By Jordan Varney and Emily Dill
This article is one of a multi-part series on a church in Davis, California, called Grace Valley Christian Center. Part 1, Part 2 (this one), Part 3.
Grace Valley Christian Center History and the Shepherding Movement
P. G. Mathew, the pastor at Grace Valley Christian Center (GVCC), was born in India. According to one source, he came from “a long line of Indian Christian pastors” and was taught from childhood the “superiority of his pedigree.” The source relayed a story where Mathew’s father “discouraged him from playing ball” because he should not play “games which were considered unspiritual.”
Mathew originally started out in graduate school for chemistry but “he felt called by God to preach the gospel,” a source said. Mathew collected multiple theological degrees, including one from Westminster Theological Seminary.
According to a source, Mathew came to Davis in 1973 at the request of Bishop Ronald Coady, pastor of Trinity Cathedral in Davis, to teach at the newly inaugurated Saint Justin’s Theological Seminary. It appeared Mathew came highly recommended from his position in Vancouver where he led a youth group.
However, Bishop Coady apparently later shared with people that the job in Vancouver had “begged him to hire [Mathew] because his harsh ministerial habits were destroying the group and causing division among the church leadership.”
Mathew seemed to follow a similar behavioral trend in Davis. In 1974, at the request of some seminary students who were unhappy at Saint Justin’s, Mathew started a charismatic bible study. This later became Davis Evangelical Church (renamed to Grace Valley Christian Center in the mid ‘80s). According to a source, he adopted a church government structure that “gave him all the real authority and the members none.”
Someone described the changing nature of the church as “over time, the church would become more and more authoritarian, controlling and centered on the honoring and exaltation of the pastor, demanding absolute and unquestioned obedience from its congregants.”
Mathew “installed or deposed elders and other leaders at will, which meant he was accountable to no one, but everyone was accountable to him,” the source shared.
An expert on Indian Christianity that the Vanguard talked to explained this style of Christianity. “There can often be a real cultic personality surrounding charismatic pastors,” they said, “and that can be in almost any denomination but especially in more conservative denominations where there’s less suspicion of strong structures of hierarchy and authority.”
When asked about the type of authority at GVCC the expert said, “A pastor who is well trained, has several seminary degrees and who knows the bible well, may also have a very paternalistic sense of his relationship to less educated people in his congregation.”
In the late 70’s, P. G. Mathew joined the fledgling church to the Shepherding Movement. The Shepherding Movement was, as explained by a source, “a large group of churches across the United States that formed a vast hierarchy under five prominent pastors in Fort Lauderdale. The movement stressed ‘serving and honoring’ leaders, ‘covenant’ relationships with (for the most part) unquestioned obedience.”
Pat Robertson, conservative Christian Televangelist, wrote an open letter in 1975 lambasting the Shepherding Movement. He called the movement “an unnatural and unscriptural domination of one man by another.” He said the “very sincere brethren” in the movement he ran into used “cultish jargon.”
In his open letter, Robertson described how he learned “wealthy Christian friends were being forced not only to divulge the most confidential details of their financial and family life, but were being urged to pour their resources [sic] into the pockets of the head ‘shepherds.’”
Once a shepherd is picked, Robertson reported that following them is “more binding than a marriage.”
Robertson said, “those ‘submitted’ are under the control of their ‘shepherd’s’. [A former employee] tells of a pregnant woman who could not visit a gynecologist until her ‘shepherd’ approved it. ‘Another couple were told by their ‘shepherd’ to stop living together as man and wife. ‘Sheep’ cannot buy a car, a home, take a trip, a vacation, or engage in any other activity of any magnitude without permission of their shepherd.”
Robertson quoted a devotee as saying, “If God Almighty spoke to me, and I knew for a certainty that it was God speaking, and if my shepherd told me to do the opposite, I would obey my shepherd.”
After receiving criticism, the founders of the Shepherding Movement began to disavow what they had created. Eventually the leading organization—and the accountability structure it maintained—was disbanded.
Dismantling the top of the Shepherding Movement, however, did not appear to take apart the many churches across America that used this structure, including GVCC.
As one former member of GVCC described it: “[Y]ou have someone in absolute authority”; when the larger Shepherding Movement disbanded “we lost the only accountability that we had” and they ended up with “your classic narcissistic personality cult.”
