A Look Inside A Police Tactics Training at Grace City Church
Prayers, gifts, and invitations to join the Strongerman Nation marked the first law enforcement training at GCC's Sunnyslope compound
Note: The name of the main source in this piece has been changed to protect them and their families.
Ken Tremblay was one of roughly 50 law enforcement officers who attended the March 2021 regional police tactics training at Grace City Church’s compound in the Sunnyslope neighborhood of Wenatchee, Washington. To kick the three-day police tactics training off, church planter and Lead Pastor Josh McPherson came in to lead a prayer and hand out gift baskets.
After a brief overview of how the weekend training would proceed, Sergeant Brent Frank of the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office introduced McPherson.
Tremblay described McPherson’s pre-prayer remarks as part “pep talk” and part anti-government screed.
“They refer to him as Pastor Josh,” he said. “And they brought Pastor Josh in, and he gives his spiel on law enforcement and guns and eff the government, the state, whatever.”
That day, McPherson wasn’t focused on Covid mandates but rather the police reform laws Washington passed in the wake of the George Floyd murder and resulting Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.
“And you know, 99 percent of us in law enforcement agreed. I mean, I still do. I think those laws were garbage, and they weren’t thought out,” he said. “But he talked a lot about that and then they did a group prayer. And there’s 50 people in the room from law enforcement agencies all over the state, and it’s prayer time.”
And the prayer wasn’t a quiet affair. For some, it was participatory. Tremblay said two training leaders, Chelan County Sheriff Undersheriff Chris Foreman and Wenatchee Police Department Captain Brian Chance, were particularly vocal during Pastor Josh’s lengthy prayer.
“And he goes on and on and there’s Chris Foreman and Brian Chance and they’re just making noises like they’re at church during this prayer,” he said. “And tears are flowing down Chris Foreman’s face.”
After McPherson’s prayer, then-Wenatchee PD officer Justin Kissel took the mic.
“And then Justin Kissel spoke a bit and left an open invitation to their men’s group in the mornings,” Tremblay said. “They pushed that church.”
Kissel has since left WPD and is currently the head of GCC’s security.
After that, McPherson handed out gift baskets with a bottle of wine, gift cards to local businesses for the local officers (chain establishments for the out-of-towners), as well as various Grace City Church apparel, stickers, and pens for all.
The bottle of wine with grapes sourced from the illustrious Red Mountain AVA retails from $12 to $19, the gift cards are worth $22 in total, and the hat, shirt, pen, and sticker are of “nominal intrinsic value,” according to the City of Wenatchee’s Employment and Personnel Policies Manual.
The entire package is most likely worth less than $50.
And that’s a good thing because that manual strictly prohibits the “receipt of money in any form, or gifts valued at more than $50.00.”
East Wenatchee’s police policy manual is less specific in the actual amount that may be accepted. It puts the onus of accepting any gift upon the ethics of the officer him or herself.
EWPD’s manual offers much more room for interpretation, and it could be argued that any gift of any value could be “interpreted as seeking to cause the officer to refrain from performing official duties.”
From what I can tell, the Chelan County Policies and Procedures manual does not address the issue, and I asked Sheriff Brian Burnett about that (more on that later).
But rather than get lost in the weeds on the individual agencies and their policies on accepting gifts, let’s focus for a moment on Justin Kissel.
According to Tremblay, before Kissel left WPD for a staff position at Grace City Church, he spent a lot of work time on GCC’s security plans.
“He got paid by the city to develop that security. I watched him at work on the clock, sitting at the computer, planning security for that building,” he said. “It pissed me off that he was getting paid to sit around and do that while the rest of us were out there busting our asses.”
Kissel even spoke about safe rooms for McPherson and his family.
“It was explained to me because I even questioned it,” he said. “Justin told me: ‘Yeah, we have safe rooms being built into it for pastor – for the pastor and their family.”
“It’s like he’s a god,” Tremblay said.
“I’ve always called this GCC a cult, and they have a cult following, I feel like,” he said. “And it scares me because it makes me think of like Waco, Texas type stuff. I think some of them are crazy enough that they think they’re that special.”
He’s not the only officer who has compared the situation to Waco and the Branch Davidians.
In a series of texts after one training at GCC’s compound, a Chelan County Sheriff’s Deputy expressed his concerns to a friend.
“Damn. And all of our classes are starting to be down there now. Our PTI training was there, the FTO class this week was there,” he wrote. “The Pastor Josh told us they’re going to build a cafe and police are welcome there anytime to eat for free.”
He ended the thread with two words: “David Koresh.”
GCC has a history of courting law enforcement officers and agencies, offering them free training space and even specially-tailored free-of-charge marriage retreats for LEOs and their spouses.
“I don’t even know if they even pay or not,” he said. “I know it’s expensive for people to have weddings at Grace City so I imagine it’s not cheap to hold training there.”
I put in a public record request with the City of Wenatchee for any contracts between the city and GCC regarding the use of their compound for training. There is no contract with the city.
So I reached out to Sheriff Burnett via email and asked if the county has a contract with GCC. A few days later, Burnett’s assistant Jessica Peterson got back to me.
“On behalf of Sheriff Burnett, the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office is not aware of any contracts with Grace City Church,” she wrote.
Neither the Sheriff nor the Chelan County Commissioners responded to my question about county employees accepting gifts.
It’s entirely possible GCC is not charging law enforcement agencies anything to use their space for training or that the state is footing the bill.
“I mean, it’s a great place for training,” Tremblay said.
It’s just the near-constant efforts to recruit the officers into the church that was the problem. But it’s easy to see how LEOs can be useful for an organization that plays up an “us vs. them” narrative and spends a lot of time and energy maintaining a defensive posture toward the outside world.
By Pastor Josh’s own admission, GCC uses current and former LEOs to work security for them. I’ve reported on the armed security team of “sheepdogs” they have on duty during services before.
But Tremblay spoke about that as well.
“All the security there is cops from the valley. I’ve heard them talking: they’re armed,” he said. “I know they must have some type of armory type place there.”
Fear of Speaking Out Against the Organization
To the question, is there a clique like CCSO’s “God Squad” at the Wenatchee PD, Tremblay’s answer is “yes.”
“And it starts with Captain Brian Chance,” he said.
But he said that if you know what’s good for you and your career, you hold your tongue when it comes to being critical of GCC.
“If you disagree with stuff, you’re going to get blackballed,” he said. “That’s just the way it is.”
Tremblay described the church as “male-dominated” and Josh McPherson as “entitled.”
He compared Grace City Church to the Mormons, not because of any shared theology but in how they treat women.
“They treat women like crap,” he said.
But he doesn’t think Grace City Church can keep growing without eventually imploding, like Bethesda Christian Center, Mars Hill, and so many similar charismatic indie evangelical sects built around a single personality.
“I think it’s only a matter of time until they go under for some money issues,” he said. “Money is flying out of that place.”
Mike Morrison for Chelan County Sheriff
Do we know if any female LEOs were present for the training? Or how officers are chosen to attend these trainings in general? I mean, the image of these trainings in my mind skews heavily white dude.