Gwen Shamblin Lara 14: What Happens When Tammy Faye & A Zombie Have a Love Child?

[formergothardite]

17 hours ago, PrincessDi said:

Every middle-aged mom in Remnant has an unquenchable thirst for Joe Lara. They sit around together and talk rapturously about how handsome, sexy, and talented he is and how he is the perfect complement to Gwen and the standard all men should go by. They will do this in front of their husbands. It is very awkward. It is now part of church doctrine that you must feverishly ship Gwen and Joe

So does Joe look less plastic and annoyed in real life? On the videos he looks like he has had bad plastic surgery and is barely tolerating Gwen. 

[PrincessDi]

4 hours ago, formergothardite said:

So does Joe look less plastic and annoyed in real life? On the videos he looks like he has had bad plastic surgery and is barely tolerating Gwen. 

To be honest, I knew Joe when he first came around Remnant and he always kinda had weird, unsettling vibes. But overall he is highly esteemed by most RFers. I guess a lot of consent was being manufactured because when all of leadership as a unit tells you that you need to love somebody, you love them, and if you don't you sure aren't gonna say anything about it.

I'd say on a whole, Joe is a lot less charismatic on a personal level than Gwen. One thing you might not get from the sermons is Gwen's ability to really look at a person when she wants to and make that person feel like the most important and special person in the universe. It's like being looked through to your soul. It's kind of uncanny and I remember having a conversation with her and feeling awed. I guess when your entire life is spent idolizing a person as a prophet of God, you are easy to impress.

If I could compare it, I'd say Gwen on a personal level is like Immortan Joe to his War Boys in "Mad Max: Fury Road." I've been in the position of feeling ecstatic and overwhelmed just at her saying hi to me. A lot of my life was spent basically screaming "Witness me!" at various leaders so I could convince myself I was a human being deserving of life. That's kind of how kids who grow up there feel. Everything is about bringing glory to the church, living and dying for the church. nothing else matters except being the most useful and self-abnegating cog in the machine.

Looking back on it, I don't know if Gwen was truly that charismatic or I was merely impressionable, but by the time Mr. Tarzan came around I felt the full brunt of uncomfortable cringe when everyone around me was going full Beatlemania for a weird-vibed man who honestly was not as hot as George of the Jungle era Brendan Fraser. ?

[ElleHouston]

I am too a lurker coming out of my shell. I left Remnant about 6-7 years ago and I can honestly say, there is a flock of Saints that does not follow Gwen’s rules at all! As far as leadership, I only called and listened to the one that died in 2009. But yes, this church is crazy. Even though I left years ago, sometimes I want to go back, but God keeps telling me no. One of my best friends still go there and I actually miss her. 

Do anybody know what happened to Michael, Ted, or Rob? Why are they no longer leadership? Ted and Rob were there on day one. I heard Michael gained weight and that’s why he’s not in the limelight anymore. 

Edited January 6, 2021 by ElleHouston
I can’t type lol

[formergothardite]

9 hours ago, PrincessDi said:

To be honest, I knew Joe when he first came around Remnant and he always kinda had weird, unsettling vibes. But overall he is highly esteemed by most RFers. I guess a lot of consent was being manufactured because when all of leadership as a unit tells you that you need to love somebody, you love them, and if you don't you sure aren't gonna say anything about it.

I'd say on a whole, Joe is a lot less charismatic on a personal level than Gwen. One thing you might not get from the sermons is Gwen's ability to really look at a person when she wants to and make that person feel like the most important and special person in the universe. It's like being looked through to your soul. It's kind of uncanny and I remember having a conversation with her and feeling awed. I guess when your entire life is spent idolizing a person as a prophet of God, you are easy to impress.

If I could compare it, I'd say Gwen on a personal level is like Immortan Joe to his War Boys in "Mad Max: Fury Road." I've been in the position of feeling ecstatic and overwhelmed just at her saying hi to me. A lot of my life was spent basically screaming "Witness me!" at various leaders so I could convince myself I was a human being deserving of life. That's kind of how kids who grow up there feel. Everything is about bringing glory to the church, living and dying for the church. nothing else matters except being the most useful and self-abnegating cog in the machine.

