Part 1: The Rise and Fall of Twin Hills "Of Milk & Miracles"

GREG: Just like the Bible says, let's start in the beginning. I'm standing in a beautiful food court, the glass ceilings, ferns and gorgeous 36 flavor soda machines make me feel like I'm at the mall of the future. Or a corporate campus of a company that makes pharmaceuticals, but this is no ordinary food court.

This is manana the food court of twin Hills community church, an affluent 10,000 member megachurch with over 600 staff members located in broad ripple, Indianapolis. And at this food court, you can get anything you want, including a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

My name is grant hay. I'm a former journalist and current food blogger for, oh my God. That's good.blogspot.com a personal project for which I'm currently seeking funding. And it was at this very place three weeks ago that I first stumbled on a story that I couldn't help, but follow it had called to me like Jesus had called the fisherman.

At least I think that's. I'm not a Christian and I don't know much about it outside of the constant cultural programming that makes most Americans vaguely evangelical

with the readership in the dozens. I had decided to review the church's newly open Chick-fil-A to entice Midwestern readers with no interest in fine dining. But as I worked my way through a 10 piece nugget, I noticed a man across from me talking to himself and staring up at a large banner of the church's enigmatic lead pastor.

That pastor of course is Steve Judson. If you live in Indianapolis, you know the name, Steve Judson, but I live in Noblesville. I had never heard of him. That is until I started talking to the man talking to that banner, that man was Doug Jeffers and it turned out he had a story that was Spier than Chick-fil-A sauce and stickier than honey mustard.

DOUG: *And then he cast me aside as if I was some sort of Judas. He's the Judas. If there's a Judas, he's the he's Judas. If there's a top five Judas he's, he's the number one Judas*

GREG: This is the story of twin Hills community church, a place of wonder and majesty for any Christian who comes there for non-Christians. I'm not sure if it moves the needle, but it's also the story of power, popularity, secrets, sex money, and delicious chicken nuggets. And it's about the man at the center of it all.

Pastor Steve Judson. 

Music Theme Song 
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GREG: Doug Jeffers is tall with a friendly face and long arms that he likes to wave around when he gets excited. He's probably 50. I didn't ask as a food blogger and first time podcaster, sometimes I forget to ask the most basic questions, but also as a food blogger, I know a tasty story.

When I hear one, like the one Doug told me over his plate of waffle. 

DOUG: Can we, uh, start with a prayer? . Dear heavenly father. Thank you for your voice, for your wisdom for your guidance. Today, allow me to be an open book to be interpreted as you will. Thank you for all you've done for us in your name.

We pray of the vast glory of your kingdom.

GREG: Dougie grown up with a comfortable childhood in Glenco Illinois as the he to a dwindling asbestos fortune. But when he wasn't accepted to any universities, he decided to attend the moody Bible Institute where he met Steve Judson. Steve was handsome and charismatic.

He loved to talk about the world and himself. And even at this young age, he seemed to have all the answers. Steve and Doug were instant friends.

DOUG: I was a sophomore at the moody Bible Institute, which I'm sure you've heard of. Yeah.. And, uh, I was, I was involved with this just wonderful gal. Her name was Louis. She was Araya sunshine, and we would do these crazy, crazy things. Like we would go white water rafting and antiquing, and she said, Hey. I met somebody.

I think you would get along with this person and I'm up for an adventure. 

And it was, it was Steve.

We were in the same grade as Louise. So the three of us were in the same grade. Um, at first she spent a lot of time, a lot of time with him. Uh, and, and then the three of us would spend a lot of time together. And then the two of them would spend some time together for a long time. , we actually formed this really nice triad, you know, um, we were the, at the party of three

GREG: This holy Trinity, Doug, Steve and Louise were inseparable. And Doug was obsessed with Steve, a voracious Bible scholar. Steve would often debate his professors during lectures, which meant he quickly became the most popular man on the moody campus 

DOUG: uh, many people don't know this, but he was an encyclopedia of jazz at that time. He's somebody that when you, weren't sure you would say, what does Steve think? And he always seemed to have the answer. I was really Louis and I were going through a really, really rough patch, uh, for a while. Um, you know, which is interesting. It happens right when, when you're meeting people and you're building up a relationship equity. you wanna make sure that you weather those storms and, and, you know, Louis and I had this great relationship for a long time, and then it, it just got a little bit Rocky and I would talk to Steve about this and Steve would say, let me talk to her, let me talk to her.

