In daily life at the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) Training Centers and Headquarters, it was always understood that the kitchens were to be closed on Sundays. The explanation I was given when I first arrived at the Indianapolis Training Center (ITC) in 1995 for my year of service with EQUIP was that the kitchen staff needed a break from their work, so everyone was encouraged to fast once a week on Sundays. This was not a new idea to me — after all, I had grown up attending the Basic and  Advanced Seminars and in the Advanced Training Institute (ATI) homeschool program. Fasting was widely taught in all the IBLP materials as important to both your physical and spiritual health. So, while we didn’t fast on a weekly basis at home, I figured it made sense that the kitchen staff should have a break.

Because students were not allowed to enter the kitchen on Sundays or take food out of the fridge or pantry, and as we weren’t allowed to leave the Training Center to visit restaurants or grocery stores on Sunday, our only option, if we didn’t want to fast, was to snack in our rooms. So many students would gather extra food from the cafeteria during the week (bananas, apples, granola bars, etc.) that they could nibble on to get through the long day on Sunday. Some students would fast the entire day, but others chose to eat privately in their rooms. I tried to fast as often as I could, but I often felt so faint that I had to give in and eat something. Each time I gave in, I felt like a failure for not being able to make it through the whole day of fasting as other students seemed to be able to do.

In the spring of 1996, Mr. Gothard came for a weekend visit as he often did. Evidently he had heard that some students were eating in their rooms on Sundays, and he was not happy about it. I was standing in the lobby several feet away from where he was talking to Mr. McWha, the Director of our Training Center, and I overheard their conversation. Mr. Gothard made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that he did not want students to eat in their rooms unless they had a medical waiver. Sundays were a day for fasting, and students should not be eating in their rooms unless there was a strict medical need.

I was shocked! All this time, I had been under the impression that the main purpose of fasting on Sundays was simply expedience: the kitchen staff needed a break, so the kitchen was closed on Sundays. It made sense — sort of. And then I started thinking about it. If it truly was just an issue of the staff not working on Sundays, loaves of bread and jars of peanut butter and jelly, could have been left out on Saturday night, so that students who wanted to grab a meal on Sundays could have done so. That would have inconvenienced no one, and would have been a cheap and simple solution to offer. But that was never an option.

As I stood there overhearing this conversation, it began to dawn on me that the issue was not primarily one of expedience. In Mr. Gothard’s mind, it was truly a spiritual issue. He wanted everyone to fast for biblical reasons, because it was good for our spiritual and physical health. Access to food was, therefore, removed to “help” us spiritually. Mr. Gothard now wanted Mr. McWha to somehow enforce a  strict “no eating in your room” rule for several hundred students!

I was only 19 years old at this time, and I had not yet been through formal Bible training, but even I understood that this was not true fasting — true biblical fasting is never forced! Fasting must be a personal choice if it’s done for spiritual reasons. Otherwise, it’s just withholding food from someone and hoping they’ll grow spiritually and physically through deprivation! It’s one thing to be given a choice as an adult, but it’s an entirely different thing to withhold food from minors. While many of the students at our Training Center were over the age of 18, we still had a large number of students who were under 18 — some as young as 11 or 12 — who had been entrusted to our care by the court system of Indiana. If they had known that the leadership was intentionally withholding food from minors on a weekly basis, there would have been serious legal repercussions!

All of this went through my mind in an instant. So in a moment of either boldness or insanity (I’m still not sure which one it was, since we were discouraged from questioning authority), I decided to speak up. I knew my year of service would soon be up, so even if I got kicked out for my questioning, I felt that I had to say something! Mr. Gothard finished speaking to Mr. McWha, and then he turned and started speaking to someone else a few feet away. While he was busy talking, I walked up to Mr. McWha, looked him straight in the eyes and half-whispered emphatically, “But that’s not biblical!” Mr. McWha gave me a sad little smile and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, I know, but what can I do about it?!

In that moment, I understood that Mr. McWha felt just as trapped as I did. He was a peer of about the same age as Mr. Gothard, a retired pastor, and the director of a training center, in charge of hundreds of young people, entrusted to the Institute’s leadership by their parents or government authorities. And yet he did not feel able to question or challenge Mr. Gothard on an issue that he also clearly saw as unbiblical.

In the end, Mr. McWha ended up taking a passive approach — he never quite “figured out” how to enforce the rule of no eating in the rooms, so, thankfully, nothing much changed. But this was the beginning of the end for me in my association with the Institute. I left the ITC three months later, feeling burned out spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. While I had some happy memories of times spent with friends, the end result of my witnessing the spiritual abuse and the leadership’s inability to express concern about some of Mr. Gothard’s more questionable decisions, was certainty that I would never again work at an IBLP training center. The negative mental and emotional effects of forced fasting hung with me for a long time. It was years before I could fast again for spiritual reasons.

A couple of years after I left ITC, Mr. McWha retired from leadership there. And a few years after that, he and Mrs. McWha returned for a happy reunion with some of the former students of the program. I was unable to attend this reunion, but heard from several friends who were there at the time that the McWhas used this opportunity to apologize, with tears in their eyes, for some of the things that happened under their leadership. They were genuinely sorry and asked forgiveness of the students. This brought a lot of healing to many who were there, and my heart was greatly warmed to hear about this after the fact. Shortly after making peace with the students, Mr. McWha passed away. To this day, I am grateful for the McWhas, for their leadership, and for their humility in coming back to ask forgiveness for their mistakes. That speaks volumes to me of their love for the Lord and their love and appreciation for the students who served under them.