Inside the Inner Circle

by Quinn

Note: Ryan and William are pseudonyms

I was part of Dave’s inner circle at least as far back as January 2021.   I left in March 2025.

Ryan, William, and I would meet with Dave for 2.5-3 hours each Monday night to plan out our Friday Night ministries, discuss any issues that had come up, study scripture, talk about what was going on in each of our lives, and pray.  Two other men were part of the group at different points, but they don’t play major roles in the story below.

This inner circle was one part of what Dave considered his accountability structure.  From time to time, he would ask us what his faults are / what we thought he could do better.  This fostered an image of humility and teachability.

However, problematic things happened in this inner circle.

Polygamy and Naked Girls

We have noticed a pattern at Friday Night that as you get closer to Dave, you learn more and more of his oddball theological beliefs.

Having heard a lot of Dave’s thinking on sexuality, I will attempt to explain it as a system of thought.  Take it with a grain of salt as I’m trying to systematize mostly isolated comments, but I do think it paints a coherent picture.

If it feels like I am divulging too much of Dave’s personal life, consider that this is not what he talked to his counselor about, or discussed with his wife in the bedroom.  These are his teachings.  While he may have desired to reserve these teachings for a certain select group, I see no biblical precedent for that kind of thing.  If it’s really God’s truth, then the whole church should know and benefit from it.  Similarly, some of the other stories divulge details about Dave that may seem deeply personal.  Keep in mind that we are talking about things he said and did while operating in his capacity as a ministry leader.

The foundation is his belief that polygamy is not a sin.  He correctly points out that the Old Testament never directly calls it a sin, and there are men who are portrayed as righteous who have multiple wives.  The best example is probably King David, whom the text does not condemn for having multiple wives in general, but only when he takes another man’s wife (Bathsheba).  The only direct New Testament warning against polygamy is 1 Cor 7:2,¹ but in context it doesn’t sound like a universal command.

Ultimately, however, Dave’s line of thinking is difficult to hold onto.  When Jesus is asked about divorce, He grounds His response in creation, not the Mosaic law.²  If one were to think about polygamy in the context of creation, what might be the conclusion? We would observe that God could’ve given Adam multiple wives but He did not.  (Personally, I think an argument can be made against slavery on similar grounds: why didn’t God give Adam a servant so he didn’t have to tend the garden?)  Additionally, in the first century polygamy was rare both among Jews and in the surrounding Roman society.  So the fact that the New Testament didn’t prohibit it (if you buy that 1 Cor 7:2 isn’t a prohibition) could simply be because it wasn’t a topic of controversy or interest at that point in history.

Regardless, Dave’s belief that polygamy is not a sin is foundational to his sexual ethics.  It segues right into his belief that it’s not a sin for a married man to sexually fantasize about a single woman.  The way he would put it is that it’s only a sin to fantasize about a woman that one “could not legitimately obtain” (that phrase is a direct quote, though it’s been years since I heard him use that exact verbiage).  Since polygamy is legitimate, the implication is that one could legitimately obtain any single woman, even if one is married.  Therefore, all single women are legitimate objects of fantasy.

Sometimes, he would say that simply having a lustful thought isn’t sin until you actually hatch a plan to go and commit the act.  If you take that to its logical conclusion, you could justify entertaining any sexual fantasy.

Every now and then, Dave would bring up the topic of looking at a “naked girl”.  He essentially wanted to know if we felt it would be okay to look at an image of a naked girl every now and then.  He did not use the terminology of “porn,” though it’s my understanding that in a separate conversation with another group he did.  He emphasized the idea of moderation and said it was like drinking a beer but not getting drunk.  Dave brought this up at least twice to our inner circle, possibly more.  I remember responding once by saying if “looking at a naked girl” is like drinking a beer, then looking at today’s internet pornography would be like injecting heroin.  Ryan agreed with me.

Dave would also indicate he did not feel a husband needed to be straightforward with his wife about any kind of porn problem he might have.  He once asked something along the lines of, “Where does it say in the Bible that a husband has to share all of his struggles with his wife?”  That’s a legitimate point; the Bible doesn’t say that.  The problem is that Dave’s take on this is still rooted in the belief that polygamy is not a sin.  If downright taking a second wife is legitimate, then certainly fantasizing about it is also.  Under that line of thinking, a husband who looks at porn may be sinning against God, but he’s not sinning against his wife.  (But, going back to the whole “naked girl” thing, Dave may not think it’s a sin at all, I’m not sure.)

Since it’s on the topic, I will also recount something Dave said openly to Friday Night years ago.  He told us that he and Kathy had once been dealing with a couple where the wife had cheated on the husband.  I do not remember if he specified when the infidelity occurred (i.e., while the couple was dating, engaged, or married).  He told us that they advised the woman not to tell the man.  If I recall correctly, the reasoning was some combination of “we prayed about it” and “we felt it would only cause emotional harm with no benefit.”  There may have also been an element of it only being a one-night stand versus a prolonged affair; I do not remember.  Dave told us later that Kathy got upset that he shared the story in front of everyone at Friday Night.  But there was no indication Kathy contested his version of the events.  In other words, as far as the actual decision to give that woman that counsel, it appears Kathy either went along with it or instigated it.

I took some time to reflect on the counsel Dave and Kathy gave this woman.  Aside from the obvious fact that hiding a massive infraction against your spouse doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that’s going to be conducive to a healthy relationship, the advice is deeply controlling.  Dave teaches that adultery is not grounds for divorce.  While this viewpoint isn’t unheard of in the church, it is a minority position.  But what’s so deeply problematic is that the husband may or may not have held to that doctrine.  By encouraging the woman to keep her offense secret, Dave and Kathy took away the husband’s chance to decide for himself what constitutes legitimate grounds for divorce and make his own decision.  It is a violation of his personhood.  And again it fits the pattern of control being exerted specifically over dating / marriage.

¹1Cor. 7:2 But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband.

² See, for example, Matthew 19:1-12.

Fake Accountability

When someone had a problem with Dave, the consistent pattern was that Dave would receive the complaint and filter it down to us through his perspective.  Of course there could have been complaints we never heard about as well (we would have no way of knowing).  Still, it felt like Dave often wanted our approval, like he wanted us to tell him that the other party was in the wrong.

We were never encouraged to reach out to the complainant and hear their side of the story.

There was never a time that we sat down with the complainant and Dave so that we could hear both sides directly.

In two cases of spiritual abuse that are not currently being shared publicly, the victim confronted Dave (without us there), and Dave subsequently painted a distorted picture of the situation to us.  In one case, Dave’s misrepresentation of the situation (which he did mostly by omitting key facts) is so egregious that, in my opinion, it disqualifies him from ministry leadership on its own.  The glaring omissions painted a picture that falsely exonerated Dave while slandering the victim. In both cases, I found out much later what the full truth was.

One Odd Case

One man had apparently committed some kind of sexual impropriety with one of the women in the group, and Dave asked how we felt the situation should be handled, without giving us enough detail to accurately judge the severity.  I told Dave openly that the severity of the offense was important to our being able to assess how the situation should be handled.  He provided a vague response, and then proposed his own solution, which involved the individual being allowed to attend Friday Night but not being allowed to speak in group discussions.