Some Thoughts on Momentus

By Steve Lortz

 

In the 1970s, a number of unscrupulous pop psychologists introduced Pavlovian techniques into their seminars/trainings/encounter sessions. The movement became known as "thought reform." One particular type of thought reform is "large group awareness training" or "LGAT." If you want more details on these things, I recommend the book "Cults In Our Midst" by Margaret Singer.

 

In her book, Dr. Singer describes what happens during an LGAT. Her description matches my experience of the Momentus training almost to a tee.

 

If you subject people to a sufficient amount of artificial physical and emotional stress ("ripping them up," the first part of the Momentus training), they become highly suggestible, and then if you switch and become buddy-buddy (the later parts of Momentus), a certain number of people will believe anything you want them to. They will "come to your view," just because you've fiddled with their brain chemistry.

 

At the beginning of the Momentus training, participants have to swear an oath not to reveal the practices that are carried on during the training. I swore that oath. About fourteen months after I had taken Momentus, it dawned on me that the promoters of Momentus were using that oath to hide the physical, emotional and spiritual abuse that takes place, and to conceal the fact that people have been hospitalized as a direct result of the training. I realized that my oath was foolish ["anoetos" = "unthinking," Galatians 3:3], and therefore, sinful. So I publicly confessed that sin, and repented of it. Now I am free to reveal anything the Lord wants me to reveal about what took place during Momentus.

 

One of the ways the trainers manipulate the participants perceptions is to generate as much confusion as possible, and then appear to be the only ones in the room who understand what's going on. (In one very cynical sense, this is true, since the trainees aren't told that the confusion is artificial.) They do this simultaneously on as many different levels as possible; physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, etc.

 

This is one of the techniques they used to generate intellectual confusion. Early in the training, they handed each participant a sheet of paper giving the mission statement of the training. The statement itself consisted of one brief paragraph that seemed to be straight forward. Then the sheet went on to list three or four different meanings for each of the nouns in the statement. After you read the first "definition" you had to try to figure out which of the three or four possible meanings the trainers had in mind. After you read the second "definition" you had nine to sixteen possibilities. After the third "definition," there were 27 to 54 possible meanings. And so on... The trainees were given no time to do anything but briefly scan the sheet. After reading about a third of the sheet, it became impossible to try to make any sense out of the mission statement. So the trainees just gave up and assumed that the trainers were doing things in line with the statement, which was often not the case.

 

During the Momentus training, I called on the Lord, and I got deliverance. The problem is, I didn't get deliverance because of the Momentus training. I got it because I called on the name of the Lord. As it is written in Joel and Acts, "and it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered/saved."

 

The techniques of Momentus are all carnal, just like circumcision was for the Galatians. The perceived benefits come from people calling on the name of the Lord, not from the techniques of Momentus. Yet the promoters of Momentus hog all the credit for the deliverance, and refuse to accept any responsibility whatsoever for the terrible devastation their carnal techniques wreak on some of the participants' lives.

 

Jesus said that if you lose one of your sheep, leave the ones who are doing okay, and find the one that's lost. Momentus says to break the sheep's' legs. The promoters of Momentus say it's okay to destroy five percent of the flock in order to achieve their goals.

 

Jesus said that what you've done unto the least of these my brothers, you have done unto me. Momentus teaches Christians to heap abuse on each other.

 

Jesus Christ is the savior. Momentus is a carnal trap!

 

The things Tocchini subjected us to were not mistakes, as some claim. They were carefully orchestrated, even though we participants were led to believe that it was all spontaneous.

 

Just for starters, the trainers get together before the training begins and review the information about the people who have signed up, to figure out who is most likely to express vocal resistance to the training techniques. Then, when the training begins, and that person starts to raise objections, the trainers browbeat and harass and humiliate and bullyrag that person without mercy, until he's psychologically beaten into submission. This is all a show, to intimidate everyone else, so that nobody dares raise a voice against the training practices. The exercises were deliberately designed to confuse you. The whole experience was deliberately designed to wipe you out.

 

To make a mistake is one thing. I did it when I paid $150 to take Momentus. To deliberately design a system of psychological manipulation in order to extract $150 each from thousands of participants is another thing altogether! To claim that God made you do it is despicable.

 

About 14 months after I had taken the Momentus training, I looked around and saw a lot of harmful things going on. My wife and I were attending a congregation in Indianapolis. The Momentus grads had formed an "elite" group, separate from, and in their opinions superior to, Momentus nongrads. The grads bullied and badgered all nongrads into leaving the leadership team, then they changed the services from prayer and praise to God into infomercials promoting Momentus.

