HISTORY

1949 - Phil Aguilar, the founder of SFM, was born into a Hispanic immigrant family as one of six children. His parents divorced.

Aguilar did not finish high school. His early life included delinquency, truancy, drug use and drug dealing. Aguilar claimed membership in the Hell’s Angels, but clearly was a member of an outlaw motorcycle group and a drug user and dealer.

1970 – Aguilar marries into a Jewish family and lives in Queens. The couple divorced as a result of pressure from the bride’s parents.

1976 – Aguilar pled guilty to charges of child abuse for assaulting his girlfriend and abusing her young son.

1976 - Aguilar assaulted a three year-old boy and received a one to ten year sentence. He was released after serving approximately thirteen months.

Aguilar reports having experienced a religious conversion during a chapel service in prison.

1979 - Following his release from prison, Aguilar pursued a religious career:
• He briefly enrolled in Pacific Coast Baptist Bible College, dropped out, completed a correspondence school degree at International Seminary.
•He became an intern at a Bible Baptist Fellowship affiliated church in Anaheim, CA.

1982 – Aguilar concluded he would never fit into the Bible Baptist Fellowship culture.
• He attempted to incorporate a variety of “street people’ into the congregation, was rebuffed.
• He had been divorced and was now remarried, which permanently disqualified him from even holding the office of deacon in a Bible Baptist Fellowship Church.
• He exited with a small group of followers who were dedicated to creating an inclusive church. His new church drew biker friends, drug addicts and others.
• He incorporated his brother’s motorcycle club membership into the church.
• His independent ministry lacked a substantial membership base, a venue for meetings, a viable financial base, and legitimacy within the Evangelical community.

Aguilar approached Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) for support.He visited the studios of Trinity Broadcasting Network and attended a recording session for Jan and Paul Crouch’s show, “Praise the Lord.”

The alliance that developed gave TBN a variety of assets:
• A high profile convert.
• An organization to which TBN could refer individuals facing a variety of personal problems.
• Volunteers for TBN projects.
• Media publicity.
• Connections with other Evangelical churches and political officials, and access to TBN properties.

The alliance that developed gave SFM a variety of assets:
• Aguilar’s appearances on the Crouch’s television show accorded him celebrity status.
• For a brief period he even had his own show on TBN, “Set Free 24/7.”
• TBN also offered Set Free material support as the Crouches became highly involved in developing the discipleship homes Aguilar was envisioning. They subsequently purchased two houses that became Set Free’s first discipleship homes.
• The Crouches gave Set Free the use of their ranch in Texas as well as access to other TBN facilities.
• The legitimacy Set Free gained from its relationship with TBN allowed the ministry to forge church and political connections. Set Free secured an arrangement with Anaheim’s local government that allowed Set Free to rent houses that were scheduled for redevelopment with HUD funds from the city at $50 per month and the church’s facilities for $500 monthly. These facilities were important as Set Free was given judicial recognition as a treatment facility. As religious entities, discipleship homes were not subject to governmental regulation.

1991 - SFM had a membership base estimated at 4,000 and over 300 residents living in at least twenty-five separate residences. SF then began establishing affiliate organizations nationally and internationally.

 1994 – SFM’s Soldiers for Jesus performed as the opening act at a Promise Keepers rally in Boulder, Colorado

 
ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

The two components that formed the core of SFM were
• The rehabilitation homes
Overseers had no formal training, and most were graduates of the program with less than five years of sobriety.
Residents had no outside contact for the first six months, and lived highly regimented lives of prescribed religious activities and work in one of the church’s businesses.
New and non-compliant residents stayed at one of three isolated and primitive “ranches,” until they were deemed ready for the relative freedom of a discipleship home.
• The motorcycle club (Set Free Soldiers)
Motorcycle groups are broadly divided into conventional motorcycle clubs, some of which share Christian faith in common, and Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs (OMC), also referred to as “1%ers.” Aguilar has identified the various incarnations of Set Free Soldiers as a club of “1%ers for Jesus”
Aguilar acted as both leader of a biker group and as a church pastor. Aguilar lacked pastoral qualities such as command of biblical doctrine and an ability to communicate the message, heading a model family, identity as a “good Christian,” and personal qualities (wisdom, self-discipline, humility).

| CONTROVERSIES
There were important three major sources of tension between the SFM, Evangelicals, and the dominant institutional order: (1) SF and Evangelical/dominant social order cultures, (2) SF and pastoral leadership requisites, (3) the capacity and requirements for personal transformations.