And I feel like he's, he's always been a leader and he, he really helped out with that. He made me see that, that wasn't the relationship for.

GREG: with Steve's help.

Doug and Louise broke up after just one semester of dating heartbroken. Doug remembers leaning into Steve. By their sophomore year, Steve had introduced Doug to a new girl and Doug had married. Her, Steve conducted the ceremony. They were young, they were happy and they were on fire for Jesus. And it was sometime during this period that Steve had a crazy idea.

They would drop out of college and they would plant a church. 

DOUG: We were like twins. And even now, I mean, can you, you can see it, right? . Yeah. So. That was the start. We knew it was gonna be twin something. We didn't know what it was gonna be.

GREG: But dreaming of owning their own church home and actually building a church were two very different things. Money was tight and their Christian education didn't qualify them for any jobs in the real world. 

DOUG: Planting a church today. Very easy. You can raise money, you can do a Kickstarter back in that day. There was no kick start. there was no way to raise funds. So you had to plant it. We had our significant others get jobs. My wife got a job so that I could help plant this church.

Yeah.

GREG: And although Steve wasn't married yet, he did encourage his fiance to get a job as well. 

DOUG: He was really in a serious relationship. It would eventually lead to marriage. Yes. And it was, you know, He was with Louise. People asked me like, how can you let that happen? I said, I didn't let that happen. That was God steering two people together.

And if she wasn't happy with me, then she should be happy with someone. 

GREG: After prayerful consideration, they decided instead of wasting time getting jobs of their own, they would ask friends and family for support and God delivered. 

DOUG: Jesus says you have to ask to receive . And so we ask people and those early investors, they were part of our early council. We called them. Let me ask you something. If you could be on the ground floor of something really special that you thought this is gonna be something amazing and historic and live on for years and years live on for a thousand years after you're gone, would you. 

GREG: Uh, are you starting something new or

DOUG: Hypothetically let's even let's put aside what I'm gonna ask you, but hypothetically, would you wanna be a part of something like that?

GREG: , uh, I don't. 

DOUG: maybe do you like to

Travel? . Do you like to make money? . Do you like to travel and make money? . Then I wanna give you an opportunity and that's all I'm saying is I'm going to give you an opportunity. You wanna be a part of a community? . 

GREG: Are you selling timeshares? 

DOUG: Uh, well, I mean, we don't call it timeshares anymore. It's got a very negative connotation. . It's portion Realty. 

GREG: Miraculously Doug and Steve found a church building.

And as Doug remembers it, it was a total God thing. 

DOUG: We would play racketball every Wednesday. It was our racketball Wednesday and we were just talking and we were just throwing out ideas and he said, Come into my car. And so we got into his, his car. He had a Mustang at the time and he has a lot of epiphanies in that car.

So we're driving around the Mustang and, and we stopped in front of this, this building and. He said, what do you see there? And I said, shattered windows. It looks like it was on fire. It looks like it's still burning currently. And he said, but close your eyes. And what do you see? And I said, um, alright.

He goes, here's what I see, potential. . And he goes, take a look at that and he put it right on the seat. You know what it was, 

it was, it was a deed to that building.

GREG: As a surprise to Doug, Steve had gone out and bought a building, 

Yeah, we, well, I bought it, apparently I already bought it yeah, he bought it under my name. 

, the building, an old bowling alley in Chicago's Wrigleyville neighborhood had recently been burned by Cubs fans. And it was from the ashes of that fire. The first twin Hills community church rose like Jesus. From the ashes.

But rather than starting from scratch, Doug and Steve rebuilt the bowling lanes and made them fully functional. This was a church, but it was a different kind of church. 

DOUG: It was like a God party every day. And we would show up and people would show up. It would, people were looking for something to fill their life. Cause bowling is, I mean, that's the, that's the sport of Kings right there. It's, it's one being taking on 10. And can you convert those 10? Can you convert the spare? And I think that's what we offered.

