Fallen Empire - Chapter 1: The Shadow Over NIFB

Joseph Lucketta
Sep 16, 2025
9 min read

A sermon with no names

Sunday night. Full room. No names. But everybody hears one.

“You don’t know why people leave.” “Even if you ask them, they’re not going to tell you the truth.” “Some have left because of drugs… adultery… sleeping with prostitutes.” “Someone falsely accused a mentally handicapped individual, and I sided with the handicapped individual.” “Grievous wolves enter in… drawing away disciples.” “Sympathizers—the sappy sympathizers—are always siding with the other side.”

No names—and yet the social math gets done for you from the pulpit. If you care about someone who left, you just got framed as naïve at best, a “sympathizer” at worst. If you are the person who left, you’re now a composite of every worst-case example listed. If you’re still in the room, you’ve been handed the script: trust the narrative or risk becoming part of it.

That single sermon move is the NIFB’s “shadow” in miniature. It’s why good people stay quiet, why friendships implode the week after someone leaves, and why so many former members describe the same tightness in their chest as the sermon slides from Bible to broadcast discipline.

This chapter is a decoder ring for that moment and is the first in a 7-part series covering the NIFB and how it serves as the definition for modern narcissistic institutions. Throughout this series I’ll cover a range of topics, including: the origin and blueprint for the NIFB movement, how the leaders of the NIFB started their career as manipulators and how they groomed others to conform, the NIFB playbook, why the movement is fracturing, and how to exit safely without sacrificing your faith.

New IFB in plain English (for the uninitiated)

The Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) world is a loose constellation of churches: bus ministry, King James Only, strong standards, heavy focus on door-to-door evangelism. The New IFB (NIFB) is the internet-era offshoot that formed around a few high-visibility pastors (e.g., Steven Anderson in Tempe; Roger Jimenez in Sacramento). Think: same basic bones, sharper lines, faster distribution (YouTube, documentaries), and a hard bundle of doctrinal litmus tests.

Typical distinctives you’ll hear:

KJV-only as the only trustworthy Bible
Post-trib, pre-wrath rapture (a big break from mainstream pre-trib teaching)
Replacement theology (explicit anti-Zionist stance)
“Reprobate” doctrine (one-way moral point of no return)
Confrontational soul-winning as a weekly proof of faithfulness
“Family-integrated” services (no separate kids’ classes/youth groups)

If that sounds like inside baseball, the experience is simple: strong preaching, clear lines, high camaraderie, a sense that the world is going crazy and someone is finally saying the quiet part out loud. That’s how good people get in the door.

The sermon you heard vs. the move it made

Let’s translate the shared clip into plain language—not to nitpick doctrine, but to name the relational moves that create control.

1) “You don’t know why people leave… even if you ask them.”

“Even if they tell you, you’re assuming they’re telling you the truth… men love darkness rather than light.”

What it does:

Discredits testimony preemptively. Anyone’s first-hand account is framed as likely deceptive.
Creates FOG (Fear, Obligation, Guilt): you’re afraid to trust your own eyes; you feel obligated to “protect the church’s testimony;” you feel guilty if you empathize. (George Simon, In Sheep’s Clothing, on FOG as a manipulation loop.)

2) “Real reasons people leave? Drugs, adultery, prostitutes…”

“Relapsed… committing adultery… wanted to live in fornication… sleeping with prostitutes…”

What it does:

Smear by association. Not naming names lets him deny targeting anyone while still dropping the most reputation-shredding categories into the room.
Thought-terminating clichés take over: “Oh, they must be in sin.” (See Richard Grannon, A Cult of One, on how loaded accusations shortcut critical thinking.)

3) “We keep biblical confidentiality.”

“We know the reasons… but we keep confidentiality.”

What it does:

Weaponizes asymmetry. He can hint at damning facts without ever being cross-examined; you’re told to accept it on faith while the other side is gagged by “don’t gossip.”
Installs a single point of truth. There’s only one place you’re allowed to verify—the very person asserting the claim.

4) “We investigated; others couldn’t see anything.”

“We took the video to multiple adults… every adult looked at it and said, what am I supposed to be looking at?”

What it does:

Crowd-launders a conclusion. Vague “multiple adults” gives the feel of consensus without independent oversight or a written policy.
Shifts standards. In one line, a report must be both ironclad and corroborated by a hand-picked panel to be “real.” (In safe systems, “we couldn’t confirm” does not equal “nothing happened.”)

