A worthwhile original mission but current methods raise serious doubts
I want to be fair: the original purpose of this organisation is a legitimate one. Helping the public make informed decisions about religious groups, in a spirit of tolerance, is a reasonable thing for a church body to do, and its founder grounded that work in careful, content-based assessment.
What I've experienced of its current practice is a long way from that. A church I'm part of was the subject of one of their recent articles, and the method behind it is hard to square with any claim to fairness. Someone attended a single service without identifying themselves, observed in secret, spoke to no one, asked not one question, and gave the church no opportunity to respond before publication. The result is exactly what that method produces: personal impressions and guessed-at motives, measured against a fixed checklist, presented as if they were established findings.
What troubles me most is what the assessment never does. It never engages with what the church actually believes or teaches. It judges style, atmosphere and outward form, then attaches the label "problematic" — without the doctrinal examination the organisation's own founder considered essential. A warning assembled from one covert visit, with no dialogue and no right of reply, is not serious assessment. It's an impression dressed up as a verdict.
The integrity of a method matters as much as the conclusion it reaches, and on that test these practices fall short. Anyone relying on this organisation's reports should know how thinly they can be sourced.
