Fair warning: this piece contains discussion of abuse. Tread lightly. See the bottom of this story for resources x
It was only a few short weeks ago when journalist David Farrier first broke the story of a long held open secret – ARISE Church are using teenagers to provide excessive unpaid volunteer labour. While ARISE scramble to perform damage control, Instagram account @arisealumni continues to try and make sense of their collective trauma the best way possible – through memes.
“We created [the page] 2 years ago,” an anonymous mod of the account told Nexus. “It began as an opportunity to have a laugh and make light [of the situation], but it has slowly turned into a central point for people to voice their opinion and be heard. Right now, ARISE and [founders] John and Gillian are silent. People want answers and to know what’s happening. For good or not, we’ve somewhat become that voice.”
For those unfamiliar, ARISE prescribe to a loosely Christian based philosophy called ‘Pentecostalism’ – a movement with a strong emphasis on the so-called ‘prosperity gospel’ (God wants you to be rich so if you give the church all of your money He will make you rich), and is generally characterised by huge, expensive buildings with smoke machines and services with high production value. At its worst, this flavour of Christianity leads to leader worship, a strong emphasis on money and image, and spiritual abuse against its own members – all of which is alleged to have been happening at ARISE.
“@arisealumni started as a way for ex-interns and staff members to make light of their experience. Over the last few weeks, it’s defs turned into something a bit more.”
A ‘bit more’ may be an understatement – when David’s first piece was published on April 4, 2022, meme page @arisealumni was sitting at 207 followers. Nine Webworm stories and countless pieces from RNZ, 1News, NZHerald and Stuff later, and @arisealumni’s followers have ballooned to almost 2000. The allegations against ARISE have grown too, with ex-members alleging assault and abuse from the church’s leaders.
“David’s investigation has really provided a lot of light to the darkness of ARISE,” the mods tell us. “We’ve been able to ride in the slipstream of David’s articles.”
“As an ex-ARISE intern, I knew this day would come, but never expected it to arrive.”
As well as posting memes, @arisealumni has served as a ‘town square’ of sorts for ex-ARISE members to tell their stories of their time within ARISE and their internship programme. Every day, harrowing new accounts of abuse are sent to the page via direct message and shared anonymously via stories – which can take a toll on the person curating them.
“It’s been really difficult. Heartbreaking would be another way to describe it. Coming from this environment, I knew there was hurt, but didn’t expect anything to this magnitude. We have been flooded with hundreds of people sharing stories – some so bad, we’ve avoided posting them.”
“We’ve been encouraging people to engage in the Pathfinders investigation or report things to police, if it’s potentially criminal.”
It’s not just ex-ARISE members gathering around @arisealumni, though – ARISE leadership are (allegedly) desperately trying to shut the Instagram account down, dox whoever is running it, and further silence their victims.
“This page is despised by a lot of their staff,” the mods told us. “As David has reported, ARISE has a legal team that makes sure things don’t go public. They don’t want the stories to be told. We’ve had 24 notifications about people trying to reset the passwords, and staff members have sent us links to try and reveal our IP address.”
“They want to minimise as much of the damage as possible. I think they will attempt to take legal action.”
While the internal and criminal investigations in to ARISE Church continue, and more and more victims come forward, @arisealumni continues to be a safe space for ex-members to share their stories and try to make sense of what has happened to them. And despite attempts from ARISE to shut the page down, they’ve survived this long – and aren’t showing any signs of slowing down.
“I was an intern when this page was first created a few years ago and it was a big deal. People freaked the fuck out.”
If you have been affected by anything in this story, David Farrier’s blog Webworm has some great resources on navigating spiritual trauma. If you have experienced abuse in ARISE Church, you can contact the investigative board here. For ARISE staff members wanting more information on this story, click here.
