Hundreds of ‘Assemblies of God’ Churches Accused of Shielding Child Predators in New Report

A deep dive into the Assemblies of God has revealed a “50-year pattern of sex abuse, silence and cover-up in the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination,” according to NBC News, which has been investigating sex abuse allegations in the Assemblies of God as part of their Pastors and Prey series:

• A children’s pastor was caught filming girls in a church bathroom in Arkansas. Elders suspended him for a few weeks.
• In Illinois, a preacher was accused of sexually abusing children. Church leaders sent him to therapy rather than call police.
• In California, a worship minister went to prison for molesting boys. His congregation threw him a party when he returned.
• All of these men remained in ministry in the Assemblies of God, the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination. All went on to abuse more children.”

Founded in 1914, the Assemblies of God USA (AG) has close to 13,000 churches in the U.S. with around 1.8 million congregants attending church on a weekly basis. While the churches are essentially autonomous, the AG has been resistant to bringing in stricter oversight, with NBC noting:

“While some of the other largest Christian denominations now require safeguards such as background checks and mandatory reporting, national Assemblies of God leaders have resisted, arguing such rules would increase legal risk, undermine its commitment to local church autonomy and defy a core biblical command: to forgive.”

As such, they’ve identified 200 Assemblies of God clergy and leaders that have abused nearly 500 people, most of them children. They note that out of the 200 people identified, more than half were pastors, and of that subsection, half were youth pastors.

At present, the Assemblies of God is facing multiple lawsuits across the country, from California to Texas, over its mishandling of sexual abuse allegations. For example:

Earlier this year, we covered the story of Joe Campbell, an Assemblies of God minister who was removed from his church for molesting young girls, but then invited to return to preaching, after which he molested even more minors. In this case, the victim, Kerri Jackson, went to the AOG in Springfield to testify about what happened in an ecclesiastical trial, facing approximately 30 men were sitting around a U-shaped table.

Joe and Becky Campbell, along with Becky’s father, were present. The AOG ministers from the district that were at the table questioning Kerri basically called her a liar because she was unable to describe details about his penis or naked body. Despite holding a church trial to see if this teenage girl really was abused, the police were not contacted.

While some denominations like the SBC and the Roman Catholic Church have implemented safety measures including background checks for staff and volunteers, reporting protocols, and prevention training, the AOG has languished. The General Council previously debated making these anti-abuse protocols and policies mandatory, but ultimately decided against it after their lawyers warned it would expose their national office to lawsuits and litigation.

NBC notes the events of the 1997 biennial General Council meeting in Indianapolis, “where thousands of ministers considered a resolution barring anyone convicted of child sex abuse from holding ministerial credentials.” While some wanted action, others were wary, with questions of “well what if the girl is only 16 or 17, and the pastor just touches her, but doesn’t have sex with her, is it fair to have that included?”

They were also resistant because this resolution would bar potential ministers who abused children before they became Christians, something they found untenable.

Ultimately, the resolution died.

Of course, that only would apply to credentialed ministers. Uncredentialed ministers is a whole other story:

While the church’s restoration handbook was updated in 2021 to bar reinstating pastors who sexually abuse children, it does still allow reinstatement for other behaviors, including ministers who engage in ““flirtatious, inappropriately affectionate” conduct with minors.

In 2019, at the Assemblies of God’s General Council’s biennial meeting, the secretary-treasurer of the Northern California-Nevada district, Jay Herndon, introduced a resolution to protect children, giving the national office the power to expel any churches found to be not merely negligent in enforcing safeguard practices like mandatory reporting of sexual abuse and background checks, but “grossly negligent.”

Put another way, all the churches would have to do is commit to reporting every instance of sexual abuse allegations to the police, do background checks on employees to see if they have a history of sexual abuse, and go through a brief program of child safety best practices.

Herndon pleaded with the thousands of ministers, telling of his own wife who was targeted as a child by a predator at an AOG church and successfully fended him off. This predator ended up molesting several girls and was sent to prison—and upon his release was welcomed back into the AOG.

But then a lawyer rose up: George Wood, the Assemblies of God’s national secretary, who previously recommended that a man who molested multiple young boys undergo restoration training so he could get back in the denomination’s good graces. He objected, saying it would open them up to lawsuits.

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