Looking back on it, I don't know if Gwen was truly that charismatic or I was merely impressionable, but by the time Mr. Tarzan came around I felt the full brunt of uncomfortable cringe when everyone around me was going full Beatlemania for a weird-vibed man who honestly was not as hot as George of the Jungle era Brendan Fraser. ?

I can easily imagine she has a charismatic personality in real life. To build an empire like she did she would have to.  That is probably one of the reasons the RF folks kept telling us we needed to visit. Of course I doubt they would truly want any of us to visit since we would be walking in knowing exactly what sort of a person Gwen is. Charismatic religious leaders tend to depend on people not really knowing a lot about them as a person. 
 

Joe is a better speaker than Gwen and when they did live videos he would sometimes answer questions reasonably and in a way that didn’t match what Gwen teaches. It is like he doesn’t believe any of that stuff.
 

Do you think Gwen and Joe have a marriage of convenience? They are so awkward and stilted together. Does Joe really constantly pick her up and swing her around? Was no one weirded out by him pretending to be a dog and chasing her?

[quiversR4hunting]

With Covid running rampant (per a post from yesterday) and @ElleHouston bringing up a a leader's death back in 2009, how does the church do funerals? Are they done in the church or are they done at funeral home? I could see Gwen not wanting death to enter her building and thus not holding funeral services. 

[formergothardite]

Has Gwen ever asked for prayer for a sick member on her Facebook page or mentioned the passing of a long time member? I don’t remember seeing anything like that. 
 

[ElleHouston]

@quiversR4hunting I only know of that one death, but they had it at the church. 
 

@formergothardite no, never. You are correct. 

[Smalltowngirltn]

Gwen does do not do funerals.not even for her own grandchild.  They have a private cemetery at her "farm" in Hickman County but as for public funerals NO WAY.  

One of the church leaders young granddaughter had cancer and they did have a lot of members asking for prayers for her and they often ask for prayers for Kent and Regina Smith's brother in law often but that is it.

[formergothardite]

Does she give a reason for no funerals? Are people supposed to be immortal in RF? Even Jesus showed open emotions of grief when a friend died. 

[LifelongRFSurvivor]

The only notable death that i believe RF has ever had was that of Marcus Francis. That name may not sound like anything to anyone, but at RF he is considered a saint. He was an African American man who had a long and painful battle with cancer. Whenever he was brought up to speak, you could hear a pin drop in the sanctuary. I have nothing negative to say about him because as far as I know he and his family were genuinely good people. He had a love for life that I’ve rarely seen paralleled and Gwen used this to her full advantage. After he died, we had a celebration of life for him. But much like Remnant Weddings, it was a warped version. Gwen engineered the service for her own purposes, talking about how dedicated Marcus was to the church and to God. We all watched a tape of him on his death bed praising God and Gwen for helping him get into heaven. Really not a bad way to die, but with the context of everything else going on in the church it was disturbing. Through Marcuses battle with cancer he was Gwens personal show pony and her example of what a perfect remnant member was supposed to look like. He was idolized by everyone and he’s really the only person other than gwen who I ever saw give something similar to a sermon. A few months after Marcus died, I was at summer camp and a new family had joined the church. It was an African American boy and his mother. He too had also battled with illness and he “gave god all the credit” for saving him. The first time he gave a testimony at a youth group, there was a hush among all the children. We had seen this before and even the adults could be heard saying “this is the new Marcus Francis” which personally is an idea I find repulsive. There was a void where “black man dressed in all black with a gold cross on a chain who has a terminal Illess” used to be. That was one of the first times I saw what a cult RF was and that I needed to get out of there. No death I think has been as important to them group as Marcus. And only for the reason that his story did wonders for her organization. New members were often rushed to meet him and his family as part of the love bomb tour on their first visit... 

Edited January 6, 2021 by LifelongRFSurvivor

[ElleHouston]

@LifelongRFSurvivor Yes, I actually joined because of Marcus. I met him, Marayet, and their son in Houston. They are genuinely good people. I would call them if I had a problem and none of them told anyone else. Once he died, it wasn’t them same. She did use his dead for her own personal agenda and I hated that! 

[ElleHouston]

I really hate to say this, but it feels like in order for RF to recruit black people/families, they need a show pony. Now that Marcus is gone, I believe they passed the torch to the Pattons. 