5) “Grievous wolves… drawing away disciples.”

“After my departing shall grievous wolves enter in… draw away disciples after them.” (Acts 20)

What it does:

Reframes dissent as predation. If someone leaves and they still talk to friends, they aren’t processing pain; they’re hunting sheep.
DARVO in a single stroke: Deny (there was an issue), Attack (they’re wolves), Reverse Victim/Offender (we’re the ones being attacked). (Ramani Durvasula, It’s Not You, on DARVO in religious settings.)

6) “Korah… the earth opened… don’t be a sympathizer.”

“Korah rebelled… the earth opened her mouth… And on the morrow they said, ye have killed the people of the Lord… Don’t be a sympathizer.”

What it does:

Biblical nuclear option. Disagreement gets filed under “rebellion against God’s man,” with divine execution as the punchline.
Polices empathy. Your compassion is recast as sin—“siding with the other side.” (DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church, on the “anxious system” that must stigmatize dissent to survive.)

7) “If you’re happy here, why leave because someone else did?”

“Why would you leave a church because of a person you didn’t even know before this church?… If you like the chicken parmesan, keep eating.”

What it does:

Individualizes what’s structural. It frames departures as personal mood swings, not responses to systemic patterns.
Shifts the burden of logic to the hurt party. “If you’re fed here, your conscience must adapt.” (Pete Walker, CPTSD, on the fawn response: becoming “logical” to invalidate your own pain.)

8) “I don’t preach against everyone who leaves.”

“I can name five, six, seven names I’ve not preached against…”

What it does:

Offers exemptions to prove fairness while keeping the tool in hand. The fear remains: any exit could become tomorrow’s no-name sermon.

None of those moves require a denomination or a board. All they require is a microphone and a room that’s been trained to hear dissent as danger.

Listen to the full sermon here: https://bannedbutnotbound.com/dont-let-people-pull-you-away-from-the-things-of-god-12-15-24/

“Independent”… until the microphone

NIFB churches love the word independent. In practice, power centralizes two ways:

On paper, every church is autonomous. In practice, there’s a hub-and-spokes effect. The pastors with the biggest platforms set the boundaries of “sound,” and access flows to the men who mirror them most closely. Agree on the litmus list, signal the right enemies, preach with the right temperature, and you’re in. Step off the line, and you’re “compromised,” “backslidden,” or “afraid of the world.”

That’s the pastor-to-pastor ring of power. But the real story is how that power lands on ordinary people.

How it feels in the room

If you’ve never sat through it, here’s what the system feels like from the pew:

The sermon does more than teach. It sets policy. It corrects people by category — “some of you are planning to leave,” “certain men are stirring division” — without ever naming names. Everyone hears themselves in the subtext and self-polices.
Dissent doesn’t get a meeting; it gets a label. Ask a hard question and you’re not just wrong, you’re “bitter,” “rebellious,” or “sowing discord.” Once those words are attached to you from the pulpit or the leadership group chat, your friendships evaporate overnight.
Service is access — and leverage. Singing, security, soul-winning stats, the livestream booth — all become quiet currencies. Access equals approval. Lose a role, and you don’t just lose a task; you lose your place.
Your calendar gets colonized. Three-to-thrive, weekly soul-winning, special meetings… it’s easy to wake up six months in and realize all your people — and all your inputs — are inside the same bubble.
Information is a closed loop. KJV-only plus sermon libraries and conferences means the pastor’s interpretation is the lens. Outside voices are framed as “worldly” or “compromised,” so you stop checking your gut against anything but the system itself.

No denominational HQ needed. Gravity does the work.

“Family-integrated” is a feature, not a fix

NIFB churches often cite “family-integrated” worship (no separate kids’ classes or youth programs) as the lesson learned from old IFB scandals: keep kids with parents, reduce corridor risk. The heart behind that can be sincere.

But safety isn’t a seating chart; it’s a system. Without boring, external, testable safeguards—two-adult rule, background checks, mandatory reporting pathways that don’t bottleneck through the pastor, independent training/consultation—“family-integrated” mostly moves risk (to homes, cars, group chats) and magnifies pastoral reach (one man speaks over every household at once). You may see fewer hallway incidents and still have more harm.