Recruitment, Growth, and Retention
Over time, GVCC grew. GVCC gains members in several ways: they recruit families of children from their school, Grace Valley Christian Academy; they have a college group at UC Davis called Grace Alive; and they encourage their members to marry each other and have babies.
As one source explained, “For years, the source of new members was college students, and that’s the way that it was in the very beginning…but what they noticed is that these kids would graduate from college and leave to go elsewhere, so they realized the way to keep these students in the church is to get them married, and it really really works.” Another source explained that “love bombing is big for recruiting, especially on the UC Davis campus.”
A source provided a screenshot of the document Grace Alive members use to track who is responsible for retaining new members, explaining “whenever a college age visitor comes to a club meeting on UC Davis campus or a church service at Grace Valley a college member of GV is assigned to reach out, befriend, and recruit them.
Each visitor is assigned a primary and a support person. The primary takes the lead on reaching out and the secondary follows the primary’s lead and offers additional outreach support. To clarify, the visitors have no knowledge of this because only the members who have been baptized and signed the church contract are involved in this.”
In terms of accountability to the leaders of GVCC a source said that “each week the primary and support people have to report how their outreach efforts are doing and what they are learning about their assigned visitor.”
A source emphasized the control the church has over Grace Alive by stating, “As a UC Davis campus student organization, Grace Alive is required to operate independently of the church with which it is affiliated….Two former Grace Alive presidents revealed that they were not elected by the members of Grace Alive, as dictated by University policy, but were appointed by leaders of the church.”
Once GVCC has new members, it employs many methods to retain them, including, day to day control/submission to the church, signing a life covenant, threats of being shunned by the community for leaving, and verbal, emotional, and spiritual abuse. All of these tactics will be detailed in future articles.
Succession
P. G. Mathew, sources estimate, is in his late 80’s and the line of succession for the church is not completely clear. P. G. Mathew has a son and a daughter. The son, Evan, runs one of GVCC home groups but is not listed as a minister on the GVCC website.
Mathew’s daughter, Sharon, is the principal of Grace Valley Christian Academy. Her husband, Gregory is listed as a minister on the website. There are also other ministers that have been with the church since the founding that are close to P. G. Mathew.
Many sources agreed that Sharon is the natural successor to her father except for one thing, she’s a woman. One source explained, “Since GVCC claims to be a conservative Reformed church, women are not supposed to hold positions of authority over men.”
One source stated, “People presently at GVCC [sic] might be wondering ‘why does Sharon have so much power?’ after hearing so many years about the necessity of male church leadership.” Sharon, from reports, seems to be made in her father’s image and runs the academy similarly to how her father runs the church.
One source said that it is made clear to children at the school that orders are to be obeyed “immediately, exactly, and with joy.” They went on to say that “the worst thing that has ever happened to that school was her becoming the principal.”
The Christianity expert the Vanguard interviewed suggested that “in churches that are characterized by charismatic leadership, there is no clear heir apparent; they tend to break up afterwards particularly if they are a large church like this. Another possibility is they break up into smaller churches following the junior pastors.”
The former GVCC members the Vanguard talked to postulated who might succeed P. G. Mathew. One source said, “Many former members of GVCC are speculating that the church leadership will eventually pass to Sharon’s husband, Rev. Gregory Broderick, who, after marrying Sharon, was baptized and put on the fast track to leadership.”
This article is one of a multi-part series on a church in Davis, California, called Grace Valley Christian Center. Part 1, Part 2 (this one), Part 3.
It’s also big on the Vanguard.
All those initially-kind comments, trying to draw folks in and convince them of your point.
Just kidding. Seems like we skip right to the “second step” on here. Or at least, those who have been commenting for awhile.
I’ve only been casually following the series itself (not even reading the entire articles), but it seems like there might be an actual story here. Might be helpful to see a summary of what someone believes is occurring, and whether or not there’s still a problem.
Less-educated as to what? The bible?
Hey, it’s in nightstand of every hotel in the U.S., if you want to read it. (Probably an exaggeration.) I’ve never been able to get beyond the first couple of sentences.
Though as I get older, I see something underlying all religions in regard to (founding) principles. Probably because I more clearly-see my own mortality.
Deep! (Deep something, anyway.)
It’s probably that “soul” that everyone talks about.
Though my favorite soul is “Soul Kitchen”, by The Doors.
Season 3 just dropped on HBO
Sounds not unlike “Succession” on HBO, actually.