[LifelongRFSurvivor]

I completely agree. So often he gives the same testimony about he used to be “a violent thug” and how now he’s a big marshmallow. (Which is true, Durville is a sweet guy and he’s adorable with his kids) but he’s very tokenized which became clear during the “RF LIFE” Years.  They had a young convert named Tim Lemon, and him as well as some of them other youth leaders started making rap music together and then put on a mini media campaign for the youth as well as some pretty interesting hip-hop concerts. The music was TERRIBLE but it was all part of indoctrinating the kids so that they didn’t “have to listen to music of the world”. That’s whole program got shut down when a couple of those youth leaders took advantage of the “fame” in the church and some of them got back into drugs.. it was suddenly like it never happened and it was never spoken of again. I did get to hang out with a lot of those guys because they were good friends with my siblings. Every time I went to a house “gathering” that wasn’t sanctioned by the church, it was a sad group pf young adults who were pressured into having kids too young, getting married too early and would get drunk and pretend that they were all living “pure” lives. There was always the elephant in the room that they were all kind of messed up in the head. There was a particular time where I actually saw one of the younger guys so drunk he couldn’t hold his own baby. And when his wife took the baby from him, he tried to be all sweet with her and she just rolled her eyes like this was a common occurrence when out with friends. 
Ive never seen a group of college age kids so completely depressed and hopeless with no way to lift each other up.

They didn’t even have the language to encourage each other without religion. Because anything other than trusting god to solve your problems and fix your feelings is selfish and immoral. 

Edited January 6, 2021 by LifelongRFSurvivor

[PrincessDi]

I agree with the previous post ^

Life as a teen and young adult in Remnant is painful and full of quiet despair. The more indoctrinated you are, the more painful your daily existence can be because you are expected to constantly be happy, to have a perfect life full of all these signifiers of success. If you have even minor failures, it is a reflection on your character and worth. Growing up there, you get a firm understanding of how "meaningless" your life is unless you give everything to the church.

I suffered from severe depression for nearly a decade because of the intense cognitive dissonance of growing up extremely sheltered in Remnant. I'd learn little bits about the real world then be forced to confront the fact that the "Divine Truth From God" made no sense logically or morally. Yet in my mind, there was no way out of the church. If I left i believed I would lose everything: my family, my friends, my future. They told us kids that if we left we would have meaningless lives, never experience love or community, and destroy ourselves through addiction. For me, it was much easier for me to imagine committing suicide than it was to leave the church. For that reason I saw death as my only way out of the vast pain and despair I felt being imperfect in a place that constantly demands complete perfection.

It was only after leaving that I realized much of my depression was environmental. I am actually a pretty happy person now that I've left. At least I'm not hiding in the bathroom and weeping for hours at a time because I thought I was the most insane and evil person in the universe.

It is truly terrible how the church weaponizes the stories of ex-members. Every kid who left became a cautionary tale. You'd hear all about their struggles with addiction, their so-called "deviant lifestyles," and especially how they gained weight after leaving. It is all used as a cudgel to keep young people from even considering leaving. You never hear about their successes or their highs, only about the crippling lows.

Of course, so much of the problems encountered by RF kids who leave comes from being suddenly cut off from all material and emotional support, carrying all the scars and traumas of being in a cult, then abandoned out in the Real World with a limited education on how to take care of themselves and be independent.

Independence is considered a sin in Remnant. All the kids I knew were forbidden to go to any college they couldn't commute to from their parents' home. Living alone before marriage was strongly discouraged. Many young adults had their finances controlled by their parents through joint checking accounts. 

They push marriage heavily on young people for many reasons, but the main one is to make it harder to leave. If you are some 18 year old kid, it is much harder to leave if  you still live with your parents. Then add a spouse and a kid you have at 19 and you are bound even tighter to the church. Even if you know you don't truly believe, you will probably stay out of fear of losing your spouse or child. So many kids I know would have no ability to survive outside without great hardship. It is what kept me there so long. I was educated and capable in many ways, but I still thought I was incapable of surviving the outside world.

The learned dependency is the biggest thing about RF. It fills every nook and crevice of your life until you cannot think, breathe, eat, or act without it. I think that is why the food and weight loss aspect is so insidious. You literally cannot go a day without having to put in practice Weigh Down principles. I think it could only be more all-encompassing if Gwen had a system for controlling how much you breathe. 

