You Took My Faith and My Money. I Want Both Back!

Why I’m Asking Soul Survivor for a Refund?

In 1997, I attended a Soul Survivor discipleship course called BodyBuilders. It was marketed as a 6-month course of spiritual growth, community, Christian leadership, and discovering more of God. I was 18. I was sincere. I was hopeful. I was also deeply vulnerable.

What I got was not what was advertised and I want my money back plus interest, because the emotional and spiritual cost of what Soul Survivor did and what it covered up has compounded with every year of silence, evasion, and gaslighting. This isn’t just about money (though frankly, it would help with the counselling bills) this is about making them look me in the eye and admit: you broke the contract. You broke me. And you’re still pretending I wasn’t even there.

The BodyBuilders course I signed up for wasn’t some vague summer internship. It was a structured 6-month discipleship programme. I was placed in a Soul Survivor house with other young adults, under pastoral oversight, engaging in talks and courses, self reflection times and volunteering all in the name of being “formed by God.” We worked, always unpaid. We served at events, so many late nights! We attended endless church services, house groups, and ministry nights. We were sold a dream. A Jesus-centred, Spirit-led, purpose-filled life. What we got was something far murkier.

I wasn’t sexually or physically abused. But I was coerced. Spiritually manipulated. Pushed, hard, back into the closet after I confided in one of the course leaders about my sexuality. I was told that to be truly open about who I was would be to “miss what God had for me.” I internalised that as shame. Deep, dark shame.

It wasn’t just unkind. It was cruel.

And worse still it was sold to me as truth. Gospel. Love.

In light of the now-substantiated allegations…

In light of the now-substantiated allegations of coercion, spiritual abuse, grooming, and manipulation at the hands of Mike Pilavachi, not to mention the systemic failures of those around him who looked the other way, I now look back on my time at Soul Survivor and see it for what it really was: a well-oiled sham. A glittering stage of empty promises. A spiritual trap where the sheep paid to be fleeced. There is also no doubt that others were actively involved in perpetuating and maintaining Mike’s power - people who defended him, protected him, and helped him remain untouchable - even as he shattered and destroyed the lives of young people, including mine. And the sickening irony is this: the very thing that was meant to bring me closer to God became the thing that almost broke me completely.

When I say he ruined my life, I’m not reaching for drama. I mean it literally. I spent years and years berating myself, questioning my worth, hating who I was. I internalised every rejection, every silence, every moment I was cast aside by the very people who said they spoke for God. I asked myself over and over again: Why wasn’t I good enough? Why was I shunned? Why was I used and then discarded the second I became inconvenient or complicated or no longer “on brand”? I was spat out the moment I stopped being useful to Mike, to Soul Survivor, to the machine.

Did he ruin my life? No. Because I clawed it back. Because I’m still here. Because I’m stronger. But let’s be very clear: he and Soul Survivor, and Soul Survivor Watford, did not improve my life. They stole from it. They poisoned it. They left damage that I’m still cleaning up.

The response from Soul Survivor? A legal shrug.

Back in April 2024, when this scandal was still very much in its early stages, I contacted Soul Survivor Watford (who were, at the time, and still are representing the wider Soul Survivor brand) alongside another former attendee of the BodyBuilders course, to request a refund for the money we had paid for the BodyBuilders course.

I wasn’t expecting a ticker tape apology parade. But I also wasn’t expecting this:

“In your email, you mention that you are seeking a refund for a course you undertook more than 25 years ago. As far as I am aware, you have not raised any previous complaint, in particular as you seek a refund of the course fee, that you were not provided with the course which you contracted for.

Additionally, Soul Survivor Watford was only incorporated in 2019 and has no records relating to the Bodybuilders’ course from 25 years ago.

In such circumstances, on the basis of the information provided in your email, this is not a request we can properly grant.”

David Mitchell - Chair of the Trustees, Soul Survivor Watford

Yet again, request for honesty, transparency, or even just decency is met with a cold, bureaucratic deflection. A polished PR statement. A neatly legal-wrapped no.

And essentially, another closet.

Not one that hid the poor young scared gay boy inside it but one that’s labelled, It’s in the past. Move on. You don’t exist. Nothing’s going to change. We won’t even consider that a promise was broken or a contract breached.

“No Records”? That’s terrifying

David Mitchell’s response included the line:

“Soul Survivor Watford… has no records relating to the BodyBuilders’ course from 25 years ago.”

Let that sink in.

They don’t have any records of 20 plus 18 to 25 year-olds, predominantly on the younger end of that spectrum living in a house together, enrolled on a course created, run, and managed by Soul Survivor.

That is terrifying.

Yes, safeguarding standards have evolved. Record keeping is (thankfully) much more robust now, and technology has made it easier to store and access important documentation. But even so, surely there must be something? Some record? A list of names? A course outline? A photo? A file? Anything?

Because I was there. I kept a journal - in fact, we were encouraged to. I have photos of me on that course. There might even be some video footage gathering dust in a Soul Survivor archive. I was there. We were there. Denying the existence of records is dangerously close to denying the existence of the course itself.

And that’s the real horror of it.

To say you have no records is to say it never happened.

But it did.

It happened to me. It happened to many, many others.

We’re still dealing with the fallout.

This isn’t about blaming God

Let me be clear: I’m not blaming God. I’m not rejecting faith.

I’m rejecting a system - Soul Survivor’s system - that platformed a perpetrator, defended the indefensible, and spiritualised harm in the name of “discipleship.”

It was not of God. It was not good. And it was never what it claimed to be.

If anyone should be repenting, it’s not me. It’s Soul Survivor.

And they can start by paying me back what they owe.