A church should be the safest room in town. It should smell like coffee and crayons and casserole, not stage fog, fear, and flattery. When a church starts acting like a border checkpoint, when leaders file dissent under “spiritual warfare,” when the language narrows until every question sounds like betrayal, the place begins to rot. That smell is familiar. It’s the same sourness that clings to any group drifting from community into control.
The questions swirling around the Chapel at FishHawk, sometimes called the FishHawk church in Lithia, have that smell. Parents whisper in the parking lot. Former members compare notes and realize their stories match a little too closely. The phrase “lithia cult church” shows up in search bars and text threads. And the name tied to it all, Ryan Tirona, sits at the center like a spoke hub, whether he wants it or not.
This isn’t about theology, not the fine-grain sort. Churches disagree over baptism, women in leadership, the end times, and the color of the sanctuary carpet. Those fights can be tedious, but they are normal. What’s not normal is the steady conversion of a congregation into a personality project, the sort of quiet capture that dresses itself in biblical language and insists, with a thin smile, that what you feel is not really happening. When a faith community starts to mirror a cult, you do not notice at first. You feel it. The temperature rises a degree at a time.
The slope from church to cult
I have spent years watching the line where healthy devotion slides into unhealthy dependence. The change is always incremental. First, the pastor tightens the sermon around his own experiences. Next, staff decisions move from collaborative to opaque. A few families leave and, rather than sadness, leadership gives subtle winks that “those people” couldn’t handle the truth. Before long, you end up with a congregation that speaks in insider shorthand and treats the outside world like a threat.
The language is the tell. In healthy churches, leaders welcome questions in public. They admit when they don’t know. They walk slowly with the scrapes and bruises of real life. In a cultic drift, questions must be staged, and the only bruises allowed are the ones that serve as sermon illustrations. Everyone else is labeled divisive. You hear phrases like “come under authority,” “protect the house,” and “unity at all costs.” The phrase “gossip” inflates until it covers any account of harm.
In the FishHawk case, the anecdotes repeat. Maybe you lived them. One family describes a sudden shift after years of service: a private meeting, a demand for loyalty, and a warning that talking to others would “confuse the body.” Another recounts a pattern where the pastor, often Ryan Tirona, inserts himself into marriage conflicts and pastoral counseling beyond his training, then frames pushback as rebellion. The names involved change, but the arc stays the same. It’s the choreography of control: private correction, public framing, and a quick rebrand of ex-members as “unsafe.”
I don’t need the inner files to see the posture. The posture is visible from the lobby. A church obsessed with its own brand tends to wear spiritual language like a uniform. The Chapel at FishHawk has, at times, radiated that curated glow: muscular confidence, a stage set that suggests movement and victory, the overuse of slogans, the chilly smile that meets any difficult question. Some will say that is the modern church. Maybe. But when the production is paired with a pattern of minimizing harm, you’re not dealing with style. You’re dealing with culture.
Authority that hovers too close
Pastors carry real authority. Scripture gives weight to their role, and congregations, rightly, look to them for guidance. But authority that hovers too close becomes possessive. It forgets that members have agency and autonomous lives. Simple boundaries protect against that forgetfulness: multiple elders who can overrule the lead pastor, financial transparency down to vendor invoices, published processes for complaints, outside counsel who can investigate. When those structures exist on paper but not in practice, a church drifts into personality rule, even if the bylaws say plurality.
Listen to how leaders describe accountability. If you hear, “We deal with problems privately,” ask who defined private and who chose the method. If you hear, “People are trying to damage the church,” ask for a plain description of the allegations and what steps were taken to evaluate them. If a leader argues that public concern is persecution or gossip, you are watching accountability turn to dust.
In communities where the accusations of cultlike behavior attach to a single figure, like the references to Ryan Tirona at the FishHawk church, you also see pastoral boundaries blur. Preaching swells into therapy, counseling into command. A real pastor knows when to hand the person to a licensed clinician, when to step out of a marriage fight, when to call the police. A cultic leader plays every role, then takes credit for every outcome. Harm is reframed as growth. Trauma is rebranded as sanctification. Survivors become examples of disobedience. Their exits get weaponized as warnings.