Cultural Tensions
• Both TBN and SFM were at the margins of their respective subcultures. SFM was therefore in alliance with an element of Evangelicalism that offered it less legitimacy in its relationship to the dominant social order.
• Aguilar openly identified SF with “1%er” Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs (OMC), which placed SF at the margins of the dominant social order. Members’ appearance and demeanor are deliberately designed to create distance from conventional society.
• The lifestyle of Set Free members and clients was distinctly countercultural. Members, including children, lived in homes with drug users, gang members, and known felons.
• Discipleship homes were organized communally, and members had no property rights.
• Women were treated as biker group property.
• Violence was used to resolve organizational disagreements.
• SF’s efforts to combine disreputable and conventional populations produced failure and conflict.

Tensions between Biker and Pastoral Leadership
• In administering SF Ministries, Aguilar acted as a biker leader, which undermined his claim to pastoral authority. He dispensed privileged positions, exercised high control over members’ and residents’ daily lives, maintained secrecy over organizational operations, maintained no public system of financial accounting, and rejected all challenges to unilateral authority.
• Aguilar presented himself and his followers as misunderstood, heroic rebels, with comparisons to Jesus. Aguilar preached to his followers the world can be divided into two categories of people, those who are bikers and those who are jealous of bikers.
• There were numerous allegations that Aguilar engaged in or tolerated domestic abuse, subordination of women, and sexual impropriety.
• Aguilar lacked conventional pastoral credentials within the Evangelical community, substituting reformed sinner and evangelistic success, which created pressure for moral rectitude and demonstrable results.
• Aguilar did not appropriately catechize members and clients.

Tensions Surrounding Personal Transformations
• The group achieved some measure of success using a rehabilitation model that relied on unquestioning compliance, a highly regimented lifestyle, isolation from friends and family, and manual labor, but only as long as participants remained in a protected environment. Failure to mainstream.
SFM clients raised tensions and lowered legitimacy with both Evangelicals and the dominant social order.
• The Set Free model, which required neither trained staff nor specialized facilities, was in direct conflict with more medicalized and mainstream methods for treating addictions that was gaining increasing legitimacy within Evangelical circles.
• The alliance with Evanglicals required that addicts have either accountability under a formalized twelve-step type of addictions system or give evidence of a complete religious transformation that included abandoning all non-mainstream affiliations and symbols of identification. SF’s converts neither exhibited Evangelical styles of behavior, dress and overall lifestyle nor did were they properly catechized into Evangelical beliefs.
• SF did not distinguish between conventional and disreputable populations in its rehabilitation programs, which produced resistance from conventional clients expecting more deferential treatment.

Outcomes of Tensions

SFM made concessions to maintain its alliance with Evangelicals.
• SF produced videos that sought to draw a distinction between members’ appearance and lifestyle from their Christian identities and loyalties.
• When it became apparent to Evangelicals that those who had been through the rehabilitation programs would never join conventional society, SF proposed a middle path that involved (1) rejection of deviant activities but not a non-conformist lifestyle and (2) dramatically depicted the alternative.
• Aguilar ultimately conceded to critics by appointing a board of elders

These various initiatives failed
• SF’s inability to produce model converts diminished SF’s utility in demonstrating the power of a “born again” conversion experience.
• Efforts to combine conventional and disreputable populations backfired and produced organized opponents.
• SFM members challenged Aguilar’s leadership practices (financial non-accountability, controlling behavior, allegations of abuse) and then defected.
• Aguilar’s leadership style threatened the Evangelical model of “servant leadership”
• Failure to catechize followers increased member resistance
• Three separate investigations of SF were launched by Evangelical groups based on the defector accounts. Evangelical pastors first privately and then publicly challenged Aguilar’s pastoral leadership based on the investigative reports.
• The Orange County Register produced a six-part expose of the group based on the investigative reports and defector accounts.
• Local political officials revoked agreements for low cost dwellings used for discipleship homes based on the media publicity and began rigorously enforcing health, fire, and zoning codes at discipleship homes.
• Former members sued Aguilar for alleged physical and sexual abuse.
• Membership dropped precipitously

SFM gradually unraveled
• Aguilar responded by issuing a statement acknowledging that he had “made mistakes” and resigning as the Anaheim Fellowship’s pastor. At the same time, SFM formed affiliate organizations and relocated the network headquarters. Three separate attempts to relocate were met with opposition campaigns orchestrated by Calvary Chapel leaders. The original Anaheim Fellowship went dormant.
• Set Free filed a lawsuit in response to the anti-SFM campaign. The case was settled when Aguilar agreed to enter a pastoral rehabilitation program in Los Angeles under the auspices of noted Evangelical pastor, Tommy Barnett. It appears that Aguilar did not successfully complete the program and subsequently sought to revive SF without any links to the Evangelical community.