In his early twenties, TikToker Gavin (@beasley.gavin) accidentally joined a cult in the desert. Growing up, he attended a private Christian school. His family was religious, but they didn’t always participate in religious practices.
When Gavin was in high school, he told everyone that he was moving to Los Angeles instead of going to college. The megachurch that he and his family attended in Memphis, Tennessee, held a banquet to announce where everyone was going to college.
When the other parents heard that Gavin was not going to college, they expressed their sympathies to Gavin’s mom and dad.
Soon after moving to L.A., Gavin met a group of people who had been living in the city for six months. Suddenly, he found himself going to a bunch of spirit-filled churches, dancing in aisles, and singing praises.
He and this small group of people started their own Bible study group. One of his friends went to a conference and met a guy who introduced them to a church in Barstow, California.
The church service there started at 10 a.m., so they had to get up super early and make the two-and-a-half-hour drive from L.A. every Sunday.
“We would do praise and worship until 5 p.m.,” recalled Gavin. “Like, time didn’t exist in this place. And this church was very controlling about certain aspects of identity, like what your name was, for example.”
Gavin’s given name is John Gavin, but the church decided to call him John, even though he never went by that name at all. Furthermore, the main worship leader was married to a man named Johnathan.
After knowing him for a month, Gavin realized that his name was actually Michael, but since the woman’s name was Michael Lynn, he was forced to change his own name.
Every weekend, Gavin would attend the church in Barstow where everyone was singing, dancing, praying, crying, and throwing up in buckets to expel their sins. Then, one day, he decided that he needed to get out of there by moving to New York.
The last straw for him was when he expressed his feelings about being attracted to other men, and the worship group immediately started praying over him to cast out the demons.
“There are so many details to this, like casting out demons and them rebuking people, and it was just really, really intense,” said Gavin.
“One time, a friend of mine was trying to cast out a demon, and she was just like, I cast it out to the bottom of the lake over there. And they’re like, no, you can’t do that. Now, there’s a demon in the lake.”
The other day, Gavin tried to look up the church on the internet, but couldn’t find anything about it. On second thought, he is perfectly okay with not knowing whatever became of those people.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
