland was under pressure from downtown businesses to provide more parking.

The city made a counter offer to our church on the land to make it a parking lot, but Freed refused to negotiate. So the city began eminent domain proceedings to take the land for the public good.

Freed immediately framed this within our church as a titanic battle between the church of Christ and the forces of satan. Mistakenly believing the Christian community of the city would rally behind him, he went on the offensive, publishing a full page ad in the Cortland Standard proclaiming the mayor, city council, and church leaders who had come out in favor of the parking lot as violators of the Ten Commandments and enemies of God. Soon after a public hearing about the lot at city hall errupted into a shouting match, with several promient church leaders accusing Freed of blasphemy.

In the end, the city won and New Life did not get the land. But Freed lost far more than a piece of land. This public exposure of his arrogance led to a number of ex church members getting the courage to begin to speak out about the abuses they had suffered in the church. Suddenly New Life members were looked at with suspicion by their neighbors, and one began to hear the word “cult” bandied about, especially after the community began to learn that the church practiced shunning, the deliberate cutting off of ex members by current members from any friendship or interaction.

In the end Freed himself hammered the nail that would end up sealing the coffin on New Life Fellowship in Cortland. Frustrated by his inability to gain prominence with the national leadership of our movement, he turned back to his roots to pursue his ambition for power.

As you may remember, Freed's father was the founder and president of Trans World Radio, one of the largest parachurch non-profits in the world at the time. Freed Senior. was aging and in poor health, and it was not secret that T.W.R was looking for a successor. Pastor Paul put himself forward as a candidate. There was one problem. The culture of T.W.R was decidedly fundamentalist Baptist, while our church was deep in the charismatic-pentacostal movement (baptism in the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues, prophecy, etcetera) , which many at T.W.R would consider sub-Christian at the best and perhaps even demonic.

So Freed decided to unilaterally make New Life a fudamentalist Baptist church literally overnight, without any consultation with his congregation. In the space of one week the music stand Freed typically preached from was replaced by a heavy wooden pulpit. That next Sunday old fashioned hymnals were passed out, and members were told they were no longer allowed to speak in tongues or prophecy or dance in Sunday services.

Despite all these radical efforts, Freed's attempt to fool the T.W.R leadership failed miserably. During their visit to the church to vet him for candidacy to replace his father, they of course spoke privately with church members, many of whom either didn't know better than to be truthful about the way the church had been, or were angry enough aobut the changes to want to expose them.

Freed ended up not only with no chance at taking over T.W.R from his father, his own church began to unravel around him too. For many members who already were waking up to the fact of how much their lives had been manipulated, Freed's brazen attempt to totally change their church for his own gain was the last straw. Families began to leave the church in increasing numbers, and thanks to all the negative publicity, few new people from the community wanted to join.

Soon Freed saw the handwriting on the wall, and suddenly got a new message from God. He was to move to Florida to start his own independent ministry, catering to building marriages and “strong men of God.”

As he was formulating these plans, we experienced our own personal disaster and last straw. My wife and I both had a strong desire to continue our educations and planned to move to Virginia to do so. Even that was a first act of rebellion, as Freed had always told us we didn't need more education.

We put our house on the market and soon had a buyer who was willing to meet our asking price. But then Freed sent his assitant pastor to counsel us not to accept the sale. He said that Freed had a “word from the Lord” that we would get a better offer. Only later did we realize this was really his ploy to try to keep us in Cortland long enought that we might move with him to Florida.

So foolishly, we turned down the offer we had on the table. A few days later Smith Corona announced they were shutting down all Cortland operations, and the bottom fell out of real estate there. We went ahead with our move from Virginia and for two years tried to rent our home from afar, but tenants always got behind on rent and never caught up, and eventually we had to turn our house over to the bank at a total loss. This led to decades of financial hardship for our family.

Freed did move to Florida and New Life Fellowship of Cortland came to an end. Only a handful of the families followed him down south.

In the decades since I and my family have come a far way from those days. We are not only dedicated to never again being fooled by manipulative leaders, but we actively try to help those who are. Still, there is a burden of guilt for my years of enabling Paul Freed that I will never completely loose.

So there you have it. A bizarre little piece of Cortland history that most have forgotten or never knew happened.

You have reached the end of the text.