When I met Rick Trudeau in Riverside Park in Saranac Lake this spring, he was busy with his family. He and his wife Anna looked like any young couple. He had a trim beard and wore a ball cap with the logo of a small sawmill he helped found in Texas. She looked quietly confident. She was taking their kids to run errands in the village.

But when we sat down on a park bench to talk about Trudeau’s ministry and also his growing legal troubles, he made it clear he doesn’t see himself as a typical Christian father and small businessman. He described himself as a misunderstood prophet navigating a sinful world, and he recounted the “dreadfully terrifying” moment 10 years ago when he had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ.

“I felt like I could not abide in his presence more than the time he allotted, which was three or four seconds,” Trudeau said.

That vision led Trudeau to leave Saranac Lake, where he grew up and went to high school, in 2010. He eventually joined the Church of Arlington which became the Church of Wells, an evangelical congregation in the small east Texas town of Wells that preaches on street corners and college campuses across the country. In recent years, Trudeau’s fierce brand of faith also led to numerous encounters with police, clashes with other church leaders and estrangement from members of his own family.

“I am possessed by the Holy Ghost, and it drives me to do things that other men who aren’t possessed by the Holy Ghost may not understand and may not find all that wonderful or attractive,” he said. “That’s my confession.”

He spoke hopefully about a possible return to the Saranac Lake area, where he and his wife may settle again.

“I have many people I care for deeply in this town. I’ve prayed for this town. My coming back here is a desire to fulfill this longing in my heart to see souls saved.”

Trudeau is 33 years old. His father died in a snowmobile accident when he was young. Many of his family members still live in the Saranac Lake area, although his brother Tanner has joined him in the Church of Wells.

Trudeau first drew attention in Saranac Lake last March when village police jailed him and a fellow Church of Wells member twice in three days, charging them first with disrupting a religious service, a class A misdemeanor under New York law, and then disorderly conduct, a violation. During our conversation, he admitted to interrupting a Saranac Lake Baptist Church service and preaching noisily on downtown streets, but he said the criminal charges are unfounded.

“If a church that’s claiming to be a church of Jesus Christ is not doing its job, it is worthy of rebuke,” he argued. “I’ve done what I did on the streets of Saranac Lake in multiple cities on dozens of occasions, near a hundred times. It’s always accepted by the police that there’s a right to free speech.”

Pastor Ryan Schneider of the Baptist church said this wasn’t his first encounter with Trudeau or the Church of Wells, and he expressed alarm about their ministry.

“I think they’re a parasite on any community they’re involved with,” he said in an interview. “I don’t see them bringing anything but hate to a community. Their message is clear: It’s hate. It’s not the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Meanwhile, the Ecumenical Council of Saranac Lake’s president, Rich Loeber, warned its members about the Church of Wells at a meeting Monday evening.

“A couple of months ago, there was a threat to church worship services, and that threat has returned,” he told the council. “It could happen in any church. It could happen to you.”

Loeber said New York’s law against disturbing religious services “trumps free speech. So if something like this happens, call 911 or local police because they know how to handle these folks.” He happened to see Saranac Lake police arrest Trudeau and Mark De Rouville downtown in March and said, “They were very aggressive toward police, and police were very patient.”

Trudeau was arrested last year on trespassing charges in Houston after he and members of his church staged a shouted protest during a worship service held by nationally known televangelist Joel Osteen. Those charges were dismissed last month.

Trudeau told me that other Christians should welcome his message.

“If they were saved, and if their hearts were turned to believe the Gospel, they would see that everything we’re saying and doing is actually pure love,” he said. “We’re willing to suffer for the truth of God.”

But Trudeau doesn’t always sound loving. During our conversation, he said bluntly that “God would be just to destroy the world and destroy every man in the world and not spare one soul alive.” He also acknowledged that he has been entangled for years in legal disputes, including a bitter custody fight with a former girlfriend in the Tri-Lakes area.

“You are going to die if you don’t hand (the child) over to me,” Trudeau warned in a 2014 phone conversation with his ex-girlfriend, which she recorded and later made public. “I’m not talking about years down the road. Very, very soon. You’re going to die and go to hell.”

