Arise Church

As I write this on the Sunday of Easter weekend, it was announced on Saturday evening that John Cameron, lead pastor at Arise church, had resigned his position on the board, though remains as an employee of the organisation. Additionally, his brother Brent had also resigned from the board. This was announced through a statement on their website.

Arise Church has recently risen to prominence in the public consciousness through a series of in-depth investigations by David Farrier of the Webworm blog

Arise is a fairly prominent megachurch, with a claimed membership of around 10,000 people, and 13 locations around the country, as well as online.

As skeptics, most of us probably take a dim view of religion, and in particular churches that exploit people. Here in Aotearoa/New Zealand, it does seem that there are a number of churches that follow a particular playbook of charismatic pastors with large followings in concert-style church sessions with moving rock-based music, and tithing - where belonging to the church means giving 10% of your income. (And it's encouraged that it's 10% of your income before tax - making it even more onerous.)

Rocking on at an Arise conference

The recent controversies with Arise church revolve mainly around how it exploits young people as “interns”. David Farrier has uncovered a large number of people who've been through the intern experience with Arise church.

Traditional internships are meant to be learning experiences. Internships seem to be more common overseas, where people work for free or low pay in exchange for the experience they gain.

With Arise church, interns work long hours and have reportedly been exploited by people in positions of leadership. Examples of interns doing housework or childcare or house renovation have been documented. Interns are doing menial work, probably learning little along the way - certainly not really acquiring skills to make them valuable in their future careers.

And, in addition to working long hours for free, interns have been expected to contribute financially to the church such as paying for tickets to their conferences. The Arise Interns typically work additional jobs to afford living expenses in addition to working for free for the church. This obviously leads to burnout and unhealthy life situations.

Interns are typically young - in late teenage years and early twenties. The pattern seems to be that vulnerable young people, perhaps lacking a sense of belonging, are drawn into the church.

As an aside, this certainly matches with my observations of how Christianity works. Many are typically drawn to it at an early age, but eventually become disillusioned with it and end up walking away from their church, and perhaps belief altogether. I think many in the skeptic community have either observed this or had direct personal experience of it.

Of course, it's easy to justify treating interns with less than due respect when one can claim that they're doing their god's work.

I attended their Easter Sunday service online this morning. It was a slickly produced pre-recorded video. Their services are hosted on YouTube, and people could comment throughout the video. There were the obvious trolls on there, whose comments were quickly removed. But, I read comments from their congregation that expressed obvious hurt and concern about the situation with Arise at the moment, and how it's being handled.

It is interesting to note, from the statement from the board, that John Cameron resigned his position effective on Tuesday 12th April, yet they waited until late Saturday evening (16th April) before publicly announcing it.

Without doubt there are genuine people in the church, and likely most churches are mostly made up of people with genuine intent. The leaders may think they're doing their god's work and fulfilling their destiny and their god's plan for their lives. But exploiting people, seemingly for the greater good, isn't OK. And damn, if it isn't easy to rationalise away the harm done for a greater purpose.

It's early days with the resignation of the Cameron brothers. It's certainly possible that David Farrier's investigations will reveal further issues with the church. Of concern will be whether they'll carry on with business as usual, given that the brothers are still employed.