Quick Facts
AquariusBiography
Gwendolyn Henley Shamblin Lara (February 18, 1955 – May 29, 2021) was the founder of the Remnant Fellowship Church, founder of the Christian diet program The Weigh Down Workshop, and an American author.
She is the subject of the 2021 HBO Max docuseries, The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin. She is portrayed by actress Jennifer Grey in the Lifetime movie, Starving for Salvation.
Early life
Lara earned an undergraduate degree in dietetics and a master's degree in food and nutrition with an emphasis in biochemistry from University of Tennessee, in Knoxville. She was a registered dietitian, consultant and a faculty member at Memphis State University for five years. She also worked in the city's Tennessee Department of Health for five years.
Lara was raised in a Church of Christ family.
She had two children and seven grandchildren.
Career and ministry
Weigh Down Workshop
Lara began a weight control consulting practice in 1980. She had struggled with her weight in college. She counseled that genetics, metabolism, and behavior modification did not explain why some people were thin while others were overweight. Lara founded the Weigh Down Workshop, a weight-loss program with no food restrictions, exercise regimens, weigh-ins, or calorie-counting in 1986.
Some experts expressed concern because the program eliminated exercise and guidance on food selection as recommended by the American Dietetic Association.
Lara developed Weigh Down Workshop while working on her master's degree at Memphis State University. As part of a counseling center, Lara hosted the first class in a mall in Memphis, Tennessee. The program was offered as small classes in retail and non-religious settings. She began hosting the program at Bellevue Baptist Church near Memphis in the 1990s. The program consisted of 12-week seminars guided by video and audio tapes featuring Lara.
The program was offered in about 600 churches in 35 U.S. states by 1994. The program was in more than 1,000 churches in 49 states, Great Britain and Canada by January 1995. The program had grown to about 5,000 churches, with about 10 percent located in Lara's home state of Tennessee, by July 1996. Approximately eight churches in Britain were hosting workshops in December 1996. Some participants in the U.S. hosted meetings in their homes.
In 1996, Weigh Down Workshop had a staff of 40 and built a headquarters in Franklin, Tennessee, and Lara began hosting an annual summer convention, Desert Oasis, in the Nashville area.
Weigh Down Workshop hosted more than 21,000 classes with more than 250,000 participants worldwide by August 1998. Classes were hosted in every U.S. state and in Canada and Europe.
Lara was criticized for using the Christianity label while building her business. In 2001, Nashville CBS affiliate WTVF investigated how Weigh Down Workshop leaders spent money. Lara said half the proceeds from Weigh Down Workshop were paid as taxes and the other half were put back into the program.
Remnant Fellowship Church
Shamblin founded the Remnant Fellowship Church in Franklin, Tennessee in 1999. The church's building was completed in 2004 on 40 acres Lara purchased in Brentwood, Tennessee.
Shamblin had preached that members should give their money to the Remnant Fellowship church, the only true church, and that all other churches were fraudulent. Upon her death in 2021, it was found that Shamblin's will left none of her multimillion-dollar fortune to the church. One reporter noted the irony of this, mentioning that less than four weeks before her death, Shamblin had made a video in which she warned others about greed.
"Most of the world has abandoned true religion and are now converts to building up their own pocket books. Yet God is a god of justice, and he will not be mocked."
Writings
Shamblin published The Weigh Down Diet, a book that advised readers to use spirituality to avoid overeating, in 1997. The book sold more than 1.2 million copies. The Weigh Down Diet teaches the love of food should be transferred to a love of God, and to cut food portions in half and eat only when hungry. Shamblin wrote multiple books after that.
Shamblin sent an email to her followers saying that she believed that the doctrine of the Trinity was not biblical on August 10, 2000. In response, some evangelical churches dropped her program, Thomas Nelson Publishers canceled the publication of her next book, she was removed from the Women of Faith website, and some employees left her staff.
Accusations of abuse
A 2021 HBO Max 5-part docuseries The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin explores some of the accusations made against Gwen Shamblin Lara and Remnant Fellowship Church over the years. These accusations include claims that Lara promoted corporal punishment as a means for parents to keep their children obedient and submissive.
Joseph and Sonya Smith were adherents of Shamblin and had an eight-year-old son, Josef. Sonya and Joseph routinely disciplined Josef by beating him with foot-long glue sticks, belts, and heated coat hangers; locking him in confined spaces for extended periods of time; and tying his hands with rope. Mrs. Smith told police that she “normally” gave the children their whippings in increments of ten blows each, and that Josef had gotten several of those whipping sessions on the day of his death. The police reported that the Smiths locked Josef in his room to pray to a picture of Jesus on the ceiling and in a closet for days and even weeks. He was given only a bucket for a toilet. An older son sometimes held Josef down while the parents beat him with implements.
During the day on October 8, 2003, Joseph beat Josef several times, striking him repeatedly with a glue stick. County medical examiners concluded that eight-year-old Josef Smith died as a result of "acute and chronic" abuse. Members of the Remnant Church led by Shamblin paid for the legal defense of the Smiths. They were convicted in Georgia v. Smith. The Smiths were sentenced on March 27, 2007, to life plus 30 years in prison (the maximum punishment) by Cobb County Superior Court Judge James Bodiford. Another child in this family, Milek Smith, had died 11 weeks before Josef's death, with the cause of death being variously reported as either pneumonia or SIDS.
Personal life
In 1978 she married David Shamblin, with whom she would have two children. In 2018 Shamblin filed for divorce and married Joe Lara.
Lara lived with her husband in Ashlawn, a historic mansion in Brentwood, Tennessee that was built in 1838.
Death
Joe Lara was the sole pilot of an airplane that crashed bound for Palm Beach, Florida. The accident killed all onboard including Lara, her son-in-law Brandon Hannah, and two other couples when Gwen’s 1982 Cessna Citation 501 private jet crashed into Percy Priest Lake near Smyrna, Tennessee, shortly after takeoff on May 29, 2021.
The NTSB final report found that the airplane crash was a result of pilot error, and that pilot Joe Lara had spatial disorientation.
Selected works
Books
- The Weigh Down Diet. Doubleday. 1997. ISBN 9780385487627.
- Exodus: Daily Devotional. Weigh Down Workshop. 1998. ISBN 9781892729002.
- Rise Above: God Can Set You Free from Your Weight Problems Forever. Thomas Nelson. 2000. ISBN 9780785268765.
- Out of Egypt: Inspiration for Conquering Life's Strongholds. Thomas Nelson. 2000. ISBN 9780785268499.
- The Legend to the Treasure. Weigh Down Workshop. 2007. ISBN 9781892729804.
- Weigh Down Basics: Workbook. Weigh Down Workshop. 2012. ISBN 9781892729132.
- History of the One True God Workbook: Volume 1: the Origin of Good and Evil. Weigh Down Workshop. 2013. ISBN 9781892729170.
- History of the Love of God: Volume II: A Love More Ancient Than Time. Weigh Down Ministries. 2015. ISBN 9781892729262.
Other media