He was arrested following that call and charged with harassment. It was settled after he served 20 days in jail, longer than the violation’s maximum sentence of 15 days, according to special prosecutor Effie Kyriakopolous.

When I asked Trudeau about the incident, he said he wants to “make people fear” God so that they will accept a more Christian life, but he denied that he would harm anyone personally.

“Never, ever would I be violent. I would rather die myself,” he said.

Despite his often militant language, Trudeau seemed calm and thoughtful during our conversation. He was funny and spoke warmly about Saranac Lake and his children. But he also acknowledged that his interpretation of the Bible is severe, and he said his own journey to salvation had been marked by periods of failure and isolation.

Trudeau described one incident in 2006 when a windstorm blew down a barn he was building in Franklin County, destroying his woodshop and his truck. He spent much of the following winter broke and living in a basement.

“It was very hard. It wasn’t easy. But it led me to the fear of God,” he recalled. “God taught me in the spirit as I was meditating in my basement on all that I had lost.”

A year later he met Anna, whom he would marry in 2008. She was already an active evangelical preacher, and they began seeking converts on the streets of Burlington, Vermont, Glens Falls and New York City before moving to Texas. Testimonials posted on the Church of Wells website by both of them offer glimpses of a tumultuous marriage, marked by painful years of spiritual searching, disillusionment and fierce disagreements over how to discipline their children.

According to Anna Trudeau’s account, she decided to leave their marriage in 2010, and he responded by climbing into a garbage dumpster and refusing to come out.

“I threw my wedding band into the woods and drove off intending to leave my husband in a dumpster far from our home,” she wrote. “I knew as I drove away that somehow I was wrong and he was right. I was leaving Christ. I broke down emotionally and returned to my husband.”

They remained married, but the drama that shaped their lives continued. The Church of Wells drew negative press coverage in 2013, when a 26-year-old woman named Catherine Grove disappeared from her home in Arkansas. She was later found living with church members and refused to have contact with her family. Grove’s story was featured on a broadcast of ABC’s “Primetime Live” in 2014. Her family claimed she had been brainwashed.

Church deacons rejected that charge, but their strict rules and harsh discipline continued to spark controversy. In one sermon posted online, a Church of Wells leader suggested that newborn children are sometimes “possessed by demons.” Another deacon named Jacob Gardner preached at length about the importance of spanking and physical punishment in the education of young children.

Gardner said some members of the congregation were taking practice too far, describing a father who “spanked the child until the child has stopped crying or until the child’s cry has turned to a whimper.” After a pause, Gardner added, “That’s not good. That’s very bad.”

In 2012, a newborn baby in the Church of Wells community died, and church members waited 14 hours before calling police. They told authorities they spent those hours praying.

The small congregation also raised eyebrows when its leaders claimed in sermons and writings that they had personal knowledge of God’s plans. They described visions and compared their ministry to the work of Biblical figures. During our conversation, Rick Trudeau described witnessing signs from God, including two cases in which he saw cancers cured miraculously.

“I couldn’t deny anymore, the Lord was beginning to speak to me,” he said.

These issues have led other Christian leaders to condemn Trudeau’s church and theology. A website and a Facebook page created by evangelical Christians in Texas portray the small community as a dangerous cult.

“The Church of Wells will not answer for failed prophecies, or take responsibility for their error,” the site argued in a blog post last December.

During our nearly two-hour talk, Rick Trudeau said those critics are misguided, and he complained that media coverage of the Church of Wells has been biased. He argued that even his fiercest threats and warnings are motivated by love.

Asked about possibly moving back to Saranac Lake, Trudeau said his plans for the future aren’t firm, and he acknowledged that he has struggled to fit in here in the past.

“I’m still wrestling to try to find fellowship in Saranac Lake,” he said, adding that many members of his family are unhappy with his preaching. “I believe they’re very embarrassed. I know for a fact that they are. They don’t understand the point of my ministry. I pray that God will forgive them.”

Trudeau and fellow Church of Wells member Mark De Rouville are expected in Harrietstown court for a trial July 25 on charges relating to their arrests in March. They were offered a public defender, but Assistant District Attorney David Hayes said they have chosen to represent themselves instead.

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Brian Mann is the Adirondack Bureau chief for North Country Public Radio. Enterprise Managing Editor Peter Crowley contributed to this report.