Less than a year after Pray’s Mill Baptist Church and G3 Ministries publicly condemned former pastor and G3 founder Josh Buice for operating anonymous accounts used to attack Christian leaders, Pray’s Mill and G3 leaders were involved in preparing and mailing an anonymous letter and dossier to First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas, accusing pastor and former G3 board member Tom Buck of serial sermon plagiarism.
Months later, the same dossier was mailed to multiple parachurch and church ministries (including us), claiming that FBC Lindale had not “dealt with the public sin biblically” and encouraging recipients to review the information and “conduct your own investigation.”
And so we did just that. What we found was more complicated and concerning, adding yet another layer of scandal to the trouble-ridden recent history of the Reformed Baptist parachurch conference ministry.
UPDATE: On Sunday evening, hours before this article was scheduled for publication, Pray’s Mill elders gaslit their congregation on the purpose and nature of this article. See details at the bottom of the article.
The Growth of G3
By 2021, G3 (Gospel – Grace – Glory) had grown from a small pastor’s conference at Pray’s Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia, to one of the largest evangelical conferences in the country, hosting well over 5,000 annual attendees and transitioning into a separate 501(c)(3) nonprofit with annual revenue topping $1.5 million.
The conference hosted well-known voices in conservative evangelicalism, including John MacArthur, Voddie Baucham, Ken Ham, and Steve Lawson.
Yet in 2025, Pray’s Mill Baptist Church announced that pastor and G3 President/Founder Josh Buice had been running anonymous social media, email, and Substack accounts that he had used to target other pastors/ministers in the conservative evangelical world, including many of the same names that routinely appeared at G3 conferences and fellow elders at Pray’s Mill.
Upon Buice’s reported confession, stepping down as a pastor/elder at Pray’s Mill, and resigning as president of the nonprofit, G3 canceled its 2025 conference and rebranded with a new logo and change in focus, announcing,
We also believe in partnership over platform. In a ministry culture often marked by competition and comparison, we are committed to cooperation with other likeminded ministries.
The Buck Allegations
Upon receipt of the anonymous packet, Protestia independently reviewed the cited source material (commentaries and sermons), and confirmed that Tom Buck had, on the cited occasions, used passages or wording from commentaries directly or with insufficient attribution. On the surface, this was concerning, especially as Buck had been a vocal critic of sermon plagiarism in the past. The letter in the anonymous packet stated:
The issue is not the use of commentaries but the deception involved in presenting another person’s words, ideas, and creative expressions as one’s own. Plagiarism is a form of bearing false witness. It deceives the congregation into believing they are receiving the fruit of their pastor’s own study, prayer, and labor in the Word when they are in fact hearing another man’s work recited without acknowledgment.
But after speaking with FBC Lindale’s pastors and reviewing the circumstances, we found that the anonymous packet substantially overstated what the evidence established.
FBC Lindale leadership told Protestia that the same issue had previously been brought to them (as the packet described), that Buck voluntarily recused himself while the elders and deacons examined the matter, and that they consulted respected pastors outside the church with decades of experience in the particulars of expository preaching.
The church’s investigation concluded that, while Buck was using commentaries in the manner he had always done (he had publicly advocated for the use of commentaries, including direct inclusion of language), he should tighten his practice regarding quotation and attribution, and Buck agreed to do so.
Most importantly for our investigation, the elders confirmed that Buck was conducting his own sermon preparation and exegetical work throughout the week (including regular collaboration with them on content), that his church was aware of the issue and the corrective action taken, and that he had agreed to be more careful in using exact verbiage from commentaries he regularly used.
The examples in the dossier represented a relatively small portion of hundreds of hours of Buck’s preaching, and Protestia found no evidence that Buck was purchasing, copying, or presenting another preacher’s finished sermons as his own while falsely representing the work as the product of his own pastoral study.
Buck has also spoken publicly in the past about his belief that pastors may make substantial use of commentary material, including occasionally using wording directly. That does not excuse inadequate attribution, but Buck’s distinction between integrating studied commentary directly and passing off purchased sermons as original significantly undermines any suggestion that he was secretly passing someone else’s sermonic work off as his own.