Poor Evan . . . wasn’t the son P.G. had hoped for . . .
Oh, that Gregory, he’s a spitfire . . . watch out . . . and again, poor Evan.
Great series . . . great reporting . . . great education for people as to how cults form . . . yet as a society and as individuals, cults keep happening in the exact same patterns, despite our ‘learning’. Maybe we need an anti-cult vaccine for our children. Or a horse de-wormer . . .
I dunno…these articles kind of come off as a hit piece. Is Grace Valley Christian Church a cult? It certainly sounds like a cult based on what’s written here. But if people want to live in a cult that’s their business. Where do you draw the line in religious (or any type of organized gathering) that qualifies as a cult?
The initial article mentioned some possible illegal things associated with the Grace Valley Christian Church and that certainly needs to be exposed. But in two articles that actual “meat on the bone” substance equates to a few sentences without much follow up. Most of the articles have been about telling us about behaviors of the person/people in charge of Grace Valley that most of the rest of us would find objectionable or even out right outrageous. There are aspects and practices of all kinds of religious organizations that many would find objectionable and/or outrageous. But again at what point is it worthy of writing an expose article about? Again, illegal activity absolutely….everything else? Live and let live.
I think the Vanguard editors need to tell the authors of this series of articles to get the point of what they want to say about Grace Valley Christian Church and truly determine if the content goes beyond simply pointing out how much the greater community might not like the organization’s behavior and that they have verifiable evidence or accounts of serious problems going in which an expose can help fix or prevent.
Well, if they buy property in Waco, TX or Guyana, I’d be REAL concerned…
Unless one feels that Branch Davidians, People’s Temple were OK, because people ‘chose to belong’…
I’ve “third-hand” known of some very ‘societally disturbing’ events that have torn apart families, had very bad outcomes for individuals… nothing I can reliably cite with documentation…
But it’s not just religions… some people ‘choose’ to send huge chunks of their life savings to things like a ‘government in exile’ in Nigeria, etc. There are two issues: when do societies act to protect others from ‘bad choices’? Do we allow folk to be abused because it is ‘their choice’, regardless of ‘coercion’?; what can be done, should be done, beyond ‘consumer alerts’, information… so far, I think the first two installments are in the latter issue…
I have no answers, but think it’s good to ask questions, challenge assumptions…
I draw the line at illegal activity.
Yes, people have the right to mess up their own lives. Maybe free will (or the illusion of free) isn’t for everyone? The world is a scary place where the certainty of some things like religious beliefs help them manage. Maybe some need even more structure in their lives (like submitting their financial and personal information) to some controlling entity. Maybe kind of a religious Britney Spears court conservatorship kind of thing…where for Britney it didn’t work out for after awhile but for Amanda Bynes it works (you gotta give me some credit for my teen pop court conservatorship references). I know it sounds completely outrageous and bizarre to the rest of us….but if it works for them so be it.
As I said, there were brief mentions of alleged illegal behavior in the first article. But not much was expanded on it. If that’s going on…yeah shine a spot light on it, expose it and shut it down.
Where do you draw the line between an informative expose (asking questions) and a hit piece/article with a targeted negative agenda towards it’s target because you disagree with them or how they choose to live?
Let’s “unpack this”… a term I’m somewhat loathe to use…
I personally ‘draw the line’ when I think the questions are inherently unfair (from what I’ve heard, confirmed and the linkage to ‘Trinity Cathedral in Davis’ where I knew some students closely affiliated with it, and as a personal courtesy attended one service in the early 70’s), and these appear to not be “unfair questions”, but ones that have come up because former member “stepped forward”, expressing concerns… their stories… I have heard similar from 20 years ago, so not ‘news’.
Whether it is a “hit piece” remains to be seen… personally, can’t tell if it’s that, or a well-meant “warning”… am reserving judgement, and will feel free to ‘believe’, ‘comment on’, or hit the DEL key as I see fit. But I see and ‘smell’ smoke, that fits with previous experiences, and information (from several who knew/know folk directly involved).
You may want to google Bishop Ron Coady…
No, not that at all… the Branch Davidians, People’s Temple folk made their choices… they ‘dealt with it’… many dying… ask their survivors about the disagreements with the beliefs/lifestyle… as did that group awaiting a spaceship and committing suicide (can’t remember the name of that So Cal group)… would disclosing ‘weird’ things in those groups earlier, saved lives, families? I don’t know… and probably the only (except most altruistic) people who care are the immediate families… should society care? No opinion, here.
