A biblical examination · Wells, Texas

The Church of Wells weighed in the balance of Scripture, and found wanting.

“None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.” Isaiah 59:4

We were once inside the Church of Wells. We gave it years of our lives, trusted its elders with our souls, and loved its people as our own family. We have come out wounded, and we write in the fear of God, not to slander men, but to lay their own doctrine and their own public record beside the Word of God, and to plead for the souls still held under it.

Examine the doctrine Are you leaving? Start here

The plain facts

What is the Church of Wells?

Before any charge is answered, here is the group as a matter of public record, stated plainly, so anyone searching the name can know who and what is meant.

Origin

Founded near Baylor

Begun by three former Baylor University associates, Sean Morris, Ryan Ringnald, and Jacob Gardner, who preached on the streets, gathered a handful of followers, and relocated to the town of Wells, Texas (population under 800).

The core claim

“The only true church”

The group presents itself as a uniquely faithful remnant and binds a member’s standing before God to unity with, and submission to, its eldership. To leave is treated as departing from Christ Himself.

The gospel taught

Salvation as a process you can lose

The elders teach a “progressive” salvation in which a person must keep producing sufficient spiritual fruit, as measured by the eldership, or forfeit salvation and be counted reprobate.

The households

The elders’ wives, and the children

The control does not stop at the men. Former members testify that the elders’ wives, Preethi Morris, wife of Sean Morris, foremost among them, hold sway over the women and children of the congregation, chiefly through a schooling “co-op” where the children are taught. Families report that the same fear, and hard words spoken against those who have left, reach even the little ones through that teaching. Former members also report that Preethi is given liberty to teach the children doctrines found nowhere in Scripture, doctrines that turn their young hearts to glory in the elders and to live in fear, even telling them which among them is demon possessed and which is not. Children have been left oppressed under it, some troubled and downcast in their souls; yet the parents are taught that they themselves are in sin if they will not subject their children to the elders.

An honest word

Not everything they say is false

We will not pretend they hold nothing true. They rightly warn against a shallow, worldly Christianity, and much of what they say about holiness sounds right. That is precisely what makes them dangerous: error is most deadly when wrapped in truth. We believe they are, in the words of Scripture, sincerely “deceiving, and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13), not con men, but captives themselves. Yet do not mistake this for any credit to their doctrine. Their deception is the allurement itself: they use the truth of the gospel as the bait to draw souls into bondage, that they may have dominion over the faith of the flock, the very thing Paul refused: “not for that we have dominion over your faith” (2 Corinthians 1:24). They carry themselves as though they were Moses and the apostles, yet they show none of the signs of an apostle; and Moses himself was but a servant, a type pointing away from himself to Christ, “faithful in all his house, as a servant” (Hebrews 3:5). These men point men to themselves.

None of that, by itself, is a crime. But when a body claims to hold the keys of heaven over a person’s soul, the claim must be tested, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1). What follows is that testing, offered soberly, and in hope of their repentance.

In the words of the witnesses

Why we could not submit and stay

Many of us carried these concerns from our earliest days in Wells. The authority the elders claim simply cannot be found in the Bible, and there is a clear idolization of Sean Morris that reaches far beyond any respect due a man, the very thing Paul preached against. The result is a doctrine unseen in all of Christian history. There is much preaching about having the humility to receive instruction, while the elders show none of it themselves, unwilling, in truth, to receive any from the “laity.” This too does not fit the pattern Paul set for how meetings are to be governed. They have made a pope; an apostle without the signs of an apostle. This was, and remains, the heart of why many of us could not submit and stay, and they have no balm to cure the damage their doctrine did to our souls. We do not excuse ourselves: we share the blame for having internalized, in some measure, the lie that God is double-minded and insincere. But so do they.
, From the testimony of former members

The pattern of a generation

The Pharisees of this generation

The Lord Jesus reserved His sharpest words not for the openly wicked, but for the religious men who bound heavy burdens on others, shut up the kingdom of heaven, and honored dead prophets while persecuting living ones. The parallel is not an insult. It is a diagnosis, and it is documented.