Our conclusion was therefore straightforward: there was a real attribution problem that deserved correction, but the process undertaken by FBC Lindale was biblically appropriate, and we found no basis to treat the matter as ministerially disqualifying or analogous to more serious cases of pastoral plagiarism. We were not alone, as our conclusion was consistent with the judgment of other outside pastors and ministry leaders who were given the dossier for review.
The anonymous letter, however, stated:
In March 2026, we presented this same comprehensive documentation to the elders of First Baptist Church, Lindale, Texas, urging them to deal with this public sin biblically. They have not done so.
This statement implied that the accusers had gone directly to FBC Lindale’s elders, insisted on action, and that the church had essentially done nothing. Yet in reality, they had merely mailed similar anonymous packets to the homes or business addresses of FBC Lindale elders and all 30 deacons of the church. These were accusers who had ministerial history and direct access to Tom Buck, yet there had been no in-person meeting, no email seeking to discuss the concerns, not even a phone call.
The later claim that FBC Lindale had not dealt with the issue biblically was particularly problematic, as an anonymous accuser leaves no way for the church to report the action that was taken. Although the letter repeatedly encouraged recipients to conduct their own investigation, it arrived preconvicted, with the validity, nature, and severity of the sin already established, and the insistence that repentance necessitated public exposure.
Importantly for our purposes, Buck and the FBC Lindale pastors/elders expressed no reservations about the dossier being made public (it is linked at the bottom of this article) and, in fact, requested that it be disclosed alongside any of our reporting on the matter.
The church provided this official statement:
The simple truth is that Tom Buck made himself accountable to God and the entire church body of First Baptist Church Lindale for his use of commentary material in sermons without proper citation. The Elders and Deacons have peace of mind that the matter was resolved truthfully and biblically. The accusations received in March of 2026 from anonymous persons were thoroughly reviewed. Advisors knowledgeable in the use of commentaries were consulted. The issue was addressed within the local church body in a transparent and comprehensive manner. The elders and deacons of First Baptist Lindale are thankful for Tom Buck’s commitment to faithfully preaching God’s word.
Who Sent the Packet?
Upon learning that, contrary to what we had presumed, the accusers were neither from Buck’s church nor had they presented themselves to the accused as their letter had implied, and that we did not find their stated reason for anonymity valid, the identity of the accusers became all the more relevant.
During our investigation, Protestia obtained testimony and information indicating that Pray’s Mill elder and current G3 board member Jon Norton was personally involved in distributing the anonymous material, which was mailed from Texas while on business (versus mailing from Georgia), using FBC Lindale’s name and return address (presumably to imply that the dossier came from someone at Tom Buck’s church, and was previously brought to his elders by a known accuser), and using latex gloves during the process to ensure fingerprints were not left on the mailed materials.
Witnesses indicated this was done to prevent the packets from being traced back to G3 Ministries (from which Buck had recently resigned amid concerns over post-Buice leadership), and that all Pray’s Mill elders were aware of the mailings.
We contacted Norton before publication and asked whether he prepared, mailed, emailed, authorized, or otherwise participated in distributing the material; whether he mailed it while traveling in Texas; whether steps were taken to conceal the sender’s identity; and to what extent other Pray’s Mill elders or G3 board members were aware of the effort. As of this publication, Norton has not responded.
We separately contacted primary figures at Pray’s Mill and G3 Ministries to determine whether either institution knew of, authorized, or subsequently investigated the anonymous distribution. As of this publication, neither the church nor G3 has responded.
The Irony
The parallels with last year’s Josh Buice scandal are difficult to miss. The present allegations are not that Pray’s Mill elders or G3 board members secretly operated Buice’s accounts or participated in Buice’s misconduct. Instead, the concern is narrower and, in some ways, more disturbing:
Less than a year after G3 and Pray’s Mill condemned anonymous targeting as deceitful and sinful, evidence indicates that a current leader employed another deliberately anonymous method to distribute damaging allegations against a fellow pastor, with the moral difference being the perceived truth of the claims themselves rather than the process by which the claims were made.