I think you read too much into my earlier post…
Peoples’ Temple, for sure, was praised by one or two mainstream church leaders, SF/Oakland Govt’ leaders praised them, and only when some former members/family members spoke out, did my then-Congressman Leo Ryan go down to Guyana to investigate… that did not turn out well for pretty much anyone. Don’t think I’ve had Kool-Aid since then…
As you said, “where do you draw the line”? Time will tell… I can deal with any outcomes, as it doesn’t involve me or my family… I may point to those outcomes with a laugh, a cry, or a “I told you so…” too soon to tell… and yes, Davis-based family members “drank the Kool-Aid”…
In the meantime, I think the series should not be stifled (as if we could) until it concludes…
That’s just the thing, though, a huge portion of GVCC members *aren’t* there by choice. They were born into the church, because the church requires members to intermarry and have kids in the church…who are never allowed to leave or have close friendships outside the church. I grew up at GVCC and when I left, I lost nearly everyone I knew. I never asked to be a part of GVCC, yet I knew from a very early age that if I left, I wouldn’t be allowed to talk to my family anymore. This is to say nothing of all the verbal abuse that goes on; for example I was constantly told as a kid that I was full of demons, that Satan was prowling outside my door, and that I had to hate myself if I wanted to get into heaven. That left a lot of lasting damage that I now have to deal with in my adult life.
If those kids *do* eventually leave, they are cut off from their entire network of family and peers. Their reputation among their closest friends will turn to crap overnight. Is that illegal? No, but it’s still terrible and abusive behavior. It’s no way to treat people, particularly impressionable kids. And especially considering GVCC has its own K-12 private school, the community deserves to be warned and made aware of what goes on there.
Yes, this is EXACTLY it. The man above says, “live and let live.“ But there are bad have been many, many people in the cult who have had no choice. Even if someone joined by choice, getting out is at the risk of virtual losing their entire life as they know it. I was there as a toddler when my parents migrated from Coady‘s church to follow Matthew. How I grew up, the following 18 years of my life, was an absolute nightmare, and leaving the cult at age 20 cost me literally everything. It took 30 years to recover. That anyone would minimize the points being made in these articles is astounding. It has been made very clear here that the committed members outreach into the community and draw people in with their charisma and enthusiasm, but it is like an anglerfish. I am for one so grateful that this despicable organization is being exposed. Maybe it will serve to warn the public, prevent more people from joining, and perhaps even give those who want to get out a little extra courage to take the steps to free themselves from the spiritual tyranny of that cult.
As a somewhat, long standing resident of Davis, as well as a health care provider, I would really like to see someone put time and energy into getting out there and interviewing former GVCC members and being the VOICE for these poor SURVIVORS! There are people from all walks of life, who have made it out of that toxic, unhealthy environment and are now dealing with some serious PTSD as a result of their time there. Certainly enough to make a movie or a book and to further expose these people at GVCC.
Worth consideration… but to what end?
Lynch mob?
Revoking tax-exempt status?
Criminal prosecutions? Civil suits?
Or the idea of ‘disclosure’, warning folk what they might be getting into?
You have been granted “posting immunity” with a nom de guerre… unlike almost all of us… if you are a ‘victim’, act on that! If not, then as a “health care provider”, aren’t you obliged to report abuse to the authorities? Under ‘professional immunity’?
I support the “disclosure/warning” thing… very much.
But your ‘anonymous‘ post is just more ‘speculation’/innuendo, unless you are willing to come forward as a “victim”, a “health care professional”, or both… fish or cut bait…
I am neither a victim, nor a “health care professional”… yet,
implies you know more than you’re willing to let on to… I may be wrong… but if I am, I see no reason for the ‘anonymous’ post…
Yes! Thank you! We are actually working towards that as well. The survivors are working on a podcast as well (website linked below) so that our voices can be heard and the public informed. Thank you for your empathy and desire to expose this dangerous organization! http://www.theartofdecultstruction.com
Why are people afraid to use their real names, here?
Is the implied “cult” going to reach out and get them (or those whom they’re close to, who are still involved with it)?
Do they have a lot of influence outside of their own walls? Why are they even important to anyone, who has made a break from it?
Are they like a gang who will track you down and make you “pay” (e.g., with your kneecaps)?
Never even heard of them, before. Should I have?