After decades of use by a cult, future of Palmer Lake property now in the hands of citizens

The Gazette, Colorado/October 13, 2024

By Savannah Eller

Walking around the abandoned compound of The Living Word Fellowship in Palmer Lake provokes an overwhelming sense of interruption.

“It’s like they woke up one morning and said, ‘Let's leave,’” said Reid Wiecks, Palmer Lake Parks Commission chair.

Exploring the 28-acre former compound one foggy morning, the septuagenarian volunteer points out a grand piano in the worship space, ready for a service but for the thick layer of dust. Trash sits in piles. A coffee mug rests on a kitchen window ledge.

The debris left behind tells a story of hasty departure.

The property was a longtime location of The Living Word Fellowship, an international organization that took in thousands over its 70-year history and is now widely considered to have been a cult.

The Palmer Lake compound, converted from a former Salvation Army summer camp in the 1980s, served as a regional hub and maintained a high-water congregation of about 100 out-of-state transplants.

They kept to themselves on the outskirts of Palmer Lake, a historic small town north of Colorado Springs. Members worked in Living Word-approved companies, had major relationships tightly regulated by the church, and spent long hours in worship services and unpaid volunteer work.

In 2020 and early 2021, representatives of the church brought town officials an unexpected offer that could not be passed up: a donation, free and clear, of the entire property. The Living Word Fellowship had quietly collapsed almost overnight in the wake of a far-reaching sexual abuse scandal.

The upside was a rare, pristine chunk of land in a desirable area near the mountains. The town would never get an opportunity like this again.

The downside was aging, expensive buildings in disrepair that would tax the budget, and the goodwill, of a close-knit community. Simmering underneath, an air of bad feelings existed among those who knew — or heard rumors about — what happened to The Living Word Fellowship.

The gift of the land and remaining buildings to the town has proven controversial — for some, bitterly so.

One approved project for the land, that of an eco-spa on 3 acres, is in the planning stages. But what to do with the rest has neatly split the community. The issue has become contentious enough that Palmer Lake voted to approve mediation among the trustees and mayor at a recent meeting, and the property has been the source of a petition and protests from community members.

What has deadlocked the town is the fate of the seven cabins down the slope from the main sanctuary, arranged in a circle in a clearing by the nearby creek. The wood-sided cabins are in disarray, the evidence of vandalism and theft strewn around inside among bunk beds left in the organization’s swift departure.

“I just don’t understand the hate over 28 acres that should be a blessing for future generations,” said Palmer Lake Mayor Glant Havenar.

Following 'The Walk'

“Loins girded, shoes on feet and staff in hand and ye shall eat it in haste,” ends a line from the book of Exodus that entitles a John Robert Stevens sermon taped in 1971 in South Gate, Calif. The former Assemblies of God pastor delivers a circuitous message, held together with a folksy inflection and liberal use of his thick, black glasses as an emphasis device.

By then, Stevens was years into the formation of Living Word, alternatively known as “The Walk” by adherents. Splintered from the Latter Rain movement, itself a revivalist offshoot of Pentecostal Christianity, the church was founded in 1951. Through the 1960s and '70s, local churches affiliated with Living Word cropped up across the country, centered on Stevens’ revelations and the tight financial control of his growing Apostolic Company.

By the 1970s, Stevens’ organization had its crowning achievement: a 900-acre compound and convention center adjacent to a small town in rural Iowa. Called Shiloh, the facility boasted a 90,000-square-foot main building, a dining hall, outdoor amphitheater, recreational lakes and playing fields. A 2019 California lawsuit settled out of court against The Living Word Fellowship alleges that most of the buildings were built using unpaid and child labor.

At its peak, Living Word had about 100 local churches and 10 in other countries. After Stevens’ death in 1983, his wife, Marylin Holbrook, and her new husband Gary Hargrave seamlessly took over operation of the organization.