We’ll lay out a baseline checklist in Chapter 5: Children & Safety—the stuff healthy churches already do as table stakes. The point here is simple: integration ≠ accountability.

Why good people stay anyway

People don’t stick around because they’re soft-headed. They stay because they’re bonded.

Mission glue. Soul-winning puts you shoulder-to-shoulder; shared risk builds real affection.
Identity glue. “We are the faithful remnant.” In a chaotic world, that feels safe.
Conscience outsourcing. Over time, you start checking yourself against the system rather than using your conscience to check the system.
Relational cost engineering. When 90% of your friendships live in one room, asking a fair question feels like burning your life down. (Durvasula on trauma bonds and intermittent reinforcement; Walker on fawn/appease as a survival strategy.)

That’s why I’m not here to insult anyone who’s inside. The system is designed to make staying feel righteous and leaving feel immoral.

Quick self-check: are you hearing “sermon as HR”?

You don’t need my conclusions. Try your own.

Are unnamed people corrected from the pulpit with labels (“bitter,” “divisive,” “wolves,” “sympathizers”) that make it risky to love them?
Do safety concerns travel through a written process with two unrelated adults and, where applicable, civil authorities—or do they travel through the pastor’s discretion?
Is “we keep confidentiality” used to hint at damning facts you’re not allowed to verify?
Can you disagree with your pastor on a non-gospel point (e.g., rapture timing, politics, schooling) and retain the same belonging?
If you stop soul-winning for a season, do you still feel loved—or quietly downgraded?
Do people who leave get blessed publicly—or recategorized from the mic?
If you left tomorrow, would your best church friends still be allowed to love you?

If your stomach dropped reading a few of those, your body may be telling you something your brain has been trained to edit. (Mel Robbins’ “Let Them” frame can help you de-enmesh without a blow-up: let them think what they think, let them run their narrative, you hold your boundary.)

“But aren’t these just strong convictions?”

Absolutely. Many people were drawn in because parts of the pitch were compelling: serious preaching, personal responsibility, courage in a cultural storm, tight-knit community, evangelism with a pulse. Those desires are good. Predatory systems don’t lure people with poison; they start with bread.

Strong convictions are not the problem. Captive consciences are.

When one man (or one hub) becomes the final lens for what’s biblical, who’s safe, how to handle conflict, and whose facts “count,” your inner compass atrophies. That’s not strength; that’s capture. A healthy church can carry strong doctrine and strong process: plurality of elders with teeth, transparent budgets, a safety pipeline that doesn’t bottleneck at the pulpit, and a culture where leaving doesn’t equal losing your life.

You’ll know you’re in a healthy place when your value doesn’t drop to zero the second you disagree.

If you’re still inside (and this rang a bell)

Here’s a single next step that won’t blow up your life:

Write down what you actually believe. Not what you’re supposed to believe; what you believe—about God, safety, conscience, loyalty, and the purpose of church. Keep it private. Sit with it for a week.
Reality-check one claim. Pick a small, verifiable detail from a “no-names” sermon and privately ask three sources not in the pastor’s inner ring what they saw/heard. Notice how quickly you’re warned off—even for small things. That’s data.
Rebuild one outside friendship. Someone not in your church, mature and kind, who won’t argue doctrine—just hold space. (Abusive systems collapse fastest when you regain alternative points of reference.)

If you’re already out and the smear machine is running, breathe. DARVO is the play. You don’t have to win the room you left to live a peaceful, faithful life. (Daniel Ryan Cotler, Voiceless No More, on reclaiming your voice without feeding the cycle.)

Where this series goes next

Chapter 2 — The Blueprint: Why a movement that calls itself “independent” ends up centralized (hub, spokes, economics of access).
Chapter 3 — The Gate: How pastors get groomed for the inner ring—and how that shapes what gets preached (and what never does).
Chapter 4 — The Playbook: FOG, DARVO, pulpit subtweets, and thought-terminating clichés—translated into plain English with checklists.
Chapter 5 — Kids & Safety: What real safeguards look like (boring, written, external)—and why “family-integrated” isn’t enough.
Chapter 6 — Fracture: A ground-level case study of how it breaks—and what it does to families.
Chapter 7 — Exit: Boundaries, disentangling from the inner critic, and finding a healthy church without losing your faith.