Ted Shuttlesworth Jr. was the long-time co-pastor of Miracle Word Church in West Palm Beach, Florida, which he helmed along with his wife. The author of nearly 20 books, he co-founded Miracle Word Ministries in 2010, which grew into a multi-faceted organization with a physical church of 200 congregants, online media, travel crusades, and educational programs.
The founder of Miracle Word University, he hosted his own podcast show and was associated with the new, savvier, wing of the prosperity gospel movement.
Notably, Shuttlesworth Jr. comes from a “preaching dynasty” with more than a dozen close members of the family in full-time ministry. His father is Ted Shuttlesworth Sr., a prominent televangelist and revivalist who runs Faith Alive Fellowship. One of his uncles is Tiff Shuttlesworth and one of his cousins is Jonathan Shuttlesworth, both pastors with prominent ministries.
Last month we broke the news that he was stepping down, quoting a letter to his ministry partners:
“Unfortunately, in the midst of so many miracles and breakthroughs, I let my own guard down….I failed to stand in my authority when temptations came.
Needless to say, my actions opened the door, which I allowed, for sin to come in through loose and inappropriate conversations with the opposite sex.
…These sinful actions culminated in sexual activity with a woman who was not my wife. I’m extremely ashamed and deeply grieved by my actions.”
While Ted’s comments could be construed as implying that the “loose” and “inappropriate conversations” were with the same person he had the affair with, his wife, Carolyn, clarifies that it was “multiple inappropriate conversations.”
Whereas this sort of behavior would typically disqualify a pastor from ministry, the letters make it clear that both of them view it as a temporary purgatory and that he intends to return as soon as it becomes opportune.
Following our story, several women reached out to us about their experiences with “Pastor Ted,” and it soon became apparent that these were not instances of mere “loose and inappropriate conversations with the opposite sex” as Ted sought to frame them.
Instead, they were occasionally years-long, sustained, unfathomably obscene conversations and long-game manipulation that betrayed a seared conscience and the heart of a devil.
We’ve verified the identities of these women and their association with Ted Shuttlesworth Jr. and Miracle Word Church. We’re granting them anonymity for the sake of reporting, in accordance with our editorial policy of not naming victims of clergy sexual misconduct, so all of the following names are pseudonyms. However, some have committed to going on the record publicly if needed.
One of the women who contacted us is “Karrie.” She met Ted for the first time in 2010 while pregnant.
“I had never heard of him before but he was a friend of my husband and was coming to preach at a camp near our hometown.
My husband had offered for them to stay at our house a few days before hand. There was nothing inappropriate at that time, but the following summer, when the Shuttlesworth’s returned to camp, he began texting me, making references to how he missed my pregnant belly and how he finds pregnant woman very attractive, etc.”
She recalls the text messages being very flirtatious. At one point, he coyly asked her if she had any new Facebook friends. When she checked, she discovered she had a new friend request under the name “Richard Long.” (a common nickname for Richard is “Dick”).
“He asked me to review a book he had been working on. It was a graphic sexual novel of sorts and the characters were directly inspired by him and I. I knew that this had crossed a line but didn’t know what to do about it.”
Karrie shares that she unfriended him, but that months later she got her first iPhone, and Ted began texting her again, Here, she is honest:
“I was at a weak place in my life and honestly the attention felt good so I engaged.”
He started sending her messages of incomprehensible letters and words, making it look like maybe his toddler had been playing with the phone. Finally, he told her she needed to decode them, and she realized that he had reversed the alphabet. She learned this text code and would respond to him the same way.
“He would always talk about my appearance, ask what I was wearing and eventually began asking about my sex life.”
Multiple women, some separated by a decade and who did not know of the other’s existence or story, told us that Ted would share intimate details of his and his wife’s sex life with them.
“He began sharing details about his as well and the ways his wife would please him even if he was on the road, traveling for ministry.
He would tell me the things she liked in the bedroom and what he liked and that she would send him pictures and videos (he even sent me some examples of her, asking me to do the same).”
These messages carried on for years. Despite all his talk and fantasy, and even after Ted visited and stayed over at their house while visiting the family, he kept his hands to himself.
“He was always telling me what he would like to do to me/with me when he would visit but never acted on anything more than a hug, maybe a kiss on the cheek.”
In all of this, however, Karrie acknowledges that while she was manipulated and preyed upon, she was not a victim, and she was not sinless.
“I have to take ownership of the role that I played but he came from such a place of influence I couldn’t help it. I was captivated even though I knew it was wrong. It began a very dark, downward spiral for me spiritually, physically, mentally and emotionally.
I would work 40+ hours per week, volunteer anytime I could, look for ways to escape my reality in an unhappy marriage and slowly let down my guard against all sin and just let it be. I didn’t really know how to be honest with myself or my husband at the time.”