According to Pray’s Mill and G3 leadership, Josh Buice was disciplined not because his anonymous claims were necessarily false (many, like the email Buice sent to Julie Roys, were investigation-worthy, and some claims were facially true), but based on the predetermination that anonymity itself rendered Buice’s claims slanderous and divisive (if not embarrassing to G3).
Both the church’s and G3’s now-removed statements in May 2025 stated:
These accounts (of Josh Buice) were used to publicly and anonymously slander numerous Christian leaders, including faithful pastors (some of whom have spoken at G3 conferences), several PMBC elders, and others. These actions were not only sinful in nature but deeply divisive, causing unnecessary suspicion and strife within the body of Christ, and particularly within the eldership of PMBC.
To be sure, Buice’s reported denial of involvement with the anonymous accounts when questioned was sinful, and his attempts to get others to “press charges” against other believers rather than raise the concerns himself privately or publicly were undoubtedly products of institutional subterfuge and competitiveness, but anonymity itself is not categorically sinful if exercised for biblical reasons, and one of those reasons is not to avoid difficulty or accountability for making accusations.
The mailed anonymous dossier stated:
We are sending this correspondence anonymously. We have observed how Pastor Buck engages with those who disagree with him on social media, and we have no desire to become targets of public attack or to be drawn into personal conflict. Our concern is not personal-it is for the integrity of the pulpit at First Baptist Church and for the spiritual health of the congregation.
Then later:
We pray that you will have the courage to do what is right, even though it is difficult. The health and integrity of Christ’s church depend on leaders who are willing to hold one another accountable to the standards of Scripture.
In other words, we’d prefer Tom Buck attack you publicly, not us.
A Broader Question of Ecclesiastical Authority
As Protestia investigated the Buck material, we obtained internal correspondence from Pray’s Mill and testimony concerning recent disputes between church leadership and former members.
Those documents raise significant questions about how Pray’s Mill understands pastoral authority, church discipline, congregationalism, and members’ ability to disagree with church leadership, and the circumstances under which members may leave the church.
One church dispute began when former member and former G3 board chairman Jon Frazier submitted a lengthy April 9 complaint accusing Pastor Matt Sikes of a broader pattern of harsh and spiritually harmful conduct.
The complaint was imperfect. It included some speculative motive attribution, some subjective interpretation, and some incidents that would hardly constitute “spiritual abuse” standing alone. Frazier later acknowledged several of those shortcomings.
But the complaint also identified numerous firsthand witnesses and requested that they be separately interviewed, that implicated elders recuse themselves, and that outside assistance be considered. Frazier said many of the underlying concerns had already been addressed privately with Sikes and other elders over a period of years, with no true resolution.
Eight days later, Pray’s Mill’s elders and deacons issued a sweeping response declaring the approximately 80 accusations against Sikes “false and without basis.” They invoked 1 Timothy 5:19, accused the complainant of bypassing Matthew 18, and said the accusations included hearsay, speculation, motive attribution, and previously forgiven matters.
But the response then turned sharply toward the complainant’s own family.
The elders accused his wife and daughter of resisting God-ordained authority, accused his wife of gossip, murmuring, and slander, instructed him to lead his household into proper submission, and required public recantation and repentance.
Most strikingly, the church wrote that because discipline had begun, simply leaving Pray’s Mill and joining another church without repentance was “not an option.”
Failure to comply, the letter said, would leave the church “no choice” but to excommunicate the family.
Thirteen days later, however, Pray’s Mill agreed to drop all pending or threatened discipline and permit the family to withdraw peacefully without censure or excommunication.
The family did not issue the wholesale public recantation previously described as required repentance.
That raises an obvious question: if excommunication was biblically unavoidable on April 17, why was peaceful withdrawal permissible on April 30?