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.” Matthew 23:13

They garnish the tombs of the prophets

The group has displayed the faces of departed preachers as its “cloud of witnesses”, yet many of those very men held the perseverance of the saints, the assurance the Church of Wells now denies. They adorn the dead who would have rebuked them, exactly as the Lord foretold:

“Ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.” Matthew 23:29–31

They condemn the living who say the same

The elders publicly called out Paul Washer, whose own preaching several of them once credited for their awakening, and denied that he still “walked in the light.” They will honor a dead preacher and damn a living one for the same gospel. This is the hypocrisy Christ named:

“Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.” Matthew 23:28

“Ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.” Luke 11:52

The case, article by article

Their own doctrine, laid beside the Word

Each charge below rests on the group’s own published teaching or its public record, not on rumor. Beneath each, the answer of Scripture. Read both. Judge for yourself before God.

They have made themselves the door of salvation

They teach that God saves and reprobates souls according to their submission to these elders, that unity with these particular men is the test of whether one belongs to Christ. But no man is that door.

What they teachSubmission to the eldership is made a measure of salvation; to break with them is to be counted fallen from grace.

What Scripture says“I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved” (John 10:9). To bind salvation to men is another gospel: “though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel… let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8).

They rule the flock by a tormenting fear

Those who question the elders are not answered but condemned, threatened with reprobation, told they hear the voice of devils, and worn down alone in meetings that stretch on for many hours until the soul breaks. This is not the clean fear of God; it is the fear of men, laid on the conscience as a chain.

What they doDissent is met with the threat of damnation; members are taught to dread the elders’ judgment above all.

What Scripture says“The fear of man bringeth a snare” (Proverbs 29:25). Shepherds are forbidden to rule “with force and with cruelty” (Ezekiel 34:4); fear is due to God alone, “which is able to destroy both soul and body” (Matthew 10:28).

III

They come between parents and their own children

They teach the young that obedience to the elders is as great as, or greater than, the honor owed their father and mother, and have pressed this upon minors during family disputes. Baptisms and confessions of children have been held back to force a parent’s compliance.

What they teachLoyalty to the eldership is set above the God-given bond of parent and child.

What Scripture says“Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise” (Ephesians 6:2). Of offending the little ones: “it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck” (Matthew 18:6).

They baptize souls, then deny them

People they received, some judged to be tormented, were baptized, and afterward told they had never been saved at all, and left broken in mind and despairing in soul. They seize a discernment of the heart that belongs to God alone.

What they doThey pronounce upon who is saved and who is reprobate, and reverse that verdict at will.

What Scripture says“Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth” (Romans 14:4). “The LORD looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7), not they.

When exposed, they build doctrine to justify the sin

This is how the whole system defends itself. When an elder or his wife is shown to have sinned, they do not repent, they construct a teaching that turns the sin into righteousness and preach it as the mind of God. When they bypassed a wife behind her husband’s back, they taught she “should not be spiritually subject to a fallen head.” When burdens were brought, they built applications to make the accuser feel he was the one in sin.

The methodEvery exposure of sin is answered with a new doctrine that excuses it, making the eldership unaccountable to correction.

What Scripture says“Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition” (Mark 7:9). “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20).

By Scripture’s own measure, they are not qualified to be elders

The qualifications of a bishop are not a formality, they are the safeguard God gave His people against exactly this ruin. Men who rule by fear, who break souls in hours-long condemnation, who will not be corrected, and who manufacture doctrine to excuse themselves, do not meet the standard. They are not elders who merely erred; by the measure of the Word they were never qualified to hold the office.

The claimThey hold the office of elder and exercise its full authority over souls.

What Scripture saysA bishop must be “blameless… not selfwilled, not soon angry… no striker” (Titus 1:7), and not a novice “lifted up with pride” (1 Timothy 3:6). Teachers face “the greater condemnation” (James 3:1).