She began to imagine a life with Ted, and believed that they might leave their spouses.
“That’s when I began to learn he had sent many other people these types of inappropriate messages. I was stupid enough to believe he actually cared about me. I felt so dirty and gross but there was nothing I could do to fix it.”
Distressed and disillusioned, she slowly began to pull away from him, but he kept sending her random messages, even up until 2017, when they stopped altogether. Ultimately, Karrie’s first marriage ended in divorce.
“Before my divorce I had been struggling with the weight of this sexual sin that had entered my life, I let my guard down in so many areas and was so angry at God because it felt like I was collapsing and Teddy was rising and I was the one trying to do the right thing.
I confessed all of my sin to my husband and we attempted to fix the marriage but there was no restoration there.”
She eventually met a new man (and future husband), and the two grew close. He was not a Christian at the time, and when she told him about Ted and his messages, he was livid.
Disturbed and disgusted, he sent Ted a message back in “code,” which he never responded to.
Karrie didn’t stay completely silent. She told a few people about Ted at this time, including her sister-in-law, “Chloe.”
Chloe became familiar with him after he preached at several churches in the area, having mutual friends in a ministry partnership. They, too, began texting.
“I was young and naive to the fact that Ted was interacting with me in a flirtatious manner for quite some time. He would pop up in messages pretty regularly, multiple times a week sometimes.
I thought he was just being funny and nice for quite some time until I asked a mutual friend what he meant by telling me he would purchase me a birthday gift at “VS” because I was clueless what he was eluding to.” (Victoria’s Secret)”
She also notes:
“He would skirt around sexual related ideas, especially my becoming pregnant commenting on ‘how I got there.’
Looking back at conversations after realizing they were too personal for an evangelist family friend, many times the conversation was vaguely flirtatious for no real reason.
It was almost attention seeking and would lean toward wanting me to respond in a certain way but when the response didn’t align the conversation did not progress in a more salacious manner.”
She eventually mentioned these conversations to Karrie, who, in turn, shared that she was also texting him. Mercifully, discovering each other’s shared experience served as her catalyst for distancing herself from his influence and predations.
Then there is “Tiffany,” whose story brings us up to the present day.
Tiffany was born and raised Roman Catholic. In 2019, while visiting her mom from out of state, she heard him preach while attending a church in Massachusetts, where he was the guest speaker for a week of revival meetings.
Here she was saved and baptized, becoming a member where she stayed for years. It’s where she also became part of Miracle Word Ministry and the ‘Victory Tribe.’
It was a transformative experience. A new babe in the faith, she devoured Ted’s messages, who is a charismatic speaker and presence.
“He taught me basically everything I know about Christianity. I got really, really into him and his ministry and teaching.”
This ministry became her life. She formed a relationship with Ted and the team. She traveled with him to his meetings in North Carolina, Virginia, and Massachusetts, helping them put on evangelistic events while pouring her blood, sweat, and tears into the mission.
A single mom in her mid-30s, she found the work spiritually fulfilling, finding meaning and purpose in seeing the Holy Spirit move and transform lives.
In fact, despite living halfway across the country, she visited 13 times in 2023, the year they established themselves as Miracle Word Church, to be with them. Soon, she was being treated like family.
This was the time the messages started.
For years, their text messages were innocuous, mostly focused on the next event, with some encouragement thrown in about how much they missed her and how much she missed them.
“And then one day he just literally said to me, we’re just having a conversation again, and talking about, ‘I was just thinking about you, ‘whatever. And then he said he had something to show me and asked if I wanted to see it.”
And I was like, ‘sure, let me see,’ because I don’t know what he’s going to show me. And he sent me a picture of his wife performing sexual acts to him.”
Ted would comment on his wife’s sexual performance and lament that she wouldn’t perform certain sexual acts with him, asking Tiffany if she’d be willing to do those things with him. He also brought his wife further into it, engaging in what seems to be a fetish or kink:
“I mean, he almost made it seems like his wife was into it, telling her things like “would you let PC (Pastor Carolyn) watch you perform oral sex on me? Would you honor her in this way? She would love that. She would love to see it. Would you do it to her too?”
After sensing her discomfort, he told her to delete it, insisting that she didn’t save them to her device.
That transgression wasn’t enough, however, because on another occasion, he sent her a solo picture of himself.
Shocked, uncertain, and filled with shame, she confronted him about it, the man who led her to the Lord. She told him it wasn’t right, that she was going to delete the Snapchat app, and that they should talk about it.
Ted insisted to her that this had never happened before, and promised it would never happen again. In doing so, he redirected the blame for his actions onto her, telling Tiffany that it was her fault for being so beautiful and having such a great body, and that he had never reacted this way to anyone else.