 

[throwaway9988]

21 hours ago, PrincessDi said:

...I'd say on a whole, Joe is a lot less charismatic on a personal level than Gwen. One thing you might not get from the sermons is Gwen's ability to really look at a person when she wants to and make that person feel like the most important and special person in the universe. It's like being looked through to your soul. It's kind of uncanny and I remember having a conversation with her and feeling awed. I guess when your entire life is spent idolizing a person as a prophet of God, you are easy to impress...Looking back on it, I don't know if Gwen was truly that charismatic or I was merely impressionable...

It’s not just you; I had a similar experience. Gwen was like a celebrity that I loved to secretly despise. Her voice annoyed me, her rambling sermons and terrible logic/philosophy annoyed me even more, and her fundie ideals and kooky cult were directly responsible for ruining my adolescence and tearing my family apart. My opinions about her had been settled for a long time. So when I got called into a disciplinary meeting with Gwen and another leader, I thought I knew what to expect from Gwen and how I would handle it. 

 

Unfortunately, dealing with Gwen in person turned out to be a different ballgame. The first thing that put me off balance was seeing Gwen up close instead of on a television screen or 60 feet away on a stage. Even after moving to Nashville, I hadn’t really ever been this close to Gwen except in passing. Suddenly she had wrinkles, her makeup was caked, and I could see a few dark, postmenopausal hairs on her upper lip. I felt disillusioned, and I didn’t have time to think through my feelings about how Gwen had suddenly become weirdly humanized to me. And all of that worked to Gwen’s advantage when she gave me this look, probably the same look she gave you. It was not a look I had ever seen when she was on stage or when she was interacting with people in more public settings. It made me somehow feel like she was wise (not something any of us here would associate with Gwen, I know, but there you have it).  And the way she looked at me made me feel understood, as if in an instant, she was the first person to actually understand how painful everything about Remnant was for me. It was the opposite of what I had expected, and it was unexpectedly charismatic and powerful. 

 

But then she used that look to impress upon me that all of my anguish was due to my own sins, so why was I torturing myself instead of turning to God and being free from the sins and the pain?  I wish I could go back in time and whisper in my own ear that Gwen’s look was just a look, and that my sins were not sins. And that the pain I was feeling was because of Gwen and what her cult had done to my parents and my life. And that if Gwen was as wise and understanding as that look seemed, she would have the integrity to admit that my pain was her fault and not mine. But what actually happened is that I cried and apologized, and it wasn’t until later that day that I had some time alone to think and figure out what the hell had just happened. I give credit where credit is due, and Gwen possessed a much better toolkit for being a cult leader than I had thought.

Edited January 7, 2021 by throwaway9988

[throwaway9988]

On 1/4/2021 at 11:47 PM, PrincessDi said:

At a youth event, Gwen once had every unmarried person over the age of 19 stand up and berated them for over 2 hours, specifically rebuking girls who refused to go out with "godly" men who were interested in them. Gwen said such girls were spoiled brats who did not deserve the love of a godly man and that it wasn't up to a girl to just say no to a guy because "she wasn't feeling it" or "she wasn't attracted to him." It was up to a girl's parents to determine who she would be with and if they wanted her to date a guy she wasn't interested then she needed to just trust in God and obey her parents. Gwen then waxed on about how superior arranged marriages were. Several girls admitted to having panic attacks afterwards. I suspect several marriages that would not otherwise have happened also came as a result of that particular message.

Wow ? Truly appalling. 
 

On 1/5/2021 at 12:03 AM, LifelongRFSurvivor said:

...One thing that has not been touched on very much is that the youth of RF get barely any sexual education. Which results in a lot of very confused kids getting into trouble and in some cases, having the fbi involved in leaks of nude photos and harassment between children. Plenty of the youth would sneak underneath the chairs in the basement movie theatre to have sex during summer camp and the debauchery that goes on with absolutely no education on how to stay safe is sickening...Also I forgot to mention: I was not allowed to be vaccinated for HPV because it was “the gay vaccine” and also I was told that if I ever had homosexual sex that i would get HIV as a curse from god...so after sleeping with a church leaders son I believed I had HIV until I was 18 and got tested in college and was informed that is not how it works...

Send help, I’m suffering from tea overload

[ElleHouston]

There’s stories of some of the RF ladies getting gastric sleeve. One is their poster child for 200 lbs weight loss. My friend, who is no longer in RF, drove her to the hospital on surgery day. 