When Scripture Becomes Institutional Leverage
The theological problem is not that every unpleasant interaction with a pastor constitutes “spiritual abuse.” It does not. Pastors may be wrong, rude, insensitive, demanding, or poor communicators without every failure becoming abuse. The problem begins when Scripture and spiritual authority are used to transform a leader’s (or group of leaders’) charges against a member into conviction, requiring the convicted person to perform leader-determined extrabiblical penance before leaders submit to the same disciplinary standards.
Matthew 18 appears in Pray’s Mill’s correspondence as a strong procedural protection when accusations are made against elders. Yet accusations against members were themselves gathered and formalized without comparable evidence that the members had first received the same private-confrontation protections. First Timothy 5:19 was invoked to reject allegations against an elder because they allegedly lacked sufficient witnesses, even where specific firsthand witnesses had been identified and could simply have been interviewed. Hebrews 13:17 was invoked to characterize criticism and resistance by members as failure to submit to God-ordained authority.
And disagreement with the elders’ conclusion that accusations were “false” became not merely a disagreement but a matter requiring repentance. That is a dangerous category shift. Scripture can bind a Christian’s conscience. An elder’s disputed factual judgment cannot do so merely because he is an elder.
The Sewells
The experience of former members Danny and Lisa Sewell raises similar concerns.
The Sewells told Protestia that after disagreements over changes in Pray’s Mill’s worship practices and an acrimonious exchange with Sikes, they eventually requested removal from membership.
Sikes responded peacefully, writing that the church would “honor” their request to be removed.
Yet another Reformed Baptist church the Sewells later visited contacted Sikes and subsequently concluded that the couple had no biblical grounds to leave Pray’s Mill, admonished them to return, and ultimately told them they were no longer welcome to attend.
When the Sewells later attributed that outcome to Sikes, Heritage Reformed Baptist Church disputed their understanding and insisted that its elders independently made the decision.
Rather than first asking the Sewells to explain the discrepancy, Pray’s Mill elder Scott Aniol sent them the Heritage letter and declared their account a “gross misrepresentation” and “false and slanderous,” instructing them to cease repeating it and seek forgiveness from those they had told.
That sequence reflects the same troubling pattern: a disputed factual question quickly becomes a moral verdict, and the moral verdict becomes a demand for repentance.
The Aniol Shift
Notably, Pray’s Mill’s longstanding Southern Baptist worship practice reportedly made a hard shift after Scott Aniol arrived in 2021 toward a highly ordered, confessionally Reformed liturgy far more recognizable in a Presbyterian church.
By 2025, services were formally organized around “Revelation,” “Adoration,” “Confession,” “Propitiation,” “Proclamation,” “Dedication,” “Communion,” “Supplication,” and “Commission,” incorporating corporate confession, declarations of pardon, responsive readings, the Nicene Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and a tightly structured God-speaks/congregation-responds order. None of those elements is individually incompatible with Baptist worship, but together they represented a major transformation of the church’s worship identity.
The timing is difficult to ignore. Worship, aesthetics, liturgy, and Christian formation have constituted much of Aniol’s academic and ministerial career, from Bob Jones University through graduate work, teaching, publishing, and Religious Affections Ministries. After joining G3, he also became one of its most prolific theological writers. In other words, the man whose arrival coincided with Pray’s Mill’s liturgical transformation had spent much of his adult career arguing for precisely this kind of ordered, historically Reformed worship. His broader background also includes repeated teaching at conferences connected to Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles, historically known for unusually regimented teachings concerning authority, submission, family order, and Christian conduct. That does not establish that Aniol imported Gothard’s theology into Pray’s Mill, but the association remains notable.
The resulting combination is particularly strange from a Baptist standpoint. Pray’s Mill retained the autonomy of an independent Baptist congregation while adopting the liturgical vocabulary and, according to former members, some of the authority culture more commonly associated with confessional Presbyterianism. Yet Presbyterian churches possess presbyteries, courts, and appellate structures above the local session; an autonomous Baptist church does not.
