Gwen Shamblin Lara plane crash led to reckoning over Remnant church: Notorious Nashville
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Gwen Shamblin Lara led a controversial ministry career after gaining notoriety for a faith-based weight loss program and died suddenly when her husband crashed a plane into Percy Priest Lake.
Shamblin Lara’s death in May 2021 was the beginning of a reckoning over allegations about a faith community she founded, Remnant Fellowship in Brentwood, and the control she exerted over her congregants. That story was at the center of dramatic portrayals in an HBO Max docuseries, which accused Remnant of being a cult, and a Lifetime movie.
Shamblin Lara founded Remnant in 1999 and built a faith community that reportedly developed 150 additional congregations worldwide. Remnant’s growth coincided with the success of Shamblin Lara’s “Weigh Down Workshop,” a Christian diet program purchased by evangelical Christian churches and other ministries.
The core beliefs Shamblin Lara taught through Weigh Down Ministries, the Brentwood-based company that sold her workshop, made its way into Remnant and affected perceptions within the congregation about one’s spiritual health, according to the HBO Max docuseries titled “The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin.” For example, Remnant members who were physically healthier were also seen as spiritually healthy.
Remnant denounced the HBO Max docuseries, saying it contained “absurd, defamatory statements and accusations.” The docuseries also explored other allegations about financial impropriety at Remnant based on reporting by NewsChannel 5 and about Shamblin Lara’s teachings on parental discipline. Those teachings were central to a court case in which former Remnant members Sonya and Joseph Smith, who had physically abused their son, were convicted of felony murder.
Also, Shamblin Lara came under fire in 2000 within conventional evangelical circles for promoting heretical views about the Trinity.
After Shamblin Lara and her first husband, David Shamblin, divorced, Shamblin Lara got remarried in 2018 to Joe Lara, an actor known for playing the character of Tarzan. Shamblin Lara and her children lived in a historic Brentwood mansion called Ashlawn.
Joe Lara was flying Shamblin Lara and five other Remnant leaders on May 29, 2021, in a Cessna 501 Citation plane and he experienced spatial disorientation when the plane entered clouds, according to the National Transportation Safety Board in a report two years later. The plane crashed about two minutes after its departure and the crash was avoidable, the board said in its report.
In the wake of Shamblin Lara’s death, a group of Remnant members have taken up leadership within the congregation.
Content retrieved from: https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/religion/2025/07/21/shamblin-lara-plane-crash-remnant-church-reckoning/84231926007/.