VII

They condemn “familial idolatry”, then command idolatry toward themselves

This is the sharpest of their own contradictions. In their published Doctrine of Judgment they teach that natural love of family can become an idol, and on that ground they have justified dividing households and turning a member against father, mother, and spouse. Yet in the very act of tearing down love of family, they set up a worse idol in its place: they teach the congregation to render to the elders a reverence, a fear, and a loyalty that belong to Christ alone, the very respect of persons Scripture forbids.

What they teachLove for one’s own family is condemned as “familial idolatry” to justify division, while the flock is taught to exalt the elders, dread their judgment, and prize their approval above all.

What Scripture saysTo exalt men so is the sin they claim to fight: “if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin” (James 2:9). Christ alone must have the preeminence: “that in all things he might have the preeminence” (Colossians 1:18). They cast out one idol and enthrone themselves in its place.

By their fruits ye shall know them

The fruit of the doctrine, and the record before the public

The Lord gave one plain test for teachers: “by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:16). These are matters of public record, reported in the press and in official findings. We set them down soberly, without embellishment.

May 2012 · Wells, Texas

The death of three-day-old Faith Shalom Pursley

A baby was born at home to members of the group, with a congenital heart condition, pulmonary valve stenosis, that is dangerous but treatable. She struggled to breathe. Instead of seeking medical care, members gathered and prayed. Accounts from within the fellowship say that even as members begged for an ambulance to be called, the elders refused, and that members were too afraid of the eldership to defy them. After she died, her body was kept for roughly fifteen hours in prayers for resurrection before authorities were notified. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services later found “reason to believe” medical neglect. The case brought the group its first national scrutiny.

We do not write this to wound grieving parents, who were themselves under this teaching. We write it because it is the fruit of a doctrine that exalts the elders’ spiritual demands above the ordinary mercies God provides. A tree is known by what it bears.

July 2013 onward

The Catherine Grove case and national coverage

A young woman left her family in Arkansas without notice and resurfaced at the Church of Wells. For nearly two years her parents sought to see her apart from the elders and could not. She was later engaged and married to a member of the congregation, Ronnie Saltsman, a union entered while she was estranged from her own family, with her interviews conducted in an elder’s home and her public statements filmed and released by the elders themselves. The case drew law-enforcement welfare checks and national television coverage.

We do not claim to read her heart, and we do not vilify her. We point only to the documented pattern: a member severed from mother and father, every word to the outside world spoken under the eldership’s eye. That is not the freedom of the gospel; it is the isolation by which control is kept.

Reported by former members

Prayers called down on those who leave

Former members report that, in sermons and in private meetings, the group has prayed imprecatory prayers against those who cross or leave it, at times praying aloud that a person’s house would burn and that some would die. We record this as the testimony of those who were present, not as a matter of court record, and we grieve that it must be written at all.

Whatever any man believes about the imprecatory Psalms, this is not the spirit the Lord gave His people toward those who wound them: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you” (Matthew 5:44). Prayer bent toward the ruin of the departing is itself a fruit, and it testifies against the tree.

Why this matters

A group is not proven false by a single tragedy, nor by bad press. It is proven false when its doctrine departs from the gospel, and its fruit then confirms what the doctrine already showed. Here, both agree. The teaching binds souls to men; the fruit has been death, division, and despair.

Spoken plainly, in the fear of God

To the elders of the Church of Wells

This is not written to destroy you. It is written because we still fear for your souls, and love does not stay silent while a man sins. You have exalted yourselves over the heritage of God; you have bound burdens you will not lift; you have devoured households and called it holiness. And when your own sin is uncovered, you do not fall on your faces in true repentance: you cover it, you explain it, you build a doctrine to justify it, and you demand of others the very brokenness you will not show yourselves.

“God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time.” 1 Peter 5:5–6

There is yet time to be brought low before He brings you low. Cast out the beam. Restore the families you have scattered. Repent with the same agony you have demanded of others. You call your assemblies lampstands, then hear the Lord who walks among the candlesticks:

“Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.” Revelation 2:5

And to every soul still inside who reads this in secret and afraid: the Lord sees you. “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit” (Psalm 34:18). You may come out. There is an open door, and a Shepherd who will not cast you away, as these elders do.

