Craig Marsh and the anonymous performance review

I've been contacted by a former worker at one of Craig Marsh's shows. They've wanted to tell their story for some time now but have been concerned about community reprisals. I'll be respecting their request for anonymity, but if you have any questions based on the below please add a comment and I'll e-mail the author for clarification.


The year was, 2006 (I think), the month, March (I think) and Craig Marsh had arrived to conduct a multi-day mission.

I say 'I think' because it could have been the previous October, or both, I didn't keep much of a record about the dates I'm afraid.


(I got the date from here http://www.turningpointministries.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1&Itemid=28 but that's the event I was involved with).

I also attended two other shows when he returned to the area for shorter events but I don't have dates for those.

My role at these events was to control the visuals: a PC connected to the projector. I had to put the song lyrics on screen so that people could sing along (it's surprisingly stressful) and to display slides for Craig, as and when, but he didn't give much direction for the slides.

The slides themselves consisted of photos of people Craig claims to have healed and of places he had visited. The ones I remember are the rather awful skin diseases and infections that are prevalent in Africa. There were children present and I felt uncomfortable showing them. I think there were before and after photos but nothing more substantial; no mention was made as to whether or not conventional medicine was administered or the exact nature of the illnesses; details are boring and don't make for good entertainment. There were no slides of any of the medical records of Craig himself though.

I hardly spoke to Craig during the entire time I was there and I don't remember him thanking me. I must have done at least three or four nights in total at the big event and I worked at two other events at different times as I mentioned above. On stage he exudes the usual charisma that you'd expect from a faith healer but he wasn't over the top (mostly) but he certainly dramatised things. In person he seemed hard to talk to and distant, almost curt.

The evenings were run of the mill. Singing, prayer, Craig's testimonies, Craig's preaching, Craig's prayers etc etc repeat ad nauseum. People would go up for prayer and healing, people would fall over at the right moment as they were expected to. I soon got tired of his testimony except for one night where he mentioned that his son is an atheist, I found that interesting. If his miraculous healing didn't convince his own son, something must be amiss. (I don't know how many children he has though).

Another moment during one of his talks pricked my ears. Craig was talking about how healings had been going on during previous nights (I don't recall anything of the sort except for people claiming to 'feel better') and he mentioned that during the previous night someone's leg had miraculously grown and that her parents had to buy her new clothes. I presume some child had a significant length difference with their legs and Craig was claiming to have healed it. First of all I don't understand why they would have to buy new clothes if only one leg grew, and secondly I was there the previous night and no such healing occurred and surprise surprise, the family wasn't there to testify. I had the distinct feeling that he knew this, and that therefore he was lying.

Naturally he would plug his books and his CDs and his wife was ready to sell these from a small stall at the end of each evening. It was a tiny stall and I don't think sales were very brisk. But the most vulgar thing that happened during the event was the money collection. At some point during proceedings the ushers would pass round these buckets for people to put money or cheques in. They were shaped like a dustbin but were bright red and somewhere around a foot to a foot and a half tall if memory serves me correctly and there must have been nearly a dozen of them. Now, I don't know to whom this money went but Craig must get some of it, he runs a ministry after all, and has lots of travel to pay for.

That's my experience of Craig in a nutshell. He's just a run of the mill faith healer who doesn't produce results but likes to make fantastic claims and whip the crowd into a frenzy. I think these kind of people are subconsciously highly insecure in their faith and they continue with this charade because if they didn't they would implode and realise it's all a sham. They don't see any miracles happening yet they yearn for them as some kind of proof of their beliefs. What better way to satisfy themselves than to indulge their fantasy and be the one 'performing' those long sought after miracles.