NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — "I'm going to say this, and the people of Remnant are not going to like this."
That was how Michael Shamblin began his thought. The son of Remnant Fellowship founder Gwen Shamblin, Michael is the highest-level defector to ever leave and blow the whistle on the controversial Brentwood church.
Michael Shamblin, who was once listed among Remnant's leaders, now calls it "a cult."
"If the Remnant members sitting in that building realized how much information that these people have on them, there would be no one left in those seats," he told NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
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Michael's mother, Gwen, once headed the popular Weigh Down Workshop — a faith-based diet program — and then decided she wanted to create her own church, which she described as "the one true church."
What Remnant members do not know, Michael confided, is about the church's "guidance information, its guidance system" that is utilized to monitor their activities.
It's a guidance system that, Michael said, he saw with his own eyes
"Every single member that joins gets a file started on them, and they start collecting video footage. They start collecting photos," he explained.
"They purposely get people who join the church to get on stage and share testimony. Why? The person joining thinks, 'Oh, this is a great opportunity. I get to get on stage and praise God and share my testimony and my life has changed,'" Michael continued.
"They only do that, it's for ammunition for later — in case the person turns."
Michael Shamblin provided evidence of other information collected and tracked by Remnant. Among the examples:
- A "guidance stats" sheet that tracked the marital situations of certain members, how they were doing on their weight, and personal issues with which they were dealing (including lust).
- Instructions that certain members needed to "have their weight reported once a month" and entered into the guidance system.
- Dates and times that members signed onto Remnant webcasts — in one case noting that a member "usually has it going in the other room type thing and not necessarily listening."
- A text noting that a member would need leadership permission to have a Facebook account, while another suggested the need to check a woman's Instagram.
- Gwen Shamblin notifying her team that a female had been "monitored" by fellow members and Gwen was "saying yes to her request to return to church."
- Documentation that a Remnant wife was "not completely under the authority and questions" her husband, that she had confessed to being "anti-authority and always having a better idea."
- A note that another Remnant wife had been counseled to "STOP controlling and driving her husband insane," that she needed to "just put the jeans on that he wants her to wear." The woman was told that her husband "was starting to look at other women" and that "she's making that happen."
"It shows every time they've ever had a doubt about Gwen," Michael Shamblin added. "There would be lists of things, 'So-and-so's wife said he had a doubt about leadership.' That's on record in a system."
Asked if he had ever seen that information used against Remnant members, he replied: "Absolutely."
NewsChannel 5 repeatedly reached out to Remnant Fellowship for comment, but no one ever responded.
Still, NewsChannel 5 Investigates may have been given hints about that system in 2004, when we asked Gwen Shamblin and Remnant leader Tedd Anger about a couple who claimed that the church had pressured the wife to give up mental health medications that had been prescribed for her by her doctors.
"A lot of times you'll have people that are even upset when they leave out of here," Gwen said. "A lot of times that's because I think they did feel pretty convicted that God wanted them to do one thing, but they wanted justification for another."
Anger then suggested that we go back and read the wife's testimony before the church.
"So if you read her testimony," the Remnant leader continued, "she went back on her drugs so it wasn't from a lack of drugs that sent her back into a psychiatric hospital."
Michael Shamblin said that was the norm.
"We have all the information in the world on this person. As soon as they turn, we're going to eat them alive in court because we have all this video footage showing how much their life was changed by Gwen and helped by Gwen," he explained.
Videos for Gwen Shamblin's Remnant Fellowship show members who are always joyous, the children angelic and — because the church sprang from Shamblin's Christian diet plan — almost always fit.
"They are desperately trying to look perfect. They are trying to look happy, overjoyed all the time. They are trying to look innocent," Michael Shamblin said.
In fact, Gwen Shamblin often pointed to the "thousands upon thousands of pounds of weight loss in this congregation" as proof it was ordained by God.
Other religions, she taught, were "counterfeit religions."
"She would have said this is a group of people who are looking for the lead of God. What it actually was, it's a group of people looking the lead of Gwen," Michael insisted.
Working at his mother's side, he said, he saw Remnant's dark side.
"You have how many hundreds of people have I talked to, how many situations, of husbands, ''Oh, their wife gets to go visit this church for a weekend. It's just an innocent little sweet lady talking, and it's reading the Bible and there's a dance party' — and then a year later the husband is fighting for his life, fighting for his children and custody with everything, his last penny, to try to get his family back that has been ripped away."
In her sermons, Gwen Shamblin would talk about the need to leave other loves behind: "God asked for a small, divergent group of people to leave other loves behind."
And NewsChannel 5 Investigates had been there for protests by families who had been cut off from their Remnant relatives.
"It's all about being under Gwen's control. She wants to control everybody," one mother complained.
Michael said such scenes were not unusual.
"Gwen wanted to have this Pollyanna type ... appearance, but then she would go back in a room and tell someone to go give someone the business who's fighting us in a custody battle — figure out dirt on somebody and send some undercover person to go find dirt."