One of those local churches was in Des Moines, where Larry Bobo’s father, a Baptist minister, pulled the family in after breaking with their former church when he was 14. After experiencing what he described as an excommunication from mainstream Christianity, the family cleaved to an intense religious community.

Now a longtime community member of Palmer Lake, Bobo said that services at his childhood church occurred as many as 17 times a week.

“It was a lifestyle,” he said. “It wasn't a casual, show-up-on-Sunday commitment. It was all-encompassing.”

As a teenager, Bobo experienced two instances of sexual assault perpetrated by members of the Living Word When he was 15, Bobo was assaulted by a traveling ordained minister with the Living Word who was staying in his room. He was also abused by an older woman around the same time who was involved in his church.

He said he believed those instances were not indicative of a culture of sexual abuse in Des Moines at the time and separates that experience from later accounts he heard from others who were abused by adults in a position of trust. He did not tell his parents about any of the incidents.

He did, as a father, have a new perspective on what happened.

“It seemed a lot wronger [sic] when I had a 15-year-old son than when I was young,” he said.

After high school, Bobo went to school to be an electrician, sponsored by a Living Word business, where he was later employed. While some Living Word “kingdom” businesses were exploitative toward employees, Bobo had a normal wage and work schedule. The Des Moines congregation, he felt, was one of the better branches.

“It really varied with whoever happened to be your local pastor,” he said. “Some of them were relatively healthy, while some of them were very toxic.”

Like in the biblical book of Exodus, however, members of The Walk were not allowed to stay in one place long. The moves served as power shake-ups for local congregations and as a means of control.

Bobo’s parents left the group after being asked to move to a different church at a lower status. Bobo went along with orders, first to a location in Grand Junction in 1982.

Bobo was in Grand Junction for two years. In 1984, Bobo became one of the founding members of the Palmer Lake location, helping convert the Salvation Army camp. The major buildings of the compound were lightly retrofitted to suit the needs of the The Living Word Fellowship, which used the campus as a regional center for conferences and a worship center for local members.

Bobo said most, like him, were transplants from other locations. He rented a house nearby and continued as an electrician and as a middle-management leader in the Palmer Lake group. Maintaining the buildings was a major undertaking for the small congregation.

“There really weren't enough people to take care of that property the way it needed to be taken care of,” he said.

Bobo’s exit from the Living Word came from doing the one thing the centralized leadership could not tolerate: questioning. He sent a letter in 1994.

“The more I learn about my mind, the more I realize that I can make it believe anything I want it to, and it certainly doesn’t make what I believe the truth,” he wrote.

A complete separation followed in 1999. Bobo said it was one of the best things that ever happened to him. What happened in the Living Word after his departure was a mystery until he set foot back in the compound, this time as an outsider and a Palmer Lake citizen on an advisory committee to investigate what to do with the land.

“I spent 30 years in and 20 years trying to get people out,” he said.

Coming forward

After feeling a “burning” calling to come back to The Living Word Fellowship at Palmer Lake in 2017 after two decades of trying to move on with her life, Macie Chadwick said that God was sending her for a reason. Coming back was painful after excommunication from the church and shunning by her family and friends over an unauthorized relationship with her now-husband Frank at 19. She did not understand at the time why she needed to return.

“There was no way in hell I wanted to go back there,” she said.

Chadwick did not fit in back in her childhood congregation and frequently clashed with the teachings and mandates handed down from the national organization. Now, the Colorado Springs resident knows why she had to do it.

“We basically brought the church down,” she said of the members in her generation, whose nationwide reckoning was the catalyst for the Palmer Lake location’s collapse in 2018.

The beginning of the end came when a former member named Shalom Abramson released in a 2018 Facebook post letters she sent to the church alleging sexual abuse perpetrated by Rick Holbrook, the son of leader Marylin Holbrook, at Shiloh. The post opened the floodgates on social media, with other former members sharing accounts of abuse from Holbrook and other church leaders around the country. One of them was Chadwick.

