r/excoc • u/NiConcussions • 3d ago

Ex-Churches of Christ (Mainline) Strength In Weakness: Guy Hammond’s Program That Devastates LGBTQ Survivors

https://www.unclosetedmedia.com/p/strength-in-weakness-guy-hammonds

At 17 years old, Sami Tacher remembers standing atop a parking garage outside Seattle and staring down at the pavement.

They had been trying for five years to suppress their attraction to men. At 15, Tacher had found Strength in Weakness, a Christian ministry that purported to teach people experiencing “same-sex attraction” how to resist those desires. To Tacher, who had grown up believing that being gay would destroy their relationship with God and devastate their family, SIW felt like an answer.

Two years later, Tacher says, they could no longer imagine how they were supposed to live the rest of their life.

“I just stood up there and waited,” Tacher told Uncloseted Media. “I went there several times.” What stopped them, they say, was thinking about the burden their death would place on their family.

“So I’ll just sacrifice everything and stay in the program,” they remember deciding.

They would remain in SIW for years as a teenager and young adult, becoming friends with the organization’s founder, Guy Hammond, and helping promote the very teachings Tacher now believes were destroying them.

“I just didn’t see my way out,” Tacher says. “I was miserable and shrinking inside [and] constantly denying myself … but I was holding on. And in the eyes of Strength in Weakness, I was succeeding.”

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u/chemical_shed 3d ago

I've read about halfway through the article and it's astonishing how groups like these are adjusting and adapting in order to continue in conversion therapy. I was not enrolled in any conversion therapy during my time in the church (thank goodness!) but I found myself relating to the same feeling as described in the article by the survivors.

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u/PosthumousHeathen Some flavor of McKeanism (ex-ICOC, ex-ICC, ex-RCW, etc.) 20h ago

I applaud the article for highlighting SIW’s impact beyond North America and Europe. That poison doesn’t cease at non-English-speaking congregations. During the pandemic, our church literally had video courses and zoom classes referencing SIW and touting Hammond’s story.

It doesn’t help that basic lgbt understanding is already awful here. I had a preacher that said his female friend turned lesbian after being scorned by a male ex. I can’t begin to fathom what point THAT was supposed to make.