 

I prayed to God, and the guidance He gave me for resolving these harmful issues was for me to publicly repent of the foolish promises I had made to hold Momentus harmless and to keep secret the physical, emotional and spiritual abuse that takes place during the training, and for me to expose Momentus for the carnal trap it is.

 

In "Cults in Our Midst," Singer's six conditions that create the atmosphere needed to put thought-reform processes into place are as follows:

 

"1. Keep the person unaware of what is going on and how she or he is being changed a step at a time."

 

"The process of keeping people unaware is key to a cult's double agenda: The leader slowly takes you through a series of events that on the surface look like one agenda, while on another level, the real agenda is to get you, the recruit or member, to obey and to give up your autonomy, your past affiliations, and your belief systems. The existence of the double agenda makes this process one of noninformed consent."

 

"2. Control the person's social and/or physical environment; especially control the person's time."

 

"3. Systematically create a sense of powerlessness in the person."

 

"Once stripped of your usual support network... your confidence in your own perceptions erodes. As your sense of powerlessness increases, your good judgement and understanding of the world are diminished. At the same time as you are destabilized in relation to your ordinary reality and worldview, the cult confronts you with a new, unanimously (group-) approved worldview. As the group attacks your previous worldview, causing you distress and inner confusion, you are not allowed to speak about this confusion, nor can you object to it, because leadership constantly suppresses questions and counters any resistance. Through this process, your inner confidence is eroded. Moreover, the effectiveness of this approach can be speeded up if you are physically tired, which is why cult leaders see to it that followers are kept overly busy."

 

"4. Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in such a way as to inhibit behavior that reflects the person's former social identity."

 

"The expression of your beliefs, values, activities and characteristic demeanor prior to contact with the group is suppressed, and you are manipulated into taking on a social identity preferred by the leadership. Old beliefs and old patterns of behavior are defined as irrelevant, if not evil. You quickly learn that leadership wants old ideas and old patterns eliminated, so you suppress them."

 

"5. Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in order to promote learning of the group's ideology or belief system and group-approved behaviors."

 

"Once immersed in an environment in which you are totally dependent on the rewards given by those who control the setting, you can be confronted by massive demands to learn varying amounts of information and behaviors. You are rewarded for proper performance with social and sometimes material reinforcement; if slow to learn or noncompliant, you are threatened with shunning, banning, and punishment which includes loss of esteem from others, loss of privileges, loss of status, and inner anxiety and guilt. ... The more complicated and filled with contradictions the new system is, and the more difficult it is to learn, the more effective the conversion process will be. ... Over time, an easy solution to the insecurity generated by the difficulties of learning the new system is to inhibit any display of doubt and, even if you don't understand the content, to merely acquiesce, affirm, and act as if you do understand and accept the new philosophy or content."

 

"6. Put forth a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that permits no feedback and refuses to be modified except by leadership approval or executive order."

 

"If you criticize or complain, the leader or peers allege that you are defective, not the organization. In this closed system of logic, you are not allowed to question or doubt a tenet or rule or to call attention to factual material that suggests some internal contradiction within the belief system or a contradiction with what you've been told. If you do make such observations, they may be turned around and argued to mean the opposite of what you intended. You are made to feel that you are wrong. In cultic groups, the individual member is always wrong, and the system is always right."

 

"The goal of all this is your conversion or remolding. As you learn to modify your former behaviors in order to be accepted in this closed and controlled environment, you change. You affirm that you accept and understand the ideology by beginning to talk in the simple catchphrases particular to the group. This 'communication' has no foundation since, in reality, you have little understanding of the system beyond the catchphrases. But once you begin to express your seeming verbal acceptance of the group's ideology, then that ideology becomes the rule book for subsequent direction and evaluation of your behavior."

 

"Also, using the new language fosters your separation from your old conscience and belief system. Your new language allows you to justify activities that are clearly not in your interests, perhaps not even in the interests of humankind. Precisely those behaviors that lead to criticism from the outside world because they violate the norms and rules of the society as a whole are rationalized within the cult community through use of this new terminology, this new language."

 

This describes what goes on in Momentus perfectly.

 

Momentus trainers generate as much confusion as possible, then bend you to their ideas by presenting themselves as the only source of confidence and certainty amidst a sea of confusion. You feel wiped out because the exercises are designed to produce changes in your brain chemistry.