The result can resemble Presbyterian elder authority without Presbyterian external accountability, while the congregation’s mechanisms for challenging that authority remain largely controlled by the elders. The irony is that Aniol’s own published theology supplies much of the critique: he has argued that church leaders may not bind consciences beyond Scripture, that elders are not a special spiritual caste, and that churches may not require of their people what Scripture does not require.
Aniol’s newest institutional role makes the direction of travel even clearer. He was recently named inaugural dean of Puritan Reformed College, associated with Joel Beeke’s Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. Sources familiar with the selection process told Protestia that Aniol had been considered for the presidency, but that board members were uncomfortable placing a Baptist at the head of an institution rooted in the confessional Reformed tradition. He was instead named dean.
None of this makes Aniol a Presbyterian. But it makes Pray’s Mill’s post-2021 movement toward a worship culture increasingly indistinguishable from conservative Presbyterianism considerably less surprising.
Accountability Must Run Both Ways
To be sure, this is not the first time we’ve been at odds with G3 over ecclesiological concerns. Pray’s Mill’s bylaws call the church congregational. But congregationalism is more than allowing members to vote after elders have framed the question. In Baptist ecclesiology, elders truly lead, teach, shepherd, and exercise oversight, but they remain officers of the flock among them (1 Peter 5:2-3), not a separate spiritual jurisdiction above it.
When elders themselves are accused, the church must have some meaningful mechanism by which those accusations can be examined without the accused functioning simultaneously as defendant, investigator, judge, prosecutor, and interpreter of what repentance requires.
That is the deeper concern emerging from our investigation. The question is not whether Pray’s Mill elders possess biblical authority. The question is whether that authority has been expanded into something Scripture does not grant: the power to treat disagreement with their judgments as resistance to God, to define departure as impermissible until they authorize it, and to demand repentance for refusing to affirm their disputed conclusions.
G3 Ministries was built around public commitments to theological courage, truth, and accountability. It recently recommitted itself to cooperation rather than competition with other ministries. Those principles mean little if the men who lead the ministry practice two-tiered, “repentance means what we say it means,” “you can’t leave unless we approve” spiritual authority.
After the Josh Buice scandal, Pray’s Mill and G3 had an opportunity to demonstrate that anonymous accusations, concealed reputational campaigns, and unaccountable authority would no longer characterize their institutions.
Clearly, this lesson has not been learned.
UPDATE: On Sunday evening, hours before this article was scheduled for publication, Pray’s Mill pastor Matt Sikes ended the church’s evening worship service by informing the congregation that Protestia was preparing an article (as I had informed them in my request for comment). Sikes described Protestia as “a sort of a gossip online blog” and said former members Jonathan Frazier and Jarrod Wilson had been “spreading rumors about our church.” Sikes mischaracterized our email, claiming it related to “an article about Pray’s Mill Baptist Church and the ecclesiological problems he’s been made aware of.” Yet the email stated:
Protestia is preparing a report for publication Monday concerning the anonymous distribution of materials regarding Pastor Tom Buck and First Baptist Church Lindale, as well as subsequently discovered ecclesiological concerns with Pray’s Mill Baptist Church.
Sikes also claimed that, “We know this man (me) several months ago, talked to other former members who left our church who shared that we did not handle the Josh Buice church discipline situation correctly, according to them.” This is a complete fabrication.
He acknowledged that church leaders had not seen the article and did not know everything it would contain, but said the elders had deliberately declined Protestia’s requests for comment (they didn’t tell us). He alluded to “one situation we were made aware of” (presumably the Buck dossier), and that “all the elders and deacons know what we know.”
Sikes then connected the situation to the church’s recent teaching in 1 Peter, telling members, “It all fits in so well with what we’re experiencing and what we’re facing right now,” before adding, “for some reason Satan wants to continue to attack our church.”
Audio:
The irony is difficult to miss: before Pray’s Mill’s members could read or evaluate a single claim in this article, leadership had already framed its sources as spreading “rumors” and the coming scrutiny within the categories of Christian suffering and Satanic attack—the same manipulation of unresolved factual dispute to moral and spiritual verdict documented throughout this report.
The June 2026 anonymous packet we reviewed and investigated:
