“After watching and praying about Bethel Church’s apology, I believe they could provide a huge gift to the body of Christ by showing what public repentance and church discipline of elders could look like. Perhaps—even—this moment is what God has been setting them up to lead the body of Christ in, all along.”
~Tenay Benes
tenaybenes.com
Shawn Bolz – Bolz Ministries
A couple of weeks ago, God put Shawn Bolz on my heart. I kept hearing a clip from a memory. In it, Shawn said he had prophesied the next South Korean president would enter office. Given the latest international headlines about the recently ousted South Korean president, I couldn’t ignore the memory.
This morning, at 3:30 a.m., I decided to look it up, to see if this was the same president Shawn said he had prophesied about. I never did find out about the South Korean president because my search results were inundated with news of Shawn publicly falling from grace.
Apparently, Shawn routinely used Facebook data mining to give fake prophesies from stage, as well as sexually harassed some people, including some employees.
I immediately thought of the welfare of Jeremy Butros and another acquaintance, both of whom were working in Shawn Bolz’ ministry when we got to know them for a brief period in 2020. In the video below, he quietly and sadly confirms the accusations against Shawn.
I felt torn at the news. In 2016, I had benefited indirectly from Shawn’s ministry, through the DVD series, “Translating God”, which was being shown at the first charismatic church I had visited. I learned about how the spirit of prophecy is not shame, guilt, and condemnation, but of encouragement and love. That was a valuable corrective teaching for someone who came out of the evangelical church, in which prophecy was taught to be the spirit of finding false teachers (AKA people who didn’t agree with their theology). It turns out that it was Jeremy Butros, not Shawn Bolz, who wrote that teaching series and book; Shawn just delivered the content. This made sense to me, since I sensed a deep love and concern for the welfare of people in the teaching that doesn’t match the nature of Shawn’s character according to these allegations.
At the same time, I had decided to stop following Bolz Ministries in 2021, when Shawn launched a “prophetic politics” show in which he evaluated current political events and prophesied about future ones on YouTube. Much like so many others on the prophetic stage during this period, I found his words to be filled with a spirit of fear. I was surprised because this spirit of fear and of politics didn’t fit with the spirit of the Translating God series, so I figured there was a mismatch somewhere. I couldn’t make it through the third episode, and I ended my following of his ministry.
Bill Johnson, Kris Vallotton, Dann Farrelly – Bethel Church
The Shawn Bolz scandal led Bethel Church of Redding, California–possibly the most influential charismatic church on the planet–to issue a public apology. They acknowledged their role in giving Shawn a global platform, and repented (changed their heart) for not publicly sharing the findings of their own investigation in 2019, which confirmed the allegations against him.
Again, I felt torn. I benefitted greatly from Bethel Church’s bethel.tv ministry in 2016-2018–my early days as a spirit-empowered believer. At the time, I found Bill Johnson’s teachings to be deep and wise. I also found Kris Vallotton’s teachings about women playing a full role church leadership to be healing.
However, by 2020 (after I had been married to my husband for some time), I felt God tell me that my time for learning from Bethel Church was done. I heard the Holy Spirit say I was now called to develop an “elder’s view” of the church (in line with my husband’s calling), and my ability to benefit from Bethel Church’s teaching ended literally overnight. (It was a weird experience.)
Todd White – Lifestyle Christianity
As I dug into other allegations against charismatic leaders, I found out that Mike Winger, the same person who made the whistleblower video about Shawn Bolz, made video about another person whose ministry I followed in my early days walking in the spirit: Todd White.
How did I feel about this? You guessed it: torn. I benefitted greatly from watching early videos of Todd White. I watched with amazement as he offered strangers on the street prayer and saw them healed. I was also inspired by how his generous tipping opened the hearts of servers to hear the good news of God. In 2017, after three hours of binge-watching his content with great longing in my heart to be able to touch people with the love of God like that, the Holy Spirit showed up in my living room, touched the back of my head, and filled me with the power of God. Two hours later, I was praying for Romas and Turks on the streets of a German town in Yeshu’s name and watching many be healed, just like I had seen on Todd White’s videos! (For details, check out my book, Heal or Die.) I tasted the goodness of God, and I was grateful to have gotten a blueprint of how to do it from Todd’s YouTube channel.
At the same time, when I heard Todd preach on a live stage at an Awaken Europe conference later that same year, the spirit in the air felt… not right. He launched his sermon by cursing the witches in the room and telling everyone that the spirit of pride hates being called the spirit of pride… His demeanor was all about himself—not at all like he was portrayed in his YouTube channel. The whole thing was just… weird. A couple of years after that, he publicly spoke out against inner healing—the act of cooperating with God for progressive healing of someone’s heart and mind from psychological wounds—and I was very upset by his stance. I believed that he was setting people up to fail by telling them they have to just receive their healing and not take any responsibility for the work. I never followed his ministry after that.