We asked, "She would do that?"
"Absolutely. They became a well-oiled machine."
Yet, when Gwen Shamblin ended up in court, fighting for custody of her new husband's daughter, she insisted under oath that none of the criticisms of Remnant were true.
"Have any of the members of Remnant Fellowship been asked to leave Remnant Fellowship because they're overweight after being there for a long period of time?" an attorney asked.
"No," she insisted.
Michael's reaction: "Certainly, people have been asked to sit out because they're overweight. They're asked to webcast, to not come into the sanctuary."
The attorney in the child custody case followed up, "Have you ever shunned a member of your Remnant Fellowship because they had not yet lost all their weight?"
"Never."
Again, Michael's response: "Does shunned, what is somebody is asked to go stay at their house and not come to the sanctuary anymore, isn't that shunning?"
Gwen Shamblin was also asked, "Do you encourage members of the Remnant Fellowship not to socialize with non-Remnant members?"
"No."
Michael said that wasn't true either.
"When you are in that bubble, that Remnant bubble, with Gwen, it was — and I'm not kidding about this — it was we are the only ones who are holy. And everyone on the face of the Earth is evil."
"And you were to steer clear of others?"
"It would be automatic."
That reminded us of our question for Gwen Shamblin back in 2004.
"You think if you lie for God's sake, it's OK?"
"I believe if God calls you to," she responded, "you'd better protect Jerusalem."
Michael said, "I don't think she was making that up. I believe, I know she believed that laws don't apply. It's OK to lie if it's for God."
"Her view of God?
"Her view of God — and really what that meant was 'if it's for Gwen.'"
Shortly after the plane crash that killed his mother, her husband Joe Lara and five other Remnant leaders three years ago, Michael Shamblin left the church.
His sister, Elizabeth Shamblin Hannah, is now seen as the church's new leader.
"When somebody leaves Remnant, I experienced the same thing. I went from having hundreds of texts a day to zero," Michael said.
After the initial shock, he said, it's been the best part of his life.
"I've had the realest conversations with people since I left the church, the cult. It's like — and I don't know how to describe it — it's like I woke up from a 20-year dream. There was a haze the whole time."
What about those still in Remnant?
"They have said this recently in Remnant — because somebody reported to me — "if you leave the Remnant, you have left God.'
"I think that's unfair. What I would say to that is: God was around before Remnant, and he will be around after Remnant. He was around before Gwen Shamblin, and he'll be around after Gwen Shamblin."
As for his sister, that was the one area where he was very protective.
He said he has enormous compassion for his sister — after all, she lost both her mother and husband in the plane crash.
Remnant still talks about her as their leader, although she only phones in her messages — instead of delivering them in person.
The stories on Michael Shamblin simply aren't one piece.
If you missed a portion of the story, you can still catch up.
PART ONE
Michael Shamblin was blunt.
"Phil, 20 years ago, early on in Remnant, you were the devil. You were Satan incarnate to the Remnant. Of course, Gwen was telling us all of that."
Gwen was Gwen Shamblin, the controversial Christian diet guru who created her own church, the Remnant Fellowship, in affluent Brentwood, Tennessee — a church that some now consider to be a cult.
To read more of part one, you can click this link.
PART TWO
Gwen Shamblin was a controversial Christian diet guru and the leader of what some call a cult right in the middle of Brentwood.
But Shamblin was also a mom and now, for the first time anywhere, her son is speaking out about what he witnessed at her side through almost all of that controversy.
Michael Shamblin, now 43, saw it all — and he said he also regrets it all.
To read more of Part Two, you can click this link.
PART THREE
How does one process the feelings of betrayal by a religious leader — especially when that religious leader is also family?
That's something that Michael Shamblin — son of the late Gwen Shamblin, the controversial religious figure from Brentwood — is still trying to figure out.
"People wonder, how do people buy into cults or how do they buy into these churches or charismatic leaders? It was my mother, and I went along with everything," Shamblin said in an exclusive interview with NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
Read more on this portion at this link.
PART FOUR
A threat delivered with a sniper's bullet.
That's just one of the startling claims from the son of controversial Brentwood religious figure Gwen Shamblin in an exclusive interview with NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
Michael Shamblin said the threat was delivered by Shamblin's new husband, former "Tarzan" actor Joe Lara, sometime after their 2018 marriage. Lara, who was proficient with a sniper's rifle, reportedly took Michael out behind the plantation-style home that Shamblin owned in the affluent Brentwood community.
PART FIVE
"I'm going to say this, and the people of Remnant are not going to like this."
That was how Michael Shamblin began his thought. The son of Remnant Fellowship founder Gwen Shamblin, Michael is the highest-level defector to ever leave and blow the whistle on the controversial Brentwood church.
Michael Shamblin, who was once listed among Remnant's leaders, now calls it "a cult."
"If the Remnant members sitting in that building realized how much information that these people have on them, there would be no one left in those seats," he told NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
Read more on this portion at this link.