Our story

We are Richard and Cheryl Schatz, a Christian couple living in British Columbia, Canada who has been actively involved in ministering to former Jehovah's Witnesses. We have never been Jehovah's Witnesses ourselves, but we have a great deal of love and compassion for those who are contemplating leaving the Watchtower.

For 16 years we operated a recorded message for Jehovah's Witnesses. The weekly messages challenged Jehovah’s Witnesses to research their organization’s history, and it brought the gospel message to encourage Jehovah’s Witnesses to study the Bible without the Watchtower. We also had the privilege of leading a support group for former Jehovah's Witnesses from 1988 until 2003. The support group helped us to understand the dilemma of Jehovah's Witnesses faced when they came to realize that they had been misled by the false claims made about the Watchtower’s history and also doctrinal changes that have been carefully hidden from the average Jehovah’s Witnesses. We were able to collect a vast collection of original Watchtower books, magazines, and original recordings, some dating back to the inception of the Watchtower organization in the late 1800s.

While we originally focused only on Jehovah’s Witnesses, other members of other cult groups sought out our help. They heard that there was a support group that helped people from abusive spiritual groups and they joined with the former Jehovah’s Witnesses to share common experiences. Our hearts expanded to welcome them and we had a desire for all of them to find the real Jesus Christ of the Bible.

In addition, Christians came to the group to understand how to minister to their family or friends who were caught in cult groups. One day a young couple came to the support group to learn how to help Jehovah’s Witnesses, but when they were heard some of the common signs of abusive cult groups, they came to the realization that their own “Christian” organization was practicing some these same tactics. That was when we experienced first hand how the deception of the cults had also infiltrated the church with abusive tactics and deceptive doctrines. It was shocking to us, but it also prepared us to encounter many more instances of false doctrine that enticed and threatened the spiritual well-being of even those whom we dearly loved.

For years we had focused on only the cults and helping them find freedom, but we came face to face with doctrines of demons that had crept into the church unnoticed  (1 Timothy 4:1, Jude 4)  We could not turn away from also helping these dear people to unravel the false doctrine that they had been taught without them even suspecting that these doctrines were in direct conflict with the Bible. We saw people who we thought had been godly Christians leave the church to follow Word Faith, Emergent, and New Apostolic Reformation doctrine. If Christians who study the Word of God won’t help those who have been deceived, won’t we be accountable to Jesus for our lack of concern?  We have dedicated ourselves to speak the truth with love to those inside and outside the church wherever spiritual deception is found.

Our compassion for those in the cults

It is difficult for Jehovah's Witnesses to leave their family and friends behind when they come out of the Watchtower Society. It is also very difficult to sort out doctrinal issues that would allow them to feel comfortable enough to attend a Christian Church. We originally created a website just for Jehovah’s Witnesses to help them sort out doctrinal issues in the privacy of their own home. Our first website was jwinfoline.com. It was created to present Christian doctrine in a way that would allow Jehovah's Witnesses to better understand the Christian faith and how the Watchtower has indoctrinated their followers to be prejudiced against Christians and historic Christian doctrine.

The purpose and goals for this website

This website mmoutreach.org is a work in progress as we expand our areas of ministry.  Our goal is to combine all of our websites to serve a wider audience and to help many more find biblical answers to the challenge of the cults and aberrant doctrine within the church. This website is now mobile friendly and we would like to add material from our other websites to bring the information into a mobile friendly format. It is a lot of work and we are doing is as we can.

Our other website mmoutreachinc.com deals with a broader range of cults and aberrant movements. However, the format was very dated and it was easier to start fresh than to try to fix the older websites. There were many challenges as we expand and renovate the website, so please bear with us as we continue to put up new material and edit older material to offer a fresh new face. We are also working on a brand new web store that we will link to as we get it operational.

Our focus will be on multi-media as we work to produce and distribute videos that both educate the public on these groups as well as provide an evangelistic outreach. The web site mmoutreachinc.com started with the ministry work of Keith and Lorri MacGregor of MacGregor Ministries. Keith and Lorri worked with us in ministry for several years until they resigned off our board and retired in the spring of 2011.

Our partnerships and friends

Our ministry is dedicated to providing audio, video and internet outreach that will impact the world of the cults and aberrant Christian movements for Christ.

MacGregor Ministries had begun the work in the 1970’s but was shut down by Lorri MacGregor years later when it became clear that the Canadian government would not allow that ministry to continue as a charity because presenting the true Jesus of the Bible to the cults was not seen as charitable. As a result MM Outreach Inc was formed as a corporation in 2007 to carry on the work without the restriction that would have forced the ministry to compromise the preaching of the gospel to the cults.

Marlene Mercado helps us with a separate ministry focused on the United States while MM Outreach Inc took over the work of MacGregor Ministries that was based in Canada. Marlene is a former Jehovah's Witness who has a heart for ministry to those trapped in the cults.  When Marlene retires there will be other changes, but for now we are working to expand the ministry and make our material available to a world-wide audience.

Melanie Ryzuk has been a tremendous help to us as she has worked hard on editing the hundreds of articles from the former MacGregor Ministries website (now MM Outreach Inc). These articles will find their way onto this new site in time as we are able to complete our ministry projects.

Cheryl also have a blog at mmoutreach.org/wim that deals with the issues of women in Ministry. This is a safe place to learn about what God's word says about women's ministry and a place to meet others who are in the process of researching and learning about what God has to say about this subject. Cheryl’s other blog is at mmoutreach.org/cheryl  Cheryl's blog is dedicated to her faith journey during the time when she was going through cancer treatments.

We also have a blog called The Giving which goes along with our newest video that we are working on. Our blog at mmoutreach.org/tg deals with the Sovereignty of God in the giving of Jesus for the world from John 6. It is gently done as an answer to those who say that Jesus did not die for all.

While we are working on updating this new website, you can still look through the old websites at:

jwinfoline.com 
mmoutreachinc.com