Bobo was a young adult by the time Living Word relocated him to Colorado. Macie Chadwick was 8.

“I didn’t know anything but the Living Word Fellowship,” she said.

As in Bobo’s case, Chadwick’s father brought the family into the fold. As a Navy sailor stationed in Vietnam War-era California, her father went to his first service with a military friend. In “turbulent times,” Chadwick said that the Living Word had an attractive combination of permissiveness — alcohol was allowed — and strictness that would appeal to her father’s austere religious upbringing. Her mother, she said, went along with it all.

The Living Word Fellowship moved her family around, too, first to San Diego, then Arkansas, Tennessee and Iowa. She came to Grand Junction around the same time as Bobo.

There, Chadwick describes a perfect storm of total authority and lack of accountability that led to her abuse and the abuse of others.

Each local church had a “shepherd” in charge of the congregation and accountable only to the central leadership in Kalona, according to Chadwick. The shepherd at Grand Junction also was the owner and manager of Larry Bobo’s electrical company, and he had frequent unsupervised contact with children in the congregation. Most other adults were young parents, freshly transplanted from out of state with few resources or connections.

Chadwick said she was sexually abused by that shepherd. At the time of the abuse, Chadwick said she did not tell her parents.

“He was given a position of power over the adults, as they were basically required to trust him and do whatever he said,” she said.

Many in the Grand Junction congregation moved to Colorado Springs and Denver while the Palmer Lake compound was being set up. Chadwick’s family, along with the shepherd she said abused her, were among them. The shepherd, downgraded from the role of authority at the Palmer Lake location, later committed suicide in 1998.

Chadwick said she did not know if abuse occurred at the Palmer Lake compound. No civil cases have been filed in Colorado in connection with Living Word, and no records could be found for criminal charges against known Colorado members.

Growing up in the church, Chadwick was expected as a child of members in good standing to attend a summer camp called the Young Adult Summer Program at the Shiloh compound. She said that accusations of child labor were true, and that she was among those exploited.

As a 17-year-old culinary student, Chadwick was put in charge of the facility’s commercial kitchen serving at some points over 350 people. She and other children performed ground maintenance at full-time hours. Chadwick was there at the same time Abramson was abused.

Chadwick said that she was inspired to come forward in the form of a Facebook video after another victim of her shepherd in Grand Junction went public, a person who was 7 years younger than her. Chadwick was not aware until then that there were other victims.

“I just felt extra-responsible,” she said.

Brought back into the fold before the sexual abuse became publicly known, Chadwick was witness to Living Word’s response. Multiple civil lawsuits surfaced in California courts brought by women who were minors at the time of alleged sexual abuse within the church. The organization began collecting interviews and sent a church mediator affiliated with The Living Word Fellowship. Chadwick said the measures were more about identifying organizational troublemakers than rectifying wrongs.

In the meantime, Chadwick said members steadily left after learning the full extent of sexual abuse in the church, now helmed by Hargrave after Marilyn’s death in 2015.

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'Free isn’t always free'

The Living Word Fellowship started with the fiery sermons and intense demands of John Robert Stevens. It ended with an actual fire. A big one.

“I think it was the largest wooden structure in Iowa at the time,” said Kalona City Administrator Ryan Schlabaugh, talking about the controlled burn of the 90,000-square-foot lodge at Shiloh.

The small town of Kalona found itself in a similar position to Palmer Lake six years ago, when the massive center of The Living Word Fellowship ceased to exist. Like Palmer Lake, Kalona has under 3,000 residents and maintains a distinct community identity. The town is known for local Iowa craftsmanship, agriculture and a symbiotic relationship with nearby Amish and Mennonite communities, says Chamber of Commerce President Tonia Poole.

Living Word had been a part of the community since the 1970s, in some ways less insular than other Living Word compounds. Shiloh was the face-forward hub of the organization, gracing the town of Kalona with a fireworks display and performance every July. The news that the organization had gone under, and why, was an unwelcome surprise.

