Newspaper Article

Once you join church, it's tough to quit
By Bill Alnor
Delaware County Daily Times June 30, 1986

Church of Our Saviour defectors say that a natural outgrowth of church teaching is that members believe that no one has the right to leave the church once they join. If they do, they are threatened with God's wrath that may kill them.

In a sermon tape recorded in 1983, for example, Frederick Drummond offered anyone in his congregation $5,000 if they could prove a valid Biblical reason for leaving a congregation after joining. Drummond then went on to say the only two ways a member could leave is "in a casket ... if they bury you" or "if we put you out."

According to Hal Likes, 25, who is related to the wife of a brother of Drummond, when he left the church in mid-June for the third time in six years, "Mrs. Drummond prophesied to him in a telephone conversation) that I'd be dead or I'd never do anything for God again." Likes lived with Drummond at his $500,000 mansion near Foulk Road, Bethel Township in previous years.

Earlier this year, Likes said, Drummond "told me in front of the church that if I ever left I'd be
dead since I had so many chances that God would kill me. God would give up on me."

During a combative telephone interview on Saturday morning Drummond denied preaching that members of his church may be killed if they leave his church.

But tape recordings of Drummond's sermons leave little doubt that Drummond sometimes advances the idea that God may strike down those who leave the church.

In a sermon delivered on Feb. 19, 1984, long after the death of former member Paul Nelms in an automobile accident Drummond recounted how the accident occurred after he warned the member that God may take his life unless he straightened up and began to live a committed Christian life. (During Saturday's interview Drummond said he re-members delivering the sermon but that he wasn't implying ' that Nelms had died because he left his church.)

'"Paul I want to tell you something,'" Drummond said, recounting the purported conversation with Nelms during his sermon, "At this point I believe you are playing with God and you're playing with your life. I don't know what else God can do to get your attention other than the grave.' Paul looked at me and said `don't say that, you'll scare me.' I said, Paul, I'm not trying to scare you. I'm trying to wake you up. '''

About a month later Drummond said in his sermon, Nelms' wife called him and told him about how she had to go to a morgue in Ohio and identify her dead husband. "'here lying on the slab, stone dead was her husband,'" Drummond said with his voice rising. "And she said, Dr. Drummond, I want you to know something, THAT SAME DAY he said to me, if I don't start serving God I pray he kills me. That night he was on a marble slab."