The actual result could not have been further from the initial vision and which eventually evolved into a grotesque culture of emotional and spiritual abuse fostered by the dominant matriarchal figure of Christel Pesch.
With a studio in
Developing a brand of music with an irregular and/or unpredictable tempo and almost devoid of discernable melody which was recorded on the fly, supposedly under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, it became nearly impossible to recreate the music or actually teach it to anyone else. The music was dominated by the constant repetition of short and disjointed fragments of scripture and personal observation which many if not most listeners found difficult to find an affinity with.
Klaus & Christel Pesch created a realm of exclusivity in which select musicians or Team members would be invited (read: forced) to participate and thus be elevated to the heights of favor until such a time that they would fail to perform to expectation, at which point they would be dropped from the program, making room for the next eager soul desperate to be recognized as a spiritual musician and willing to shine in the light of Christel Pesch.
In an attempt to maintain a level of authority in the presence of musicians more gifted with technical ability and creative sensitivity she branded herself as a ‘Psalmist’ which she claimed to be distinctly different from a conventional praise and worship leader, thus introducing a hierarchy in the music ministry which could be used to control and abuse willing participants.
Using her self proclaimed authority Christel Pesch publicly humiliated and abused musicians and singers into believing their musical skills were worthless in the eyes of God unless they yielded to her guidance and were open to learning new ways of worshiping in the spirit of the Lord. She systematically chastised many singers because of their inability to synchronize or harmonize with her unconventional way of expressing herself, eventually moving to pre-programmed music. Her inability to keep tempo was projected as the inability of other musicians to follow the leading of the spirit. This ultimately generated a great deal of confusion and self doubt in very capable people willing to learn something they did not fully comprehend.
Able singers, technicians and musicians were excluded from the worship team for a variety of reasons ranging from; being suspected as having a CD collection containing worldly music through to having an un-teachable spirit. In reality Christel Pesch supported by her husband Klaus Pesch would move people in and out of the music ministry as she saw fit to promote her own musical talent and keep competition as far away as possible.
Many group members would perform the outward ritual of heaping praise onto Christel Pesch for her musical creations, however very few actually listened to the music at home and even fewer ever learned it to be able to perform it.
There was no corporate worship in any of the Sunday meetings or bible studies. The only musical or worship content of any meetings run by Klaus Pesch would consist of everyone listening to Christel Pesch playing a selection of her recordings after which her husband would preach. Occasionally she would perform a song live during which everyone would sit motionless in apparent admiration of her spiritual sensitivity.
This gradual dumbing down of the group in all thing musical resulted in the slow and painful demise of the singing talent of many people in the team as they had less and less opportunity to improve their praise and worship skills in a group setting.
In the mid 1990’s Christel Pesch announced that God had told her to throw away all the songbooks from other artists or churches and that from that time onward she would only be allowed by the spirit of God to sing her own creations.
It followed that all music whether recorded or written from any other organization other than the Team was banned within the team and any of its meetings or services.
It was also ruled that only the music of Christel Pesch would be used in any worship because she was the only anointed worshiper in the entire group and she alone would lead the Team on a quest to rediscover the ‘Song of Moses’.
This edict persisted until about 2002/03 when gradually she started to allow songs written by her grandchildren to be sung but only after considerable vetting and public criticism during meetings.
Using the internet to promote her music Christel Pesch started using her website www.mtherronstudios.com to reach out to the world with her husband’s message. It became her preoccupation for the latter years of her life and she became obsessed with the site traffic statistics believing that the world was hungry for her creative output. The reality was that almost all of the visits to the site were members of the Team. Not one single CD was sold through the website
When she died very suddenly in 2006 it is true to say that her music died with her. There were minor squabbles as various factions of the Pesch family scrambled to take up the perceived anointing associated with the music ministry and ultimate control of the copyright on the music which in reality is worthless because no one is interested in singing the songs.
After her death Klaus Pesch openly preached that God had taken his wife and her gift of music because the members of the Team had failed to support her in her prophetical music ministry by learning and performing her songs.
Many observers agree that Christel Pesch used her world of music and control of the musicians within the Team as a form of escape in which she could hide away from the increasingly tyrannical and hyper-authoritarian rule of her husband Klaus Pesch.
Her life of increasing loneliness and isolation perpetuated by her own brand of manipulation afforded her little in the way of creative outlet and by using the talents of those willing to submit to her leadership she was able to escape the unpleasant pressures of the financial exploitation imposed by her family’s business practices on most of the rest of the group.
1 comment:
Fuck me!
It sounds like the Taliban on acid!
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