Copyright NBC News
This article is part of “Pastors and Prey,” a series investigating sex abuse allegations in the Assemblies of God. The Assemblies of God is facing calls for reform and repentance after an NBC News investigation revealed decades of sexual abuse allegations and alleged cover-ups within the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination. The report last week identified nearly 200 ministers, church employees and volunteer leaders accused of sexually abusing more than 475 people, most of them children, over the past half-century. In dozens of cases, the investigation found, Assemblies of God churches returned accused offenders to ministry — freeing them to abuse again. In response, several Assemblies of God pastors said they were praying for a reckoning within their ranks. One urged the denomination to enter a season of repentance; another announced he was leaving in protest. “I cannot in good conscience remain credentialed with the Assemblies of God,” the minister, Trevor Walker, wrote in an email Wednesday to denomination leaders. “I pray that greater light and humility will one day prevail in addressing abuse within the church.” Walker was one of 10 current and former Assemblies of God ministers who shared their views with NBC News. Reporters also heard from several alleged victims and longtime congregants. Their reactions ranged from outrage and grief to deep disappointment. Some said they hoped the reporting would prompt change. “Maybe this will be the thing that turns the corner,” said Krystopher Scroggins, an Assemblies of God minister who leads a college ministry in San Angelo, Texas. “You can’t have this amount of light shining in your dark corners and not want to clean your house.” The General Council of the Assemblies of God, the denomination’s U.S. governing body, released a video statement last week taking issue with the NBC News report and asserting its commitment to child protection. “The Assemblies of God grieves with anyone who has been hurt by the actions of an abuser,” said General Superintendent Doug Clay, the denomination’s top national leader. “The General Council of the Assemblies of God is committed to child safety and has an established track record of leadership in this area.” Standing beside him, General Secretary Donna Barrett defended the denomination’s policies, reiterating that it requires background checks of credentialed ministers and screens out any found to have sexually abused children. Some pastors praised the Assemblies of God for vetting credentialed ministers but were troubled by a significant gap noted in NBC News’ report: Under denominational policy, only a church’s lead pastor is required to hold ministerial credentials — meaning other staff, such as youth pastors or music ministers, can be hired without national oversight or background checks. Jim Line, who leads a small church in St. Marys, Pennsylvania, said he’s concerned that this lack of supervision can allow individuals with troubling histories to return to ministry roles. “If you bring in somebody who’s a minister of music or youth pastor and they’re not credentialed, I don’t know what your background is,” said Line, who added that he otherwise thought the Assemblies of God’s policies are strong. “I do have a problem with that.” NBC News contacted each elected member of the denomination’s Executive Presbytery, which serves as a national board of directors, but none agreed to comment. At least a few of the Assemblies of God’s 66 district councils, which oversee church affairs on a state or regional level, sent emails to ministers responding to the reporting. One district office implored every pastor in the region to voluntarily adopt child safety policies; another called the reporting “heartbreaking” and encouraged ministers to watch the General Council’s response. For some inside the denomination, the video statement fell short, confirming fears that leadership is unwilling to confront what they see as systemic failures. Anthony Scoma, an Assemblies of God pastor in San Francisco who previously served as a district leader in north Texas, said failures that allowed sex offenders to return to ministry can’t be fixed with policy changes alone. He called for “churchwide, denominationalwide repentance” in response to the NBC News report. “As long as the Assemblies of God, led by our leaders, refuses to repent over a culture of abuse, the media, the courts, public opinion will continue to expose all these things,” Scoma said. “Because it’s not actually them that’s exposing it — it’s God. It’s the spirit of truth that is bringing these things to light.” Among the most forceful reactions came from Walker, the minister who resigned his credentials after two decades in the Assemblies of God. Walker said he had already left his church in Midlothian, Virginia, in 2023 over its handling of a family member’s abuse allegations but had maintained his credentials and hoped to one day return to ministry. The NBC News report and the denomination’s response — which Walker described as “sterile,” “impersonal” and “devoid of accountability or compassion” — finally convinced him to step away for good. “If they would have said, ‘Many people have been hurt over the years under our watch, and we regret that, but we’re working toward making it better,’ that would have been enough for me,” Walker said. Other ministers criticized a 2021 decision by the General Council to reject a resolution that would have added language to the bylaws stating that a credentialed minister or church could be expelled or disciplined for failing to enforce safeguards like background checks and mandatory reporting of abuse. Ministers declined to adopt the policy after lawyers for the denomination warned that it could expose the General Council to costly lawsuits. One senior official said at the time that the legal risk “outweighed the benefit.” That remark brought to mind a passage from the Book of Matthew, said Scroggins, in which Jesus warned that a person cannot serve both God and mammon — or money. “When your guiding thought is, ‘We don’t want to implement this policy that will protect children because we don’t want to lose a lot of money in potential lawsuits,’ that to me is, you’re worshipping money,” Scroggins said. “And that’s heartbreaking.” Barrett, the Assemblies of God's general secretary, defended the 2021 decision in the video response last week. She said the denomination’s structure gives churches broad autonomy to govern themselves, which she said “makes it impossible” for the General Council to "give oversight" to local congregations. “It is absurd to think that anyone at 2021 General Council was opposed to child safety,” Barrett said. Former Assemblies of God pastor Dan Matlock called that explanation hypocritical and “frankly, pardon me, bulls---.” In 2020, Matlock’s church in Kyle, Texas, announced it would affirm LGBTQ members and perform same-sex weddings. Within days, Assemblies of God district officials moved to revoke his ministerial credential and expel the church for adopting views “contradictory to historical Christian beliefs and our AG doctrinal positions,” according to a letter reviewed by NBC News. Matlock said the episode showed that the Assemblies of God can exercise control over local church policies — when it’s important to them. “I am not convinced in the least that what they are most concerned about is congregants’ safety,” he said. Among rank-and-file Assemblies of God congregants, reactions to the NBC News report ranged from heartbreak to hope. Charity True, a longtime Assemblies of God member in Illinois, said “Jesus would be flipping tables” at the Assemblies of God’s national office. “If my local church didn’t have their act already together, then last Sunday would have been my last Sunday inside of an Assemblies of God church,” True said in an email, referring to her congregation’s stringent child safety policies. “I just pray this will bring change at a national level.” For survivors, the revelations were deeply personal, reviving painful memories and exposing a pattern of abuse, silence and cover-ups. Cheryl Almond spent decades attending Assemblies of God churches in Oklahoma — even after she says her pastor, Joe Campbell, sexually abused her as a teen in the late 1970s. After other children came forward in the 1980s to allege abuse, Campbell was allowed to keep preaching for years before the denomination finally removed him in 1989, NBC News reported in May. Almond said she was devastated by the latest report, which she said confirmed a long-held fear: What happened at her childhood church wasn’t isolated. “This has been allowed to happen to far too many kids, and for far too long,” she said. In calling for change at the national level, Almond pointed to Jesus’ parable of the shepherd who leaves 99 sheep to rescue one that has gone astray — a lesson about valuing every life. “The Assemblies of God isn’t doing that,” she said. “They’re saying that safeguarding the 99 is more important than protecting the one. ‘That vulnerable child can fend for themselves. We’ve got a church to protect from lawsuits.’” “It’s wrong,” she added. “It’s not biblical, and it’s disgusting.”
