Is Friday Night a Cult?
by Quinn
It may not be helpful to label Friday Night a cult or not a cult in a binary way. But let’s take a look at cult-like traits and think about which ones are present and which aren’t. We should be cautious about saying “Friday Night has / doesn’t have this one trait, therefore it is / is not a cult.”
Power and Control
On the non-culty side:
Dave does not require people to attend a certain amount, or even show up on time.
Dave allows anyone to bring a teaching.
Dave does not explicitly require anyone to believe in his particular doctrines.
Dave is fairly permissive about members setting up other ministry events that are not monitored by leadership.
On the culty side:
Dave influences people’s personal lives using prophecy, in morally neutral situations, like whom to marry or where to move.
Even when Dave isn’t directly exerting control, Friday Night instills the idea that God regularly gives people very specific direction in their personal lives in morally neutral situations, as opposed to giving people freedom to make their own choices based on general wisdom or personal desires.¹ Since Dave is perceived as being an especially attuned / accurate prophet, people often reach out to him for confirmation of what they believe they heard from God. At that point, whatever Dave says can have enormous influence over that person’s life.
Dave sometimes engages in subtly controlling, condescending behaviors, like telling the group to repeat phrases after him. ² “Repeat after me” is a teaching method that’s mostly done away with by 2nd or 3rd grade. The military uses it, but the military is open about its intense hierarchy. Getting people to comply with things like this may serve to reinforce Dave’s “Papa” identity. It’s also deeply at odds with the kind of egalitarian spirit implied by the “anyone can bring a teaching” idea. Think about it: if someone in the group other than Dave were to say “okay, repeat after me…” how would that be received?
When talking about various theological doctrines, Dave does not present both sides. In fact, he often presents a stupid and/or morally repugnant caricature of views he disagrees with. He spiritually justifies this practice by saying that it’s the way of a prophet to proclaim truth rather than presenting both sides as a teacher would. Uninformed listeners are led to believe that the arguments supporting alternative views are weaker than they actually are, which keeps people believing Dave’s doctrines. It also repels those who don’t agree, since they get sick of hearing their views misrepresented.
Some have experienced “correction” during Friday Night discussions to be heavy-handed and shame-inducing. If people can be intimidated into not sharing / holding views contrary to those of the leader, then Friday Night can maintain the appearance of openness while quietly enforcing adherence.
¹ In the New Testament, highly specific directions from God tend to come in the context of ministry situations, e.g. Acts 13:2.
² Repeating things is part of church liturgy, but liturgies are generally either direct scripture readings or prayers that have been handed down through the centuries. Not teaching points simply written by the current pastor and then imposed on the congregation.
Isolation
On the non-culty side:
Friday Night meets in an urban area, not on a compound in the middle of nowhere.
Friday Night does not directly discourage people from attending other churches. In fact, there have been times in the past when Friday Nighters were attending a wide variety of other churches on Sundays.
On the culty side:
Dave rarely speaks positively of other Christian leaders. The only ones that come to mind for me are Francis Chan, Kay Arthur, and Billy Graham. That’s over a 10-year period.
Dave almost never speaks positively of other churches, and very often bemoans their shortfalls (even if he rarely calls them out by name).
Dave sometimes denigrates people’s families of origin, which may serve to undermine their sense of personal identity outside of the group.
Dave sometimes slanders people who leave the group and/or are critical of him.
Broadly speaking: how does one leave Friday Night? No one’s guarding the exit, so what’s the big deal? Friday Night is good at instilling the idea that most churches on the outside are doing it wrong, even if those exact words are never stated. And so for many (including me, when I was there), the prospect of leaving Friday Night felt like choosing spiritual mediocrity. If Jesus asks us to seek God’s kingdom and righteousness first, then how is leaving a legitimate option?
Finances
On the non-culty-side:
Dave did not strongly emphasize financial giving to his and Kathy’s ministry to the group as a whole.
Dave and Kathy don’t appear to be outwardly wealthy, aside from going on frequent vacations in the last 2-3 years.
On the culty side:
Dave used false prophecy to take $30,000 from Jim and Rebecca. See Thirty Pieces of Silver and The Kidney Donor’s Story.
There is no transparency at Friday Night when it comes to how much money is taken in, how it is spent, etc.
The fact that Dave offered Jim a loan from the church blessing fund rather than a gift raises questions about how much of that money is actually given to anyone. See Thirty Pieces of Silver under “Spiritual guilt deepened our financial desperation.”
Charismatic Leadership
On the non-culty-side:
People at Friday Night are generally willing to question Dave and disagree with him.
On the culty side:
Dave has a special title (“Papa”). No one else in the group has a special title. Unlike other churches that may use special titles for certain offices (e.g. “Father” in a Catholic church), Dave’s title is applied to just him as a kind of special honor that has nothing to do with a pre-established office in the church.
The “Papa” title fits a broader theme of cult leaders taking on surrogate father roles with their followers (David Koresh / Waco Cult, Jim Jones, Charles Manson, Sun Myung Moon of the Moonies / Unification Church, Marshall Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate, and many more).
There have been at least two occasions that the entire group went around and said something positive about Dave. One instance was in 2017 for Dave’s 60th birthday. These were during actual Friday Night meetings, not birthday parties. This would go on for over an hour. One of those times, it may have been for both Dave and Kathy, but this has never happened for anyone else in the group.
Dave is widely considered by people inside the group to be a prophet, despite having a history of false prophecies that even highly committed, longtime members are largely unaware of.
Exclusivity / Superiority
On the non-culty-side:
No information.
On the culty side:
Dave has said (and I quote): “If Calvinism is true, then I don’t know God!” The subtle implication is that Calvinists don’t know God, which is an attack on not just their theological position but their legitimacy as believers.³
Dave sometimes persuades people that they weren’t real Christians until they came to Friday Night. That may be true in some cases. But this dynamic can also serve to delegitimize the person’s life / experiences outside the group.
One person would refer to Friday Night as a spiritual dojo.
I myself used to say that while Friday Night was small in number, it was training people more to be the spiritual equivalent of green berets or Navy seals.
³ John 17:3 “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
Secrecy
On the non-culty side:
No information.
On the culty side:
Getting into the inner circle means becoming privy to otherwise hidden “knowledge,” like Dave’s teaching on polygamy, lust, and porn. However, recently Dave has started teaching these kinds of things out in the open (while instructing the hearers not to say he told them, which gets back to secrecy).
Dave also brought up a weird idea about the Trinity to our Monday Night group that to me sounded suspiciously close to tritheism.
Other
Sometimes cults use specialized insider terminology. We see this at Friday Night with “edification appointments.”
Dave and Kathy seem to have an answer for virtually every problem. I can’t remember any time I went to Dave or Kathy with a question and they said, “Hmm, that’s a good question, I’ll have to get back to you on that one.” Or simply: “I don’t know.”
One common trait in cults is that the person leading the group has no credentials. Dave refers to himself as “God’s joke,” since he didn’t go to seminary, etc.
Many cult leaders are polygamous. Even if Dave never fulfilled this desire, the desire was clearly there (see Cara’s Testimony)
There is a strong theme of “the ends justify the means” that runs through the various testimonies we have compiled, which is common in cults.