“I think when something like that happens, it's not what you want to hear and it's not what you expect,” said Poole.

The Living Word Fellowship sold the campus to a housing developer, with about 160 new lots coming online for single-family homes and condos so far. A significant chunk of the property — 200-plus acres — ended up with the city of Kalona as a donation. Schlabaugh was part of the planning process for the land, which turned into a recreation project with a $3 million splashpad, dog park, playground, soccer field and fishing ponds.

Kalona took out a 10-year bond for the project through a sales tax, while securing $1.2 million in grants.

Living Word had been a part of the community since the 1970s, in some ways less insular than other Living Word compounds. Shiloh was the face-forward hub of the organization, gracing the town of Kalona with a fireworks display and performance every July. The news that the organization had gone under, and why, was an unwelcome surprise.

“I think when something like that happens, it's not what you want to hear and it's not what you expect,” said Poole.

The Living Word Fellowship sold the campus to a housing developer, with about 160 new lots coming online for single-family homes and condos so far. A significant chunk of the property — 200-plus acres — ended up with the city of Kalona as a donation. Schlabaugh was part of the planning process for the land, which turned into a recreation project with a $3 million splashpad, dog park, playground, soccer field and fishing ponds.

Kalona took out a 10-year bond for the project through a sales tax, while securing $1.2 million in grants.

The buildings initially cost about $60,000 a year, which decreased after the town discontinued major repairs to the water system. Palmer Lake boarded up the main sanctuary, dormitory, cabins and other outbuildings. Trespassing and vandalism soon became problems on the property, according to Havenar. Insurance and maintenance still cost the city about $10,000 per year.

The town entertained multiple options for a long-term lease or lease-to-own on the property. The one that stuck was a proposition from local entrepreneurs Lindsay and Richard Willan, who envisioned a spa on one nearly 3-acre section that includes an old pool and recreational building. The couple were behind the SunWater Spa in Manitou Springs and envision an “eco spa” on the property that pays homage to Palmer Lake’s pioneer history.

The spa is only leasing one-tenth of the property and has no control over major buildings. The rest remain in the hands of mostly unpaid city volunteers and officials.

An advisory committee, including Bobo, recommended saving and restoring the compound’s cabins for lease by local business and arts interests, including a forest school and a therapist. The committee argued that the buildings would play into Palmer Lake’s revival of Chautauqua — a summer cultural learning event held in the town from 1886 to 1910 and brought back in 2008.

“They have economic value,” said committee chair Susan Miner. “They can earn income.”

Proponents of tearing down the cabins, including Havenar, disagreed that the buildings could be saved or used to financially benefit the town. Palmer Lake’s Board of Trustees voted twice to tear them down. As of the most recent back and forth, the cabins are still on the chopping block.

“They’re filled with asbestos and not readily insurable,” said Havenar.

On the tour of the property, Wiecks was a spry, enthusiastic guide to a gurgling creek and a new bridge put in by Air Force Academy engineering students for a perimeter trail system. The fresh wood of the footbridge stands out as the only new construction on the town-owned section of the property otherwise dominated by peeling, dark gray paint over old siding.

When it comes to the land, the parks enthusiast sees opportunity, but he had a more complicated view on the gift of the property’s buildings.

“It's been a curse, because they’ve been struggling with what to do with it for three years,” said Wiecks. “It’s been costing the city money for three years.”

Rumors and regrets

The debate has had personal ramifications for Palmer Lake residents, especially among those who were previously connected to the church.

Alex Farr’s mother was fleeing a divorce in Florida when The Living Word Fellowship opened its arms, and its bank account, for the struggling family in 1990s Los Angeles. His father, meanwhile, blamed Living Word for the estrangement.

“He believes that the church stole, manipulated and brainwashed us and, to a degree, he was right,” he said.