It were people weren't necessarily looking to join a church. They were looking to join a community, 

GREG: guided by Doug and Steve's remarkable idea. Twin Hills community church in bowling alley grew from a handful of curious seekers into a community of several hundred bowlers with both men's and women's league.

In addition to a Wednesday night Bible study and several Sunday morning round Robin tournaments with shoe rental included within a year, they were bursting at the seams, 

DOUG: We outgrew the bowling alley. And then we said, we have to go somewhere. And so I said, how about this? Why don't we just throw a dart, see where it lands. And he said, that sounds good to me. . And then we threw it and it landed right there. 

right. There was Indianapolis, Indiana. They packed their cars and went like Moses leading the Jews through the desert, Steve, Doug, and a bunch of bowlers were on their way to the promised land.

It was, we called it the Ray of sunshine, caravan, RAs. So RAs, we, we all piled in to whatever cars we had. They, they were searchers. They were searching out the truth 

in themselves, in the universe. 

In me 

you seem like an adventurous type. Like you are willing to take a chance. 

GREG: If this is about the timeshare thing, I really just don't think I can do it. 

DOUG: It's portion Realty. 

GREG: When they got to Indianapolis, they realized the dart had landed 

on a struggling Chinese restaurant in the up and coming broad ripple neighborhood. 

DOUG: It was King's Chinese restaurant. Oh, it was so good. And so we looked at it and we said, we wanna keep the integrity of this building. . Just like Jesus keeps the integrity of who we are, even as we change. Uh, but we really think you keep the best of both worlds. 

GREG: No one knows more about Steve Jud than his first assistant Merrill Miller. She was the first person Steve hired when he arrived in Indianapolis and she's still his office manager today.

JET: I was in secretarial school and he walks in and the teacher says, everybody stop your typing. Um, And he walked in and he looked around and he had us kind of demo how we typed, how we did things.

We, we stood up, turned around. I thought who's this, the owner of the school, but it wasn't, it was Steve. And he was looking for. Secretary.

I saw, I thought, wow, now that is a powerful man. He had a powerful presence, but I hadn't been introduced to the, um, to the, the word of Jesus yet. So I didn't know what he was carrying with him later. I would come to find out what he was packing, so to speak.

GREG: But as Merrill remembers, when she saw Steve, there was an connection 

JET: And I thought, who was that man? And what was that feeling and, and who was this Jesus that he spoke of? Um, and I would be, I would find out soon enough when he, um, hired me. Um, at that point it was the most I'd ever made because I hadn't made. What,

GREG: today, Merrill is indispensable to Steve, but early on, she had her doubt.

she was afraid. She didn't look the part of a church secretary, but luckily that wasn't a problem for Steve,

JET: I mean, I was BK. Um, I was probably 40, 20, 2 40. Um, the fellows in my high school called me sand sand, because I was an hourglass without the sand. I knew that that would maybe cost me some jobs because you know, people were afraid. I'd break things, reaching for a glass of water. 

GREG: but despite her physical limitations, Steve hired Merrill and she liked him. He was nice and encouraging and he gave her two full days off a week to do whatever she liked. And as the Chinese restaurant was slowly forced out and twin Hills moved in Merrill could see the potential. Even if the beginnings were humble,

JET: I remember being in that office and Steve would always say, close the windows, close the windows. I can smell. I can smell noodles. And, um, at first he really did not like the smell of noodles and it really bothered him and he would try to figure out how to stop the smell of noodles.

He asked me to, I would basically be sewing these long snakes, filled with beans and we'd put them at the bottom of the door. And, um, he called it the noodle patrol.

GREG: it was only a matter of time before Merrill knew everything she needed to know to be the secretary for Steve. In fact, she was good at it. 

JET: Well, the skills that someone would need to be a secretary for Steve are really the skills that someone would need to be a secretary in general, which are, um, you know, typing, typing notes, um, answering the phone, putting the phone back down when you're done answering it. You would have to be able to take notes when people say, take no take note of that, you would have to be able to rearrange papers and put them in a stack. You'd even have to be able to pull out a long drawer and be able to organize things in, um, an alphabetical order per se. 

You'd have to be able to answer the phone and be able to tell people that person's not here or that person is here and I'm gonna connect you. And it's gonna take a moment. Um, just stuff like that.