 

Do people just "claim to have been hurt," as Momentus supporters declare, or have they actually been hurt by the Momentus training?

 

Concerning her experience of Momentus, Jean Cofield wrote, "Having no personal or family history of mental illness, I spent four days in a hospital mental health unit after the training. I was admitted because my mind was racing from thought to thought making it very difficult to relax or sleep. I mistook unfounded and never before imagined thoughts concerning my husband, children and others as reality. I literally believed every thought that came into my mind was true. Once at the hospital I was given medication to rest and readjust the chemical imbalance in my brain and soon regained rational thinking processes. The hospital physician termed what I experienced as a single occurrence manic episode (excessive mental excitement). It was determined the episode was brought about by a chemical imbalance in the brain due to the abnormal stress of the Momentus training. I was told by Momentus staff my reaction was an isolated and rare occurrence caused by some big problem in my life I was afraid to face (neither they nor I have any idea what that might be). However, I learned later, two others in my own training experienced very similar extreme symptoms, one winding up in the hospital also. I have since heard of three additional situations where participants ended up in the hospital or attempted suicide following their Momentus training. This is far from an isolated occurrence and is cause for concern. ... One of my concerns with Momentus is that the trainer and staff assume no responsibility for what occurs with an individual either during or after the training."

 

When I took Momentus, I did a very foolish thing, and when I say "foolish" I mean in the same sense that Paul called the Galatians "foolish" in Gal. 3:1-3. The Greek word is "anoetos" and means "mindless" or "without thinking." I signed a "hold harmless" agreement that contained the following clause, "12 EXEMPTION FROM LIABILITY: I hereby fully and forever discharge and release MM. Inc. and [initials of local sponsors] from any and all liability, claims, demands, actions, and causes of action whatsoever arising out of any damages, both in law and in equity, in any way resulting from personal, physical, psychological or emotional injuries, distress, or death arising from or in any way related to the TRAINING. This release from liability includes loss, damage or injury resulting from the negligence of MM. Inc. and [initials of local sponsors] from any other cause or causes."

 

In effect, I swore a solemn oath that I would turn a blind eye to any damage that was done to me or to anyone else as a result of the Momentus training. I swore an oath before God that I would refuse to look at the harmfulness of Momentus, even if people died as a result! That oath was one of those things Singer characterizes as "noninformed consent," because no one ever told us that we could be hospitalized, or even die, as a result of the training.

 

Do some people receive genuine deliverance from the Lord during the Momentus training? Yes, I did so myself. Why? Because people sometimes call on the name of the Lord during the Momentus training. Again, as it is written in Joel and in Acts, "and it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be delivered/saved." Sometimes people call on the name of the Lord during disasters, combat and terminal illness; and get deliverance. Should we promote disasters, combat and terminal illness so that more people can get delivered? No. Should we promote Momentus? The answer again is an emphatic "NO!" We should expose it for the carnal trap it is.

 

When the Lord opened my eyes to the truth about Momentus, He showed me a picture of a mouse trap. One of those good, old-fashioned ones with the spring that snaps the wire snare over the mouse's head.

 

The wire snare is carnal mindedness, believing we can clean up the flesh by means of the flesh. All of Momentus' techniques are designed to fool around (to put it mildly) with a person's brain chemistry. For reasons that I don't have time to get into right now, concerning the way "healing" was done in the first century, and the few things we do know about how initiation into the mystery religions was done, I am of the opinion that the Momentus exercises fall into the category of "pharmakeia," poorly translated "witchcraft" in the KJV of Galatians 5:20, a work of the flesh.

 

Carnal mindedness is the wire snare, but commitment to foolish promises is the spring. The more committed a person is to the foolish oaths he swore during the Momentus training, the more he is blinded by carnal mindedness. That's not good for in-depth spiritual perception and awareness. Repentance of those foolish oaths is the only way out, but it works.

 

Repentance is the most humbling thing in life, even more humbling than a tongue-lashing from Dan Tocchini. But our God is a God full of mercy and grace, and as we repent, abasing ourselves, He raises us back up! Praise the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name!

 

The first verse the Lord brought to my attention regarding the curses I had placed myself under during the Momentus training was Jeremiah 17:5, "Thus saith the Lord; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord."

 

That's a one-sentence description of the Momentus training. We trusted the trainers, we embraced exercises that manipulated our flesh, and we committed ourselves to visions that we made up out of our own hearts.