Growing up, he participated in the outsized musicals and performances that were the penchant of Rick Holbrook. Farr said Holbrook would regularly collect an “entourage” of young women and girls.

Farr’s family moved to Palmer Lake where, as a teenager, he left the church. He replaced it with the camaraderie and purpose of his profession as a firefighter. Farr is currently deployed in California fighting wildfires but has worked at the Palmer Lake Fire Department.

He is also a candidate to replace his wife, Jessica Farr, on the Palmer Lake Board of Trustees. Trustee Farr, who is term-limited, has been an outspoken proponent of tearing down the cabins on the property, a position that has fueled small-town rumors online and in person that she was a part of The Living Word Fellowship and a victim of sexual abuse there. Both rumors are false.

“It’s absolutely asinine,” said Farr, who recalls his wife coming to one event at the church before its collapse. “It’s been harmful at times … and it does no good to people who were actually plaintiffs in that case.”

Former members do have their opinions about what should be done with the property moving forward.

That is certainly the case for Chadwick, who said the city of Kalona was on the right track.

“Burn it to the ground,” she said.

Bobo and Farr, on the other hand, see opportunity in the donation for the town of Palmer Lake, though they may disagree on the particulars of how the property should be managed.

All former members interviewed, including Chadwick, also conversely expressed feeling sadness at the fate of the Palmer Lake congregation and the compound at Shiloh. That feeling was directed toward normal members who gave much of what they had to The Living Word Fellowship.

"They had dedicated their lives to it, their children’s lives to it,” said Farr.

“I have empathy for them because it's a lot of time and a lot of effort, and you hate to see someone take the money and run,” said Bobo.

How do you know you're in a cult?

The Living Word Fellowship is gone, but echoes remain.

Charity Navalesi and Scott Barker are two of the most informed people when it comes to Living Word. Both former members, the pair have been producing a podcast called “Oops! I’m in a Cult” since 2022 that both chronicles the timeline of Living Word and documents their and others’ journey coming to the titular realization.

Barker went to a service with Chadwick before the Palmer Lake group collapsed, then visited the abandoned location. There he found a recording left of one of the last meetings of the congregation talking about taking a two-week break from services.

That version of events tracks with what Farr heard from friends and family still in the church, who told him after a meeting that seemed hopeful for a plan to break away from the national organization, The Living Word Fellowship in Palmer Lake closed its doors for good.

When it comes to assets of Living Word, Palmer Lake is a rare case of outright donation. Other properties are still caught up in various degrees of connection with the following of John Robert Stevens or Gary Hargrave, including in Hawaii, Oregon and Brazil. Barker and Navalesi said they believed the Palmer Lake location might have split with the larger organization legally and financially, then donated the property when local leaders were unable to maintain a congregation.

Hargrave, the last surviving leader of Living Word, left the organization behind but did not leave the public eye. He now operates an organization called Hargrave Ministries, which on its website promises to lead people “into spiritual maturity” through podcasts, books and other materials. Hargrave Ministries also leads “immersive tourism” in Israel and accepts donations for what it says are Israeli causes.

“Rather than trying to make anything right, he just resigned, and all of the leadership underneath him resigned as well,” said Navalesi.

Looking back on time in Living Word, Bobo said that the organization manufactured closeness between members that was difficult to abandon. Being in a cult, he said, both created and supplanted family.

“It’s kind of like war buddies,” he said. “You go through a crisis together.”

Chadwick wants people to know about the sexual abuse of minors she felt was systemic to Living Word, but she said that it was a “small aspect” of a larger culture of abuse and control. Chadwick is open about her experiences to call attention to cult dynamics for others. She wants people to be able to ask the critical questions that can lead them out of cult thinking.

“That means that the audio guy was out, at least, but I think it just means no one ever showed back up,” said Barker.

“If you’re worshipping a man, a physical man, and not God — you’re in a cult.”

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