Other Charismatic Leaders
In doing my research for this post, I continued to discover other charismatic leaders whom I had heard about have also fallen from grace over the past few years:
- Mike Bickle
- Bob Hartley
- Daystar Christian television network
Lessons
I didn’t know about any of these leaders falling from grace because I haven’t followed the charismatic movement for many years. The role of many charismatic leaders in political campaigning from 2016 on was incredibly surprising to me. By 2020, I felt that their continued campaigning stunk of a lust for power that doesn’t belong in the bride of Christ. 2021 was the final nail in the coffin for me, and I left the American charismatic movement.
However, I did give these ministries props for their help to my early spiritual journey in this blog and in the first edition of my book, Heal or Die. That’s why I felt the need to write this blog today: to share the lessons I am learning from this.
Denominational Differences Don’t Count
To be clear, I don’t agree with every reason highlighted by Mike Winger and other critics for demanding change from these church leaders. For example, some critics said that the works of the Holy Spirit are no longer for today and any mention of them still happening today is blasphemy. The Bible directly and overtly disagrees with that, in many places, these are just three of them. Others said women having a leadership role in church is unbiblical. The Bible directly and overtly disagrees with that, repeatedly showing women in church leadership from pastors to deacons to preachers, as well. Even others accused people who still experience the spiritual realm in Biblical ways—through exercising faith to get something they want, visions, angels, saints, empowered objects, and so on—to be faking, lying, or blaspheming because they personally don’t have those experiences. That’s not surprising, the same spirit of powerless conformity killed Yeshu and his followers for the same reason—and will continue to demand a conformity to a version of godliness without power because they are afraid of experiencing God more fully.
So, we always have to be discerning about why Christians bring up allegations against leaders, because sometimes these are actually accusations, like from The Accuser.
Allegations with Evidence Do Count
However, allegations backed up with evidence of ungodly character that are confirmed by two or three witnesses must stand, according to church discipline of elders, as described in the Bible. The leaders in this post have confirmed allegations of:
- falsifying miracles, signs, wonders, prophecies, or testimonies;
- sexual harassment or assault of minors or adults;
- using ministry donations for personal gain (beyond a reasonable salary, public figure services, and travel expenses);
- a “cover-up culture” by other ministers who found allegations to be well-founded but did not take steps to notify followers of their findings.
These are allegations that I cannot let pass by without letting you know of them. As of today, I discern them to be factual in my evaluation of the evidence and through prayer.
All Human Leaders Have Weaknesses
It is a fact in my life that despite their character deficiencies, God did not take away the spiritual abilities of the people in this blog. Instead, God used some of their teachings to help me grow in the spiritual abilities of prophecy, deliverance, healing, miracles, and so on. Why? Because:
- God can use the works of imperfect people to do beautiful things (just as God can use a donkey to speak to a king)
- people can be unaware of the heart-state of those they follow (just as I was unaware when I followed their ministries)
This is why testing every word you hear (every sermon, every book, every podcast, every video) is crucial to spiritual health.
I don’t want to hide this messy reality about church and life. Therefore, I will not retract the posts that mention the names of these leaders or how I benefitted from their ministries. However, I will add a note next to the unrepentant ones that links to this blog. This note will state that I cannot recommend their ministries at this time because of their lack of restoration (proving repentance with good fruit).
I will praise Kris Vallotton and Dann Fellery at Bethel for publicly repenting in a genuine and self-reflective way. It’s a great start on the path to healing and restoration. That is why I will hold off on no longer recommending them until I see the fruit of their repentance.
After watching and praying about Bethel Church’s apology, I believe they could provide a huge gift to the body of Christ by showing what public repentance and church discipline of elders could look like. Perhaps—even—this moment is what God has been setting them up to lead the body of Christ in, all along.
Always Test Every Word
For those who read this blog for spiritual guidance, this is my repeated exhortation to you to always test every word you hear, read, and see (even those you receive from me) by :
- whether it comes from someone full of the fruit of the spirit
- whether hearing or following it produces fruit of the spirit in you
- listening prayer about the personalized will of God for your life, and
- the confirmation of others who don’t know of the word and don’t know each other repeat the same word to you
Make It Right
Finally, if my earlier recommendations or my heretofore inaction have hurt you or caused you to lose trust in me in some way, I apologize to you.
Please reach out to me and let me know how I can make it right. This is the will of God for all of us when we hurt one another, even inadvertently.
Leave a Reply