This post was originally published on this site.
Jonelle Awomoyiand
John Johnson
BBCJodie was surrounded by smiling faces at her 21st birthday party, but most were people she had not known for more than a month.
The party had been organised for her by the London International Christian Church – a Bible-based non-denominational church, according to their website – into which she had recently been baptised.
She was told by her “discipler”, or church mentor, she says, that she could not invite any friends from outside the church – only a handful of family members.
Looking back, this was the point where she feels members of the church began encouraging her to choose them over family and friends, leading to her becoming more distant from others in her life.
Other students we spoke to also told us of similar feelings of isolation after moving into “Brother” and “Sister” households with other church members.
The website of the London ICC describes it as being part of a global movement of more than 130 churches worldwide.
The London church is one of the churches which the London ICC website says has been “planted”, along with others in Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh and Dublin. There are smaller operations in Oxford and Essex.
In sermons seen by the BBC, the London ICC – which is the largest – said it was aiming for 400 “disciples” by the end of 2025.
It claims to be “not your average church”, and its student-focused Instagram features slickly edited testimonies from young faces, along with vlogs and vox-pop interviews near university campuses.
People we have spoken to, who were all students when they became involved with the ICC, have raised allegations with the BBC about the London ICC and the Edinburgh ICC.
These include feeling pressured into making donations they could not afford, church members asking for their private financial information and the church encouraging them to recruit other students into the church.
Both churches should follow the Code of Fundraising Practice, which lays out how charities should behave. This includes not putting people under undue pressure to donate and not unreasonably intruding on their privacy.
The London International Christian Church told the BBC the allegation that undue pressure was put on the students for donations was untrue.
It said its doctrine was that giving must be “voluntary, in keeping with one’s means and never coerced or demanded”.
‘I believed not donating was a sin’
The people we spoke to were aged between 19 and 22 when they became involved with the church, at a time when they say they were feeling vulnerable at university.
One says he was approached by a church member while he was in a park. Another told the BBC she was in a cafe on a university campus. Two say they found the church online.
They say they suddenly found much-needed community in the church, with one describing the early days as “beyond love-bombing” from members.
But for Jodie, who was 20 at the time, the conversation quickly turned to how much she was prepared to give financially, she tells the BBC.
“The day before my baptism, they asked me how much money I was making and I told them,” she says.
“We picked a price, an amount of money that I should be giving to the church weekly.”
When she joined the church, she was using her overdraft, which she says three church members knew about.
She was working to pay it off, but she says the church advised her to leave her job as she was missing services to work on Sundays.
Jodie says she believed donations were mandatory, and she had the impression that if she did not donate, it would be viewed by the church as “falling back into sin”.
Jodie showed us her bank statements, and told us that when struggling to keep up with donations, she started giving the church money from her student loan.
In publicly available footage of the London ICC’s services, one speaker delivered a sermon including the line: “If you don’t love God, don’t give. If you do love God, you’ll give to help the churches grow.”
The London ICC told the BBC that any claim that donors were told it was “a sin” not to give “especially in circumstances where they lacked funds is rejected in entirety as being utterly false and baseless”.
They say they offer financial aid if a member encounters financial difficulty.
It was around this time that members of the church started to ask Jodie for private financial information, she says.
She showed us what she describes as an unprompted message from a member of the church asking her to fill in a budget planner, which asked for her total monthly income, expenses, savings and cash balance. And they needed it “ASAP”.
Despite repeated requests, Jodie refused, saying that what the church had asked for felt “super invasive”.
The London ICC told the BBC that “asking members for financial information is not our practice or policy”.
The church added it offered workshops on budgeting and financial skills, where members “may provide information voluntarily”.
‘I printed off bank statements and showed them to church members’
Jodie’s was not an isolated experience. Hanu, who knew Jodie through the church, says he was also asked for private financial information.
“They really got invasive where they started going through my bank statements seeing how much I earned.
“That’s where I went wrong. I let them,” he says.
Hanu says, in his view, the church’s use of scripture “embed it into your head that you are robbing from God every time you don’t give”.
In bank statements seen by the BBC, Hanu sends the last 46p he had in one bank account to the church.
The London ICC told the BBC “no person is instructed to request bank statements, income details, or private financial documents from others”.
It said “such conduct would be contrary to [the LICC’s] teachings and governance”.
Persuaded to live with ‘disciples’
Like many students, Hanu says he had been partying too hard and was looking for spiritual guidance.
He was invited to a Bible study where people he had never met before were giving him hugs and complimenting him. He describes this now as “more than love-bombing”.