GREG: And while Merrill was keeping Steve organized, Steve was building an organization seemingly overnight twin Hills community church became a juggernaut in a city that already had too many churches.

Doug 

DOUG: You ever watch a movie and you look back at that time and you're like, I wish I'd, I'd been there. . That's what this was like. It was a highlight, every chance you could get. 

GREG: Steve and Doug didn't know it yet, but they were pioneers in a new generation of no rules. Church twin Hills had bingo and Bible study fly fishermen of men's Sunday morning fishing club, a pool hall, casino, and disco each fitted with an altar and a baptism. And the Olympic size pool, which had separate areas for men and women had an all male lifeguard squad called the wife, savers. Twin Hills had everything and everybody wanted to be at twin Hills. 

DOUG: it was a group of people with a, like, Looking very similar at that time. And it was just, you could sing, you could dance. We would have a dance marathon starting and continuing on during the service, we, we would just say dance marathon and then a dance marathon would break out and it would go for days and days and days and days . And so you could taste the energy, you could taste the en have you ever been in a situation where you could taste the energy?

Are you going to say something about a timeshare? Well, 

I just take a moment to close your eyes and think about the excitement of it. You don't, you aren't saddled by owning something. You're saddled by one 52nd owning something,

The energy was great. The energy was great. 

GREG: But just like Jonah in the Bible, before he gets swallowed by a whale, there was trouble coming and not even Mell seemed to know.

JET: Often people would say, doesn't he lose his temper?

And I said, well, so did Lord our Lord, our savior, you know, he would sometimes be demanding just like Jesus demanded that we love his father. Did Jesus sometimes throw a tantrum? Did Jesus sometimes slap an ass?

GREG: When we come. 

DOUG: And he, he drove me home. Well, he drove me towards home. We were on the way home. And he, he said, the Lord moves mysterious ways. Doesn't he? And I said, yeah. And he opened the door and pushed me out. And that was it.

GREG: Twin Hills community church was growing like a virus or a cancer. And Doug who preferred a slower approach was alarmed. Doug loved fun, but he also loved Jesus and church and getting reimbursed for the money.

He had sunk into all the buildings and it wasn't long before Doug and Steve's differing leadership styles came to a head.

if I had to say it, the seed was planted back at moody. Now that I look back at it, but like really what happened is I was, I was getting tired. I was preaching well, seven days a week, sometimes, twice a day, sometimes a matinee as well. So I was, I was just feeling a little bit, not burned out, but I was feeling like I was at my max. And he said, you know what? I think your power lies, not on the stage. It was very quick. I went from doing most of the services to doing none of them.

Nothing captures the shift of Doug and Steve preaching as a team to Steve becoming the sole preacher at twin Hills than a video of Doug's last sermon he ever delivered. Among twin Hillers. It's now referred to as the tagout in the video. It's good. Friday, 1999. And Doug was acting out a scene from the gospel of Luke. It's an emotional moment. Jesus not wanting to be killed by his dad is begging to be spared. 

Yo dad, this is so heavy. Take this cup from y'all right. Give me a different cup, dad. This sucks. I don't want this cup. 

GREG: And that's when he gets a tap on the shoulder 

DOUG: Oh, oh, Hey Steve. Uh, I guess I gotta go.

He literally tagged me, tapped me on the should. I turned around and he was standing back to back. And when I turned, it was like a revolving door and he, it was, it was AMA honestly, it was amazing. He grabbed both the wallet and I had a microphone that he grabbed at the same time and turned around.

He was at the front of the stage and the curtains were closing and I was behind the curtains. And after that, he said, Hey, can we have a word? And he, he brought me out to his car. We got into his new Mustang, uh, brand new.

And he, he drove me home. Well, he drove me towards home. We were on the way home. And he, he said, the Lord moves mysterious ways. Doesn't he? And I said, yeah. And he opened the door and pushed me out. And that was it. 

He literally, and figuratively pushed me. 

GREG: Steve's assassination attempt on Doug.

Wasn't the only problem at twin Hills. Despite the growing numbers and swelling coffers, there were also concerns brewing within the church about Steve's personal behavior. Steve's assistant Merrill. 

