Evangelist Kent Christmas is the founder of Regeneration Nashville in Nashville, Tennessee. Described by his church bio as a pastor whose “passion is to strengthen the local church body and to share prophetic insight,” Christmas considers himself a prophet who regularly shares messages from God and other prophecies that turn out to be embarrassingly wrong.
In late 2019, he prophesied that 2020 would be a year of explosive joy and financial “wealth transfers”, speaking for God by saying, “What I (God) am now releasing in the earth is going to be so glorious both spiritually and in the natural realm, that you will forget the pain and suffering that you have endured…”
In 2021, he again got it completely wrong, claiming that the church would become full (most were empty most of the year) and that “hospitals and clinics will become empty.”
Prepare yourselves for 2022. Sickness and disease will be so bound by the church in the earth that hospitals and clinics will become empty, while the church has become full. I am going to stamp out AIDS says the Lord. Cancer is going to begin to disappear. And the world will stand and say ‘how could this be?’
One year ago, Christian preacher Kent Christmas predicted that faith-healing would be