 

I don't now remember exactly how or exactly when, but I became later aware that the act of taking an oath is in fact the calling of a curse upon yourself.

 

One of the major themes of the surface agenda of Momentus was "self-government" through keeping promises. Most of the first day was filled with the trainers browbeating people about promise keeping. "What's your commitment?" was the refrain. The more committed a person is to the promises he made during the Momentus training, the more tightly carnality ensnares his mind. Commitment is the spring of the mouse trap.

 

I Corinthians 10:13 says, "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it."

 

There is a way for a person to escape the curses of the Momentus training. He needs to change the things he's committed to. He needs to stop being committed to the foolish promises he made during the training, he needs to stop being committed to the visions he made up out of his own heart, and he needs to recommit himself to being led by the Spirit of the Lord. To repent means to change what you're committed to. Genuine repentance is the only way to escape the curses of the Momentus training. The fact that we can is only by God's mercy and His grace.

 

Momentus supporters claim that the training is a "good thing." Is carnal mindedness a good thing? Look at Romans 8:6-7 and 12-13,

 

6 "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

 

7 "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be."

 

12 "Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.

 

13 "For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live."

 

My experience of Momentus is that it is carnal from root to fruit. Momentus was supposed to help us pull down the strongholds in our lives that prevented us from being the types of persons that we said we wanted to be. During Momentus, the trainers quoted a prayer from "The Three Battlegrounds," a book by Francis Frangipani: "Lord Jesus, I submit to you. I declare according to the Word of God, that because of Your power to subject all things unto Yourself, the weapons of my warfare are mighty to the pulling down of strongholds..."

 

"...the weapons of my warfare are mighty to the pulling down of strongholds..." Is Frangipani's prayer really according to the Word of God? Look at II Corinthians 10:3&4:

 

3 "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:

 

4 "(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds;)"

 

"Not carnal," but mighty "through God." What happens when we leave words out of the Word of God? Do we have the Word left? Frangipani's omission may not have meant much in the original context in his book, but it makes a world of difference in the context of the Momentus training, because the Momentus exercises are not "through God" and they certainly are carnal.

 

The exercises used in the Momentus training were not at all inspired by God. They were devised by the secular, quack practitioners of thought-reform who developed est and Lifespring. They weren't devised for the biblical purpose of pulling down strongholds. They were devised for the purpose of applying artificial physical and emotional stress to the subject, to the end that the subject's will to resist is broken, and the subject's belief system becomes putty in the hands of the thought-reform practitioner. The fact that Momentus puts a religious veneer over the exercises doesn't make them spiritual.

 

Momentus achieves its effects by altering the subject's brain chemistry, through applying artificial physical and emotional stress. In other words, Momentus operates by manipulating the flesh. Galatians 3:3 asks:

 

3 "Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?"

 

Very good questions, indeed!

 

In the context of the truth that we do not war after the flesh, II Corinthians 10:7a asks, "Do ye look on things after the outward appearance?" During the Momentus training in which I participated, it seemed that the trainer's warcry was "The physical universe doesn't lie!" If that doesn't indicate a "mindset" of looking on things after the outward appearance, I don't know what does.

 

The harm Momentus inflicts is not incidental, like the damage done by a fistfight in the stands at a ball game. Momentus was specifically designed to crush peoples' belief systems, like the machine that crushes gravel to build roads. Some people are bound to be damaged, no matter how careful the screening process.

 

Promoters of Momentus seem to believe that the "good" done by the training is sufficiently worthwhile to accept that a significant percentage of its participants will be seriously damaged. Look at Luke 15:4&5,

 

4 "What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?

 

5 "And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing."

 

Apparently, Jesus Himself is interested in 100 percent!

 

Compared to the truth of God's Word, Momentus is weighed and found very, very wanting.

 

 

(Note: These thoughts first appeared as a number of entries on the CES Dialogue Board message board before it was removed from the CES site because too many posters didn’t buy the CES line on Momentus and a number of other doctrines. They’ve been compiled in this format for easlier reading, with personal comments to other posters removed, and edited slightly for flow. Otherwise, they appear just as Mr. Lortz originally wrote them and accurately reflect his thinking about the Momentus experience and his evaluations of the training. Although the original Momentus training is now broken into two trainings, Discovery and Breakthrough, these comments are still pertinent to the new versions, as a careful examination of the ACCD Web site reveals essentially—if not exactly—the same books on the recommended reading list as when Mr. Lortz took the training.)