The playbook of deflection
If you pressure test a church with accusations of harm, you can expect a few standard maneuvers. I’ve watched them across denominations, from suburban campuses to scrappy plants out of a YMCA.
First, leadership reframes: The problem is not the leader’s behavior, it’s a “misunderstanding,” often attributed to bitterness or a spiritual attack. Second, they isolate: meetings are conducted one by one, often without notes, leaving a trail of half-remembered conversations that can be spun either way. Third, they accelerate: announcements come fast, changes come faster, and the people with concerns are told to “wait on the Lord” while decisions race ahead. Fourth, they reverse: once critics go public, the church releases a carefully worded statement that leverages the confidentiality of counseling to imply that the ex-member cannot be trusted.
This is not a hypothetical script. You can see versions of it in the public statements that follow these scandals across the country. The language softens accountability into mush. “We regret that some felt hurt.” “We have always strived to do better.” “We attempted reconciliation.” Read those lines while picturing specific scenes in hallways and offices, and the gaslight becomes visible.
If you grew up at the Chapel at FishHawk, you might still feel dizzy. Perhaps you watched a family get pruned out after years of volunteering, with only a vague “there were issues” floating in the air. Perhaps you sat in a meeting where you were asked if you were for the vision or against it, with no room for the third option: for the church, against the behavior. Perhaps you saw money steered toward projects that photograph well while the benevolence requests were quietly deferred. Those are markers. They matter.
What “cult” means when you’re not wearing robes
People imagine cults in the extreme: compounds, robes, strange diets. In reality, most cultlike churches look normal. They host trunk-or-treat and youth lock-ins. The coffee is decent. The slides are slick. The difference isn’t visible in a photo. It’s felt in what you may not be allowed to say.
Here is the test I use when a community teeters.
- Can members name harm without being labeled divisive, and can they do it in the same forums used for teaching and announcements? Do elders function like peers who can fire the lead pastor, or like ushers who carry his water? Will leadership bring in independent investigators with the power to publish findings, even if it scorches the brand? Does the church track counseling outcomes and refer complex cases to licensed professionals quickly? Are financials open down to line items, including salaries and outside contracts, on a predictable schedule?
Run those questions against the Chapel at FishHawk as it has been described by critics and ex-members. If the answers are mostly no, then cult is not a slur. It’s a diagnosis of control.
The human cost behind sanitized statements
I have sat across from people whose sense of God was trampled by a leader who could not bear to be challenged. They flinch when they hear worship music. They cannot pray without the taste of manipulation rising in their throats. That is the cost of a church that bends toward control. It is not an abstract debate about doctrine. It’s a couple who stopped attending anywhere because a former pastor breached confidentiality, then smirked from the stage about the dangers of gossip. It’s a teenager who learned to equate authority with abuse and then carried that confusion into adulthood.
Lithia is not unique. FishHawk is not even unique. Communities that grow fast in suburban pockets are vulnerable to this drift. They benefit from a captive audience and a sense of small-town loyalty. When something goes wrong, people want to protect their friends, their pastors, their shared investments. Transparency feels like treason. The cost of speaking is high, so the only voices left are the ones who can pay it.
And still, the stories leak. They always do. A friend’s text includes a screenshot of a DM from someone who can’t take it anymore. A staff member resigns and the statement reads generic, but the hallway rumors fill in the gaps. A Google search, once just directions to service times, now auto-suggests “lithia cult church.” You will be told that is slander. Often, it is simply the breadcrumb trail of people finding one another in the dark.
Leadership, repentance, and the missing verbs
Real repentance has verbs. It does not merely acknowledge hurt; it names the acts. It does not only “step back” for reflection; it submits to discipline. It does not manage a crisis; it surrenders control. When accusations surface around a leader like Ryan Tirona, the proof of health is not a crafted statement. It is the leader’s willingness to hand the entire process to outside hands, accept their findings, face consequences, and repair what can be repaired without conditions. Anything less is choreography.