He lamented that the enemy had gotten hold of him. He begged and pleaded with her to fast and pray for him to break the devil’s hold on his life, placing the responsibility on her to defeat this wickedness. He needed her help and couldn’t do it on her own.
Would she help him? For the sake of the church and ministry, for all the good they were doing to transform people’s lives and bring them into a relationship with Jesus, would she fight for him?
She committed to that she would. She would fast and pray for him for days, believing that the only thing holding back these demons was her entreaties and intercession. Hours after hours on her knees in supplication, without eating, begging God to deliver Ted, who surely must be praying as urgently as she to keep the demonic wolves at bay.
“Like in my mind, I needed to help him overcome what he feeling towards me so that we can continue to move with the church and the ministry. That’s how he literally drew it in my brain.”
At this point, she had been with them for five years and lived and breathed the ministry. In fact, her face was plastered across the ministry and church’s Facebook and Instagram pages, and she modeled and promoted their clothing line.
But this wore on her soul. He stopped sending her pornographic home videos, and she put it past her, surmising that it was a secret they shared that she helped him overcome, for the sake of the mission. Now and then, still, he would send her comments which, in hindsight and with eyes open, she now considers subtle and suggestive innuendos.
This past October, after nearly seven years of pouring her heart into the place, she received an official job offer to work for them and Miracle Word Church full-time.
This meant she would have to leave her state and move to Florida. Tiffany packed up her entire life, said goodbye to all her clients for her home-cleaning business, took her daughters with her, and ultimately spent more than $10,000 on the move, then another $10,000 to secure a new home.
There was much fanfare, with her church throwing her a going-away party to honor her years of service and to pray for this new chapter in her life.
In January, four days before she moved, Ted messaged her, telling her how excited he was to have her come down and become her pastor in person.
She arrived on Saturday. He wasn’t there to preach that Sunday, however, and it wasn’t clear why he was absent.
The following Sunday, Ted was present and announced to the whole church that he had been having an affair. While this confession was not streamed, we have acquired a recording, which you can hear in part:
The excitement Tiffany felt for months leading up to her arrival vanished in an instant; both her faith and her future were thrown into turmoil.
The next week, they announced that Ted would be stepping down from the ministry.
Several weeks later, they announced they were closing the church in audio that was also not released.
But how did he come to be exposed?
One of the women Ted was messaging and sending pictures to, “Claudia,” was attending Rodney Howard-Browne’s The River Church to participate in their healing ministry. She began to feel a deep sense of guilt and conviction, however, and told the leadership about what had been going on, as well as the emotional and spiritual toll it had taken on her.
River Church leadership contacted the leadership at World Harvest Church in Georgia in October 2025 to inform them of what had been uncovered, and they confronted Shuttlesworth with the evidence, telling him he needed to fess up.
Tiffany says he asked not to be publicly exposed until after the holiday so he could spend time with his family and have one last holiday with his wife and kids.
They acquiesced, and Ted spent the next few months teaching and preaching while they continued investigating. All the while, Miracle Word Church in Florida was raising money, collecting tithes and offerings, and even putting on a big end-of-year “seed offering” push as the days ticked down. As the new year approached, Ted repeatedly tried to squirm out of telling his wife and the church, bargaining and asking for extensions, including 21 days to pray and fast about it.
Between October and January, however, another woman Ted was messaging was discovered. One of the young women, “Elana,” who had a pre-existing professional relationship with him because she had helped with tent meetings and revivals, confessed that he had been sending her messages as well.
Later, she would also reveal that they engaged in sexual activity.
Tiffany says that Ted framed this sexual encounter with Elana, which he swears only happened twice- one of which occurred last year in March, as a successful demonic plot from spiritual forces to shut down his church. He lamented that the devil wanted him ejected from the ministry, all the while minimizing his own culpability.
He claimed Elana was the one who pursued him and who took advantage of him. As he wrote in his message to ministry partners: “I failed to stand in my authority when temptations came.”
“And he told me out of his own mouth, he told me “the first time I was with her was last year” and that “I was so depressed, I was feeling so low because I’m always pouring out into everybody and I forgot to pour into myself. She got me in a weak moment and I was just so depressed, I was so weak mentally I forgot to pour into myself'”
After Ted was initially found out but before he publicly came clean, his uncle, Tiff Shuttlesworth, and cousin, Jonathan Shuttlesworth, appeared on their programs (here and here) and, while not naming him, condemned his actions as sinful and predatory.
Tiffany alleges that Ted was furious at his relatives for talking about him, even anonymously, and that this upset him.
Following the ministry’s implosion, Tiffany was crushed, confused, and furious by the initial revelation. These feelings were compounded when she realized that they knew she was going to uproot her entire life and move halfway across the country for a job and a church that would never materialize, yet they brought her down anyway.
