After decades of use by a cult, future of Palmer Lake property now in the hands of citizens
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Walking around the abandoned compound of The Living Word Fellowship in Palmer Lake provokes an overwhelming sense of interruption.
“It’s like they woke up one morning and said, ‘Let’s leave,’” said Reid Wiecks, Palmer Lake Parks Commission chair.
Exploring the 28-acre former compound one foggy morning, the septuagenarian volunteer points out a grand piano in the worship space, ready for a service but for the thick layer of dust. Trash sits in piles. A coffee mug rests on a kitchen window ledge.
The debris left behind tells a story of hasty departure.
The property was a longtime location of The Living Word Fellowship, an international organization that took in thousands over its 70-year history and is now widely considered to have been a cult.
The Palmer Lake compound, converted from a former Salvation Army summer camp in the 1980s, served as a regional hub and maintained a high-water congregation of about 100 out-of-state transplants.
They kept to themselves on the outskirts of Palmer Lake, a historic small town north of Colorado Springs. Members worked in Living Word-approved companies, had major relationships tightly regulated by the church, and spent long hours in worship services and unpaid volunteer work.
In 2020 and early 2021, representatives of the church brought town officials an unexpected offer that could not be passed up: a donation, free and clear, of the entire property. The Living Word Fellowship had quietly collapsed almost overnight in the wake of a far-reaching sexual abuse scandal.
The upside was a rare, pristine chunk of land in a desirable area near the mountains. The town would never get an opportunity like this again.
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