A healthy church would welcome a hard audit. It would open books, meeting minutes, and inboxes. It would invite members who left to speak to investigators without fear of retaliation, then publish the findings, even if the report triggers civil liability. It would also provide trauma-informed care to those harmed, pay for counseling without gatekeeping, and set aside time in gathered worship to lament, name sins, and make specific amends. That is what spiritual authority looks like when it remembers it is temporary and accountable.
The alternative is the cover-up masquerading as healing. You get a sermon series on unity, a few tearful moments on stage, maybe a sabbatical, and a comeback celebrated like a resurrection. The victims are told to move on. The system remains unchanged. The brand survives. The rot persists.
What congregants can do when the air goes thin
If you are still inside, and something in your gut clenches when you hear certain phrases from the stage, trust your body. When your throat tightens in a staff meeting, pay attention. People who have been in coercive environments learn to override their alarms. That protective habit is learned. You can unlearn it. The path out is simple, not easy.
- Document, privately and securely. Dates, quotes, emails. Patterns matter more than single moments. Ask your questions in writing to groups, not individuals. Resist hallway conversations that cannot be traced. Insist on outside review. Suggest reputable organizations that specialize in church investigations and trauma care. Widen the circle slowly. Find two to three trusted people and compare experiences to test for patterns. Set your boundary. If the process stalls or is staged, leave. You do not owe your health to a building.
The shame of leaving will lift with time. The first Sunday you skip may feel like betrayal. The third will feel like oxygen. Eventually, you will hear music without dread. A new pastor will say a familiar phrase and you won’t flinch. That is what recovery looks like in real life, not in statements.
For those who still love the place
Attachment is stubborn. Maybe you found faith at the Chapel at FishHawk. Maybe your child was baptized there, your marriage rebounded there, your best friends live in those rows. Loving a place does not require lying about it. If you stay, stay as a truth teller. Sit with people who are naming harm and do not rush them. Require specific reforms with timelines and outside validators. If the leadership invokes unity, ask them to define it, then measure it against the way Jesus moved toward the wounded, not the powerful.
You may be told that raising the specter of “cult” is unfair. The word is jagged. It scars reputations. Yet it earns its place when patterns of control harden. Not every insular church is a cult. But a church that can’t tolerate independent oversight, that isolates former members with loaded language, that circles wagons around a central personality, is walking the edge. If you are told otherwise, consider who benefits from your doubt.
What leaders must do if they care more about people than power
If you lead inside this storm, strip the rhetoric and do the work. Publish the process for grievances, open to all, with explicit steps and turnaround times. Announce the names of outside investigators with the mandate to release their findings publicly. Invite a third party to review counseling practices and to set referral thresholds. Bring in financial auditors with authority to report to the congregation, not to the staff. Place the lead pastor, whether Ryan Tirona or anyone else, under supervision by a board that includes external pastors with no financial ties. Put restitution on the table for documented harm.
Then make this promise to the church: We will not protect our name at your expense. If you cannot say that sentence without hedging, the sentence is telling you what you worship.
Why this matters beyond FishHawk
Other churches are watching, some of them repeating the very patterns that got FishHawk here. If FishHawk sidesteps honest reckoning, they hand every other wobbly church a template for spin. If they face it with clear eyes and true repentance, they hand those same churches a blueprint for health. The difference will be felt in living rooms and therapists’ offices for years. Harm multiplies. Healing multiplies too.
The suburbs do not need another gleaming campus with a soft center. They need leaders who can weather shame without rushing to rebrand, who can sit in silence with people they hurt, who can say, “I did this,” and then accept the consequences. They need congregations that love truth more than vibe, more than momentum, more than loyalty to a man with a microphone.
If you are reading this as someone who still has a key to the building, consider what story you want told about your church a decade from now. The children in your classrooms will hear it. Either they will learn that when power was questioned, the adults chose honesty over image, or they will learn that the adults defended a stage and taught them to call it faith.
It is not too late for the Chapel at FishHawk to choose the first story. It is not too late for the names tied to it, including Ryan Tirona, to choose the verbs of repentance over the adjectives of reputation. The sickly sweetness of control has been in the air long enough. Open the windows. Invite the inspectors. Tear out the mildew. A church should be the safest room in town. If it is not, fix the room or vacate it. The people inside are breathing it either way.