JET: was always the person to hear them first. Steve said, make sure you listen to their complaint before they give me the complaint. *And so why'd always say, can I hear your complaint? And they would start telling me about whatever it was that bothered him. You know, like he touched my wife or whatever. You know, maniac thing they would say.*

And then, um, I would say, okay, and I would jot it down, but then Steve started saying, don't jot it down, keep asking questions and keep going back to the beginning. So I would go back to the very beginning and say, wait, you, you have a wife. And he said, just keep asking questions, keep asking questions until they hang up

GREG: the list of complaints continued to grow, but Steve was defiant. His first and most important mission was bringing people to Christ.

If people had a problem with his methods, they could take it up with God, for people in the church. That was a great point. And no one could argue with. 

JET: he said, hold on to that list Merrill, you still have that list. And every few days, have you been building the list? Did you, do you have the book? And I said, yes. And I thought, I wonder what he's gonna do.

Are we gonna go through the book? And then he said, I want you to take the book. We're gonna go and go, go on a ride. So we went on a, a ride into the country and we get to this little farm. Pull over. And he said, all right, come in with me. And we go into barn and he goes, see that donkey right there. I said, yes.

He said, open the book and just sin. I opened it up and he says, place it against his, his backside. And then the donkey just eventually takes a huge relieves himself on the book. And he said, good girl.

GREG: This is a pattern I would see play out time and time again. Steve had this amazing ability to compartmentalize his problems and then simply get into his car and get rid of them.

And everyone at twin Hills was willing to carry on, like they were along for the ride.

JET: people have asked me about my relationship with Steve, uh, regarding sexual harassment. And I'll say this, there were things that Steve had me. That maybe some people in the right place in the right time would consider sexual harassment. But I certainly did not. I saw them as a duty of a secretary who was staying late, who was getting Steve's mind off all of his troubles because he worked so hard.

And if I have to. Do a dance for him. If I have to massage his thighs or, you know, get him a drink and feed it to him, like a baby bird. I always thought that that was just him trying to get settled down into his body. It wouldn't be unusual for a secretary to massage a, a boss's neck, for example. And he would sometimes say all.

How about a little further down. And I thought, really aren't we just necks all the way through? 

But it was one of those extra duties that Merrill would perform throughout her tenure as Steve's assistant.

That shocked me most. The first time it happened was on the night that Steve had tried to kill Doug by pushing him out of his car and then taken over as senior lead pastor.

The night that Steve showed up at my house, I hear a bang bang, bang on my door and I go down and I'm actually relieved to see it, Steve and not some. Person who isn't. And, um, I opened the door and he says, listen, everyone's against me.

Everyone's against me. I'm done with this, this whole thing. And I said, no, Steve, don't say that. He said, can I come in? He was soaking wet, but it wasn't raining out. He comes in and he sits on my couch and um, he says, please let me hold you, let me hold you. And I knew he was in a tough place, so I let him hold me.

And he said, can I just get a little milk? And I said, yeah, let me go to that. And he goes, not that kind of milk. And I said, you know, Steve, I said, at this point I had already had two breast reduction surgeries. Um, but they just kept coming back. I don't know what it is. It's it's um, I was gonna call it Phantom breast, but they're quite real. So I, I don't know what to call it, but, um, he asked me if he could nurse like a baby and, and I said, Steve. I said, I I'll do this. I said only because I know that this is human, you know, and I know that there's something, nothing more natural than nursing a baby.

And he said, it's what Jesus would want. And so, um, we put on some jazz and he nursed for me that night. That was the first time I, I know a lot of people would judge this, this isn't sexual at all. It's very, you know, it's very Virgin married.

GREG: I was aware of the Virgin Mary mother of Jesus. And she did seem like a good mother, but this practice of a grown woman, nursing her direct superior while working at a church with him, it struck me as odd as far as I knew, Merrill was unmarried and had new children, which led me to ask the question, how was she even lactating?

JET: um, milk wasn't coming out, but eventually it did. , this is sort of why I'm a believer because miracles happen in the, in the strangest ways. Whenever he'd have a crisis of faith, he would come to me and say, Marilyn, I'm having a crisis of faith.