Hanu says he was later persuaded to move out of his family home into a house with other male “disciples”.
He says the impression he received was that for him to “advance” in the church, he would need to live with “disciples” to “keep you accountable”.
Despite paying rent to a church member, he says that for the first two months, he was sleeping on a sofa where he was often woken up to pray by his housemates.
He could only invite friends over, he says, if they were planning on joining the church.
The London ICC told the BBC any suggestion that members were discouraged from relationships with non-members is directly contrary to its practices.
Like Hanu, Arabella – not her real name – says she was convinced to move out of her family home.
In her 20s at the time, she thought living with other members of the church made “it easier for you to be spiritual”.
This was years before Hanu joined, but Arabella also says there was a lack of privacy at the house she moved into.
And she says the number of people in the household regularly fluctuated, meaning sometimes people had to share a bed.
She says members of the house had to wake up at the same time, and were told they could not leave the house after 10pm.
The London ICC told the BBC members may choose to live together for mutual support.
It said living arrangements between members were private and the church did not impose curfews, social isolation or restrictions on friendships.
Those we spoke to said they were actively encouraged to recruit on university campuses.
Hanu says the impression he received was that students were seen by the church as the “easiest to manipulate”.
The London ICC told the BBC that it did not “target”, prey upon or manipulate students.
It said “evangelism among students is conducted openly and respectfully”.
‘I thought she was another student, but she was a member of a church’
Madalaine was 19 when she says a woman approached her in a cafe on one of Edinburgh University’s campuses.
The pair became friendly and Madalaine was invited to Bible study sessions at the Edinburgh ICC.
It was not until months later that Madalaine discovered her new friend was not, in fact, a student.
Like other students we spoke to, Madalaine recalls one Bible study session where participants were asked to reveal their biggest sins to each other.
“People were sharing some really dark, extremely emotional things and then expecting me to do the same,” she says.
Like Hanu and Jodie, she says it wasn’t long before she was invited to provide her financial information.
The final straw was when she was told by two members to break up with her boyfriend, who was not a member of the church.
“I remember this, like, rising feeling of dread, and I just started crying.”
She says she broke off contact with the group before she became a formal member.
The Edinburgh ICC told the BBC that “misrepresentation of identity, directing personal relationship decisions, or reviewing personal financial information for the purpose of influencing donations, do not reflect the policies or authorised practices of the church and are not condoned”.
Madalaine reported the group to the Edinburgh University Christian Union, which said it was aware of the group.
Last year, the Dublin branch of the ICC was banned from Trinity College campuses.
The university told the BBC the group was inviting students to “social events that were in fact designed to bring them into a religious group” but said there was “no issue with religious groups on campus” more broadly.
The BBC contacted the Dublin ICC, but it did not respond.
Jodie, Hanu and Arabella say leaving the church was made harder by the belief that being part of it was the only way to get into heaven, and that they did not want to risk their salvation.
Jodie says she was very low after leaving the church, and was left believing that God did not love her, that she did not have any friends and that she had “done something bad”.
The London ICC told the BBC the allegation that it teaches that leaving the church results in forfeiture of salvation is “utterly false”.
It said that members are taught that “salvation cannot be purchased”.
But it added “deliberately abandoning God and persisting in unrepentant sin has spiritual consequences. That doctrine is not linked to donations, nor is it coercive.”
‘A donation needs to be a voluntary act’
The London ICC is a registered charity, and has obligations to the Charity Commission and Fundraising Regulator.
According to its own charity filings, for each of the past four years, it received an annual total gross income of between £966,693 and £999,521.
The Code of Fundraising Practice stipulates that charities should not unreasonably intrude on a person’s privacy, put undue pressure on a person to donate, or use unreasonably persistent approaches.
We discussed the accounts of the ex-members we spoke to with Nathalie Jacoby-Danesh, a charity law expert and partner at Browne Jacobson LLP.
“A donation needs to be a voluntary act, and that’s the basic definition under law, under charity law, and under regulations, a donation is something that you do freely without any undue pressure,” she said.
The Fundraising Regulator does not have powers to formally sanction organisations found to be non-compliant with the Code of Fundraising Practice, but works closely with statutory regulators including the Charity Commission where enforcement is needed.
The Charity Commission say they would become involved only if a breach of another regulator’s rules indicated a wider failure of governance.
When asked about the regulations around faith-based charities in general, the Fundraising Regulator said some had not always been aware that their activities constitute fundraising, which must be carried out in accordance with the code.
It added it was an area where it was seeing “increased misunderstanding and inconsistent practice”.
Get our flagship newsletter with all the headlines you need to start the day. Sign up here.