They knew she would be leaving an established cleaning business to be thrust into a situation of likely having no job, paying rent, and taking care of two kids, with no source of income, at a time when the church was unraveling.
Because Tiffany was so dedicated to the church, and it had become such a big part of her life, the news of his affair weighed heavily on her.
She felt alone and abandoned. She reached out to Pastor Carolyn and Pastor Ted multiple times, but they never seemed to have time for her, always pushing her off. She was in a brand-new city and state and didn’t have anyone.
Despite shutting down the church, Ted encouraged them to keep gathering as believers. Most scattered, including many of Tiffany’s friends and beloved brothers and sisters. Some of the congregants decided to stay together, visiting different churches each Sunday.
As some folks peeled off, citing revelations about Ted’s sin as the impetus for their departure, the core group became tighter. Ted formed a private chat group called “The Cool Kids” to keep in touch, reserved for only the most loyal members, where they frequently planned where they would attend next.
Tiffany was part of this group for a while, but then she heard some news about him that made her stop in her tracks.
And I was talking to one lady and I had not said anything about my personal story. I was going to take this (information) with me until the day I die, I promise.
And it was the fact that she said to me, ‘oh, did you even know that he was sending pictures of himself and his wife to other women?”
And I was like, ‘no, I had no idea.’ And she said, ‘yeah, somebody saying that he sent a picture of his wife performing a sexual act to him.’
And that was the very first picture he sent to me, so I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, that it was true, because I seen it with my own eyes. And that was like, everything came falling on me, kinda, because I was like, wait, I have been this idiot for this long?”
It hit her like a ton of bricks. She knew about the affair, but not about the sexting—and not to other people. She had kept his secret because she thought she was the only one.
As a result, she decided to call him on it.
Rather than respond to her and issue a stringent denial in the face of her accusation, he changed the subject and made excuses for why he couldn’t talk.
The more she thought about it, however, the more upset she became, not believing the parents were there and again feeling like she’s been strung along.
Now, she sees clearly the extent to which Ted manipulated her, and she wishes she hadn’t kept quiet for so long. She also takes responsibility for her actions.
While Ted would use his position as a minister to take advantage of people in a classic case of clergy sexual misconduct and sexual harassment, none of the women we spoke to sought to frame themselves as victims.
As for the Shuttlesworths, they’ve not ruled out a comeback, instead suggesting that it’s all but inevitable. As the letter they sent to their ministry partners indicates, this is just a temporary setback, and both of them see a bright future in the ministry.
Ted wrote, “For now, I am stepping away from ministry” and “Though I’m currently stepping down from ministry, should God in His mercy give me another opportunity, I’m willing to answer the call.”
Carolyn echoed those sentiments, “Pastor Ted and I will be taking intentional time to focus on restoring our marriage and strengthening our family. At the same time, we remain committed to the calling God placed on our lives many years ago. Though he is stepping away from ministry for the time being, I will be stepping forward in greater leadership and ministry responsibility during this season, and I am deeply grateful for your continued prayers and support.”
Ted says he’s healing and has been traveling and attending meetings to receive blessings and encouragement. He and his wife were at the Saturation Conference listening to Mark Hankins just last night.
Carolyn is still teaching Bible studies and promoting her endeavors. They were still collecting payments for their Miracle Word Plus membership, with a video dropping just last week, before shutting it down only in the last 48 hours.
We don’t know to what extent Ted is truly repentant, or how many women he’s texted and slept with. Neither Ted nor Carolyn responded to our multiple attempts at a comment.
We don’t know how much Carolyn knew about his texting habits. Reportedly, she was told about one incident in which Ted started texting a wife in his congregation, “Destiny,” in an overly familiar and intimate way. Carolyn brushed this off as gossip and slander, but it led to the couple leaving the church.
Sometimes people admit to small crimes and small sins to conceal the larger, hidden evils, and this appears to be the case with Ted.
These weren’t mere “loose and inappropriate conversations” but rather a sustained pattern of sexual deviancy and predation going back at least 15 years, involving at least six women that we’ve identified, and more that have not come forward.
And both he and Carolyn really think he should ever get back into pastoral ministry?
Editor’s Note.
If you’ve been on the receiving end of these messages from Ted, you’re not alone.
If he was texting you, or you were involved in him in another way, please DM us on Twitter/X, (@protestia) on Instagram (@protestianow) or email us at editor@protestia.com.
We want to hear your stories.
We guarantee anonymity, and we will never reveal who you are, unless you want us to. We also won’t share any information you send us unless you give permission, and every conversation we have will be off the record. If you’re facing legal threats and cease-and-desist letters, please pass those along to us, with the same rules applying.
Everything you say will be confidential and protected, and we’re going to bring it all into the light.