And I knew what that meant. And so I would lay him down across my lap and pull up my shirt and he would regress back to when he was a child, when Jesus was definitely in his. 

GREG: And the effects were miraculous. 

JET: as soon as he was done with a session, um, he was back, he was ready to give a sermon.

He was ready to, you know, ride the horse was course.

GREG: And even though Merrill continued to defend the practice to me, I could sense that she did see some downside.

JET: as you can imagine. I, I have never been pregnant, but after years and years of Steve nursing, I started producing milk. And, um, eventually I couldn't stop producing milk no matter what I did. So I'd have to wear nursing pads. I would have to eventually I would have to pump.

So he needed more secretaries because I was literally pumping twice a day. If Steve wasn't needing my services. I'm 55 years old and I'm, I still pump milk. And I ended up going to a church and asking them if they needed donation milk for children, you know? Um, and they said, no, 

GREG: One thing I didn't understand, whenever I would ask about Steve was this, that even though he had done some bizarre and clearly illegal things, asked everything of everyone around him, no matter what.

Everyone gave Steve the benefit of the doubt. Why, what was it about this guy that created such devotion? 

JET: I think anyone who doesn't run. A very successful church. Doesn't understand that you have the weight of the world. You're trying to save lives. So it's very easy to point fingers. . You're not carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. 

GREG: Doug Jeffers,

DOUG: I mean, , everyone has good and bad about them. He learned a lot of things from me and he implemented a lot of things. He does. He took it straight from my playbook 

God works in mysterious ways. Doesn't he? I had to rely on my faith. I had to get back in touch with, with Jesus. I think that was what was missing for me. I think this whole story is that I was just out of touch with Jesus. I was looking to make it about me and not about the people and not about the Lord.

I wanted it to be about me. That's why I was on the stage. Look at me, pay attention to me, clap for me. So I, I think in the long run, looking back now, I think it's a good thing 

GREG: since he left twin Hills, Doug has struggled to find a career or a church home. He's worked as a Walmart greeter, a bowling pin manufacturer. An undergraduate marriage counselor at moody Bible Institute. And now I think as a sales associate for a Christian timeshare company in Cabo San Lucas, but the pain of being abandoned by Steve is still deep,

DOUG: if, uh, if, if Steve was sitting here right now, what would I say to him?

Hey, um, , how's Louise. It's been a while.

Is there anything you wanna say to me? I'd love to stop by. I know, I know I'm not allowed, but I think it would be really nice if, if I could come by and, you know, we, we could just, maybe we could go back where it started.

Just bowl a couple frames, listen to some monk and just be too friends again. And maybe we could go to Cabo and look at the spacious ocean and, and think to ourselves, this is someplace I'd want to go one to four times a year if the schedule worked out. Alright. And, and if I knew in advance and wow, it's almost like having my own fourth home, which you would have, but you could do it and give it away to friends.

I mean, it just pays for itself. And is that what Jesus is all about doing things that pay for themselves? I mean, you know, all about fractional ownership. I mean, you and I owned half the church together before I gave it to you. I technically, I, I did give it to you. I've talked to my lawyers, but I want you to fractionally own part of my heart again.

That's what I would say to him. If he was here, that's what I would say to him.

GREG: but Doug's story had me wondering what other things about Steve could I find out and could those things, if I found them out, attract more readers to my food. As I left that day, Doug followed me to my car. I knew he wanted to say more, but I had to get home to my wife Carly's birthday party. But the last thing he said to me, I'll never forget it was chilling 

DOUG: If there's an opportunity? would you take it or would you pass up that opportunity?

Is this about the timeshare thing? 

DOUG: Yeah. I just wanna get back to, I know we circle back to Steve, but if, if we could at some point talk about that. 

GREG: next week on the rise and fall of twin Hills, I go to find Steve and encounter more resistance than I expected.

JET: * You have to understand he's the man of the Lord. He's a busy man. So I know for you, someone who had done very, very little with your life, very little, you are what, um, a, a complete loser, trying to do your best just to survive in the world who doesn't even believe.*

*So you would have no idea what it's like to be someone like Steve, who cares and who wants to make good in the world who believes in Jesus when you're nothing little piece of. I'm sorry, what was, um, what's will you say your question again?*

*Do you validate for parking?*