[Reallyhatefakes]

I’m horrified my family member is so far from us and now all alone in the cult as her mom has left and she is married into it very young and very quickly this all is so sad. 

[Red Hair, Black Dress]

Questions for our new FJ-ers who are former RF-ers:

Do the elites, those in leadership really and truly believe Gwod's idiocy, or are they just going along  for the money and power?

I'd love some insider tea on the Martins, the Angers and the Days -- especially why the Angers and Days are no longer part of leadership.

 

 

[LifelongRFSurvivor]

3 minutes ago, Red Hair, Black Dress said:

Questions for our new FJ-ers who are former RF-ers:

Do the elites, those in leadership really and truly believe Gwod's idiocy, or are they just going along  for the money and power?

I'd love some insider tea on the Martins, the Angers and the Days -- especially why the Angers and Days are no longer part of leadership.

 

 

This is a very interesting question, one that I have pondered frequently. All of the women in the church seem to be completely sold on everything gwen has to say. As for the men, i think it depends. There is an extreme culture of misogyny present in the church, and there are certainly some men there who enjoy, and abuse their power. But I also know that people who have experience as leaders in their old churches are frequently excluded from doing so for RF. Mostly because Gwen does not support gaining leadership for “praise of man”. In fact a number of men have testimonies about how they went to school for religion or held positions of power, and that when they joined RF they were humbled and thankful to be a follower. And many of them say that giving up that control was a “difficult test from God”. To be in the most inner circle, Gwen needs perfect loyalty. They are her secret service. As far as the Angers and the Days, that is past my time. But there are regional leaders and deacons who are assigned to parts of the country and the world who are in charge of monitoring their activities. These people are not always official “leaders” as listen on the site. And what they show publicly is not always what is true in practice. It could be a subtle way to divert attention away from the ringleaders. It is a very secretive place so to find the method behind madness can be a dangerous game.

[AmazonGrace]

In case you wanted to know what Gwen has to say about recent monumental events: 

 

 

 

[formergothardite]

Well everyone knows that if you exist on diet coke and licking chips every 36 hours you won't have the energy to storm a building and attempt a coup. 

I might be off but I bet Gwen actually supports what happened and is a Trump fan. 

Edited January 8, 2021 by formergothardite

[LifelongRFSurvivor]

I’m confused, is there a link there somewhere? I can’t see one 

[AmazonGrace]

32 minutes ago, LifelongRFSurvivor said:

I’m confused, is there a link there somewhere? I can’t see one 

No, my point was she had absolutely nothing to say. There's been a coup attempt and 4000 Americans died of covid the other day but Gwen hasn't commented on FB or IG and the devotionals are the same old same old. Reading Gwen, you would never know that anyone cares about anything but being thin.     

[LifelongRFSurvivor]

Ohhh yes. She has never talked about politics as far as I am aware. World/national events are never discussed. The way she addresses individual concerns is “Pharaoh was leading Egypt, but God protected the Israelites. Rulers will change, and it is our duty to follow the laws just like they had to follow the rules of the Babylonians and the romans when they were in power.”

I’ve heard this said and repeated to many new my members who were used to churches with a little more patriotism built in. 
 

I remember one service though when it was a Wednesday and also Veterans Day. To be clear, this was before YouCanOvercome so Wednesdays were usually an hour or two of open testimony with no theme. One member gave a short story about something involving free food for veterans they had encountered, or some story about not getting angry at someone who wouldn’t give her a discount. It was somehow her “way of escape” and God telling her not to eat. There was of course uproarious applause. Things resumed normally for a few testimonies and then suddenly a line had formed by the stage and EVERY SINGLE PERSON had something to say about Veterans Day. Not really testimonies mind you, just short stories about Veterans Day experiences or simply “praising god for this beautiful Veterans Day”. This was the first time in my entire RF life that anything patriotic has been addressed and was turned to an attention seeking contest. After maybe 45 minutes of this, leaders were quietly dispersed by Gwen to find out which people in line were going to talk about Veterans Day and sent them back to their seats. (She sat in the front with the main leaders and they would often huddle when she was off stage).

It was very strange and it made me realize that there was a lot more right wing political people in the church than I thought, and given the smallest opportunity, they worshipped soldiers to get attention. 

Gwen never addressed this of course, it was just shut down quickly and quietly with not a word.