Here we go again…the Nine O’clock Service Cult
- Charles Perez
- 21 hours ago
- 8 min read
By Judy Sture
Special to Virtueonline
August 24, 2025
With wearying regularity, along comes another case of historic, wholly predictable, abuse in the Church of England. Yet again, we see the utter gullibility, stupidity, and failure of all common sense and critical thinking processes that seem to characterize the upper echelons of HMS Church of England whenever a predator hoves into view.
Back in the 1980s and 90s, the soon-to-be-Rev Chris Brain was the man of the hour, an inspired leader, capable of getting bums on seats and attracting the youth vote to church. For several years, he ran a high-profile weekly event in the northern English city of Sheffield, known as the Nine O’clock Service (NOS). This ‘service’ consisted of a Sunday night multimedia rave session, that focused on er, rave culture:
‘Young and beautiful, they danced to the sound of acid-house music pumped out of 500-watt sound systems, beneath laser lights and surreal images projected all around them. Bikini-clad go-go dancers, eyelids powdered, lips glossed, hip bones jutting…. lost themselves amid hundreds of fellow clubbers who had queued around the block just to get in.’(https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/21/chris-brain-priest-sexual- assault-church-of-england/)
What could possibly go wrong? It is church, isn’t it?
For the last few weeks, Brain has been on trial accused of committing 37 sexual offences against 13 women during his reign of er, influence. The court heard that he ran his own cult - using his position to abuse a ‘staggering number of women’. He was viewed by his alleged victims as a God-like ‘prophet’ whom they ‘worshipped’.
Well folks, even without going any further, I suggest that there may have been one or two pointers there that should have raised a few questions back in the day. But let’s continue…Victims finally got Brain to court last month, and former NOS members, clergy, and a bishop, were duly rolled out to give evidence. On 20 August, he was found guilty of 17 counts of indecent assault and cleared of a further 15. Jurors failed to reach a verdict on four counts of indecent assault and the rape charge.
So, I hear you ask breathlessly, how did we get to this point? Well, let’s see. I would suggest we got to it by a combination of all the usual suspects – as listed above - utter gullibility, stupidity, the closing down of all common sense and critical thinking processes, alongside a wholesale failure of spiritual discernment, in the face of a narcissist who bamboozled a succession of authority figures in the CofE into facilitating his fantasies. Because fantasies they were, and boy, were they facilitated - to the extent that the court heard evidence showing that:
‘This lanky, cocky young bass guitarist was transformed and enabled to become a powerful, abusive “controlling maniac” cult leader responsible for leaving a trail of broken women in his wake. Many were left as shells of their former selves, isolated from their friends and families, depressed, broke, and suicidal…..To say no to him was to say no to God.’ (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/21/chris-brain-priest-sexual-assault-church-of-england/)
He even had a rota of female followers to ‘put him to bed’ at night, involving ‘massages’. mmm…where have I heard about this sort of thing before…? And all this was known at the time!
Hats off to the then-curate of St Thomas’s church, Dr Mark Stibbe, who raised the alarm to the Bishop of Sheffield in no uncertain terms. But the Bishop of Sheffield, David Lunn (now safely deceased), told a BBC documentary in 1995 that he was ‘very impressed’ by Brain’s ‘integrity’, and duly rebuked Stibbe about not carrying out witch hunts in the diocese. That hasn’t aged well, has it?
The then-Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, was also impressed with Brain – leading to a meeting between them, of which Brain recalled: “He said to me, ‘I’d be very happy to see an NOS in every town and city in the UK’”. Right. As someone else has said, thank God for unanswered prayers.
Brain was part of a Christian rock band (oxymoron, anyone?) which evolved into the NOS at St Thomas Church, Sheffield, before relocating to a larger space at Ponds Forge in the city centre.
Upon securing a venue for his fantasy-empire-building project, Brain set about attracting followers, sorry, worshippers, to his vibrant, eco-friendly, new-age-inspired, ‘services’ in which he promoted a sexualised concept of ‘church’ that showed up the drabness of the er, Church, and its older members. Who needs hymn books when you can have a rave in the nave? Come as you are! Clothed or semi-clothed as you feel! Wow – you can even get to put me to bed if you play your cards right!
He ‘preached’ about all things to do with nature, the universe, and ‘using your force’, later describing the NOS as ‘an evolving experiment’ which embraced ‘club culture’ by creating ‘a natural ecstasy’. Wow. Pretty much everything except Jesus, then.
He was even invited to contribute a chapter to the Archbishop’s book on the Decade of Evangelism: An explosion of stroboscopic lighting and high-powered computer simulations bombarded the 15,000-strong congregation; performance art and energetic rave dancers led people in worship; loud house music and rap pulsated across the field; and the leaders of the service exhorted everyone to participate in global and planetary salvation, to “make God happen now” and “use their life force”.
Extract from Chris Brain's chapter in Treasure in the Field, the Archbishop's Companion for the Decade of Evangelism (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/21/chris-brain-priest-sexual- assault-church-of-england/)
The Bishop of Sheffield gave him the ‘freedom to experiment’, and hey – did he experiment! With multiple women, over multiple years. At Pond’s Forge, massive weekly crowds, some driving long distances to attend, were drawn into what was obviously a cult, with ‘worship’ focussed on the leader rather than God. All clearly visible at the time, of course.