And hear, at the last, the word the Lord hath spoken against shepherds who have committed two evils:

“For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” Jeremiah 2:13

If you are inside, or leaving, or searching

You are not alone in Christ

Whether you are a member beginning to doubt, a family trying to reach someone, or a believer testing what you have read, here is where to start.

If you are still inside

Test it without fear

Read the passages on this page in a whole Bible, in context, for yourself, “prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). You were made to live by your own faith in Christ, not by the faith of your elders. The bondage you feel is real, but it can be healed: come out from among them, and be free in Christ alone. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).

If you are leaving

You can reach people who understand

Former members and families who have walked this road are willing to listen, without pressure. We will not ask you to submit to us or to any man; we would point you to submit to Christ and His Word alone, and never to the fear of men. Use the form to reach us privately.

If you are a family

Keep the door open

Do not let the group be the only voice of love your loved one hears. Steady, patient, non-condemning contact matters more than winning an argument. We can share what has helped others.

Common questions

Questions people ask about the Church of Wells

Is the Church of Wells a cult?

It is a small, high-control religious group that teaches it is the only true church and binds a person’s salvation to submission to its elders. Former members and observers have documented patterns consistent with spiritual abuse, information control, rule by fear, isolation from family, and severe discipline. Rather than argue over a label, we ask you to weigh the group’s own teaching against Scripture, which is the surer test.

What cult-like structures does the Church of Wells show?

Researchers who study high-control groups look less at a group’s label and more at how it treats people. Two widely used tools are Dr. Steven Hassan’s BITE Model, which maps the control of Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotion, and the International Cultic Studies Association’s Characteristics Associated with Cultic Groups. Measured against those patterns, the Church of Wells shows many of the classic marks:

Rule by fear. Members are taught to dread the elders’ judgment and the loss of salvation, so that questioning itself becomes dangerous to the soul.
Isolation from family. Ties to parents and spouses are strained or severed; disconnection from outsiders is one of the most common criticisms leveled at the group.
Information and thought control. The eldership’s reading of Scripture is treated as the only safe one, and dissent is reframed as pride or the voice of devils.
An exalted leader. Reverence, fear, and loyalty are directed to the men themselves, the very respect of persons Scripture forbids.
Sin redefined to protect the group. When leaders are shown to have erred, new teaching is built to justify it rather than to repent of it.

None of this is our private theory. Mainstream reporting has documented the same dynamics: see Texas Monthly’s investigation “For the Mouth Speaks”, and the collected reporting and analysis gathered at Apologetics Index. We point to these so you can weigh the group against recognized patterns for yourself, and then against Scripture, which is the surer test.

What does the Church of Wells believe about salvation?

The elders teach a “progressive” or process salvation in which one must keep producing sufficient spiritual fruit, as judged by the eldership, or forfeit salvation and be counted reprobate. Scripture teaches that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ, “not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9), and that those who are His are kept by God’s power (1 Peter 1:5).

What happened to Baby Faith?

In May 2012, three-day-old Faith Shalom Pursley died in Wells. Born at home with a treatable heart condition, she received no medical care; members prayed rather than seeking help, and her body was kept for roughly fifteen hours in prayers for resurrection before authorities were told. State investigators found “reason to believe” medical neglect. It remains the most public emblem of where the teaching can lead.

Who are the elders of the Church of Wells?

The group was founded by Sean Morris, Ryan Ringnald, and Jacob Gardner, former associates from Baylor University who began in Arlington, Texas, before moving to Wells. They publicly identify themselves as the elders.

Does the Bible allow me to leave a church like this?

Yes. Scripture commands separation from those who preach another gospel and calls believers to “come out from among them, and be ye separate” (2 Corinthians 6:17). Leaving a false teacher is not leaving Christ, it is following Him.

Reach us privately

Have information, or need someone to talk to?

If you have information to add, if you want to help, or if you simply need to reach a person who understands, leave your name and email and a short message. You will not be added to any public list, and no one will pressure you. We will reach out quietly.

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