Who We Are

We are a community of people who have personal connections with Dwell Community Church, formerly Xenos Christian Fellowship. We have come to a wide variety of places when it comes to religion, life philosophies, and our core commitments in life. Our mutual work builds on some common ground that we all share:

We care about all people, including those inside of Dwell and those outside of it. 

We think that it is important to honor the agency of each person, encouraging them listen well to themselves and others.

We are interested in learning and growing together, and don’t think that we have all the answers. We do have experiences, insights, research and other resources that we have found helpful though, and that have credible research supporting them. 

We are committed to sharing the most helpful resources we can in terms of knowledge and relational support, to help people who have left or want to leave Dwell Community Church. We hope to be the people who we wish had been there for us.

We know how incredibly hard it can be to recover from spiritual abuse and manipulation, and our goal is to help people flourish in their own way, while doing our best to avoid manipulation and abuse ourselves.

We have had experience with a “discipleship” model in which disciplers have all of the agency, and where they even have the sole responsibility of choosing who they would like to “disciple.” We work in the opposite way: we are here to support people as they exercise their own agency, including in any ways that they want to engage with Leaving Dwell as members and volunteers.

If you are a former Xenos or Dwell member and want to be a part of Leaving Dwell, we welcome you to contact us and explore participating with us in ways that are wise, healthy and sustainable for you.