Somehow, Brain was accepted into theological training in 1990. Amazingly, or unsurprisingly, depending on your level of naivety, critical thinking ability or position in the hierarchy of the CofE, his ordination was ‘fast-tracked’, and he was ordained in 1991 (deacon) and 1992 (priest), after only a year of study, if I have read the reports correctly. His tutor, Rev Marilyn Parry, objected to his ordination on the grounds of him being too much the focus of attention at the NOS. She also found him arrogant, and he often missed study deadlines. Sadly, or as-expected, again depending on your level of nous, she was ignored, because he was running such an important ministry. Rev Parry had even reported at the time that she once called Brain and was told by a female acolyte that he couldn’t come to the phone because one of her colleagues was giving him a massage. Criticise my hindsight vision if you like, but I’m pretty sure that even circa 1991-2, that should have rung some alarm bells.
Others had also noted his grandiose behaviour prior to his ordination, but it went ahead anyway. Staggeringly, considerable sums of NOS money were spent in acquiring the exact cassock worn by Robert De Niro in the 1986 film, The Mission - for Brain to wear at his ordination. Cult Rule 101 – the leader gets what he wants, when he wants it.
Other obvious cult behaviours and practices included the vetting of new members, who were then encouraged to separate themselves from their relatives and secular life, to focus on the NOS being their new family. People were sorted into discipleship groups and were encouraged to give their time, funds and self-identity to the NOS and Brain. Many felt enable to leave or to return to their old life. He told his victims he wanted to ‘empower them’; they couldn’t ‘be spiritual without being sexual’ and that they should use their ‘healing gifts’ to massage him, making them feel that being subservient to him was serving God.
A core group of beautiful young women formed his ‘homebase team’, tasked with caring for Brain, his wife and child. This is where the ‘putting to bed’ came in, involving ‘massages’ and so on. Being on the core team involved 24/7 cover, and being on a rota for ‘living in’. Who would have thought it?
In 1995 the then-Archdeacon of Sheffield, Stephen Lowe, discovered Brain had been having ‘inappropriate sexual relationships’ and informed Bishop Lunn. Giving evidence in the trial, the Rt Rev Lowe said: ‘I put it to Chris that he had had sexual relationships with 20 or 40 women from NOS and he said, quite definitely: ‘It was many more than that, maybe double’. There was a bullishness to his response of my accusation and that is etched in my memory.’
Cue the end of the NOS. Anyone interested can read more about it in Roland Howard’s book The Rise and Fall of the Nine O’Clock Service: A Cult Within The Church? I have barely scratched the surface here.
Obviously, the main concern here must be the wellbeing of the victims. There may well be more hurting women out there that we do not yet know about, and if so, who knows what they may have gone through? Nothing that we can say or do can make up for the trauma caused by this man. But we must also look at the responsibility of those who facilitated Brain’s actions.
The court case has highlighted the level of top-down approval and door-opening that was instrumental in allowing his abuse to flourish. Whistleblowers such as Mark Stibbe and Marilyn Parry were ignored and/or castigated. Bishops and at least one archbishop thought the NOS was a Jolly Good Wheeze for the CofE, thereby enabling a cult to emerge, ultimately sexually abusing a considerable number of women. Of course, even one abused woman is too many – yet here we are talking about many, many women, and even from the horse’s mouth, double what he was confronted with.
Questions that ought to be answered:
How did Brain manage to persuade the vicar of St Thomas’s in Sheffield to let him use the church in the first place, for what were effectively raves dressed up as church?
How did he get into theological training? Who signed off that decision? Where was the discernment process on both sides in all this?
How did he get fast tracked into ordination in a year? Why?
What justification was used for any of these decisions at the time?
Why did nobody question the stuff he was saying and doing in the ‘services’?
Why did nobody question the behaviour of the ‘congregations’ at the NOS?
Why was there no spiritual or practical oversight of his activities?
Why was there nobody of sufficient seniority or brain (pardon the pun) to challenge the
emergence of an obvious cult flourishing in the heart of the Sheffield diocese?
Was it the money that was coming in?
Was the NOS deemed to be a good advert for new members of the CofE?
And finally, two questions to which the answer is bound to be ‘no’:
Are we seriously to believe that nobody knew any of the ‘bad stuff’ until 1995?
Does anyone seriously believe that we have got a handle on how to prevent all this
happening again in 2025?
I’ve had reason before to write about the absolute idiocy of those in charge of the church while abusers are de facto supported to carry on their abuse. And here we are again. What does any of this say about the intellectual, emotional and moral standards and capabilities of those in power in the CofE in the recent past? A blind and deaf chimpanzee would have spotted something amiss here.
What does the Bible say about the role of pastors?
Acts 20:28 Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God which he obtained with his own blood.
Matt 7:15 Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
And about discernment?
1 John 4:1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
Were any of those in authority at the time of the NOS doing any of this? No. They ignored the voices of those raising an alarm and chose instead to allow a false prophet - a classic narcissist - to play them, bringing the church, the faith and the name of God into disrepute. Is anyone ever going to be held to account for any of this? Only, I suspect, when we see a herd of porcines in flight over Lambeth Palace.
For more click here: https://news.sky.com/story/cult-leader-chris-brain-abused-position-to-sexually-assault-staggering-number-of-women-court-hears-13390845
Dr Judith Sture is a regular contributor to Virtue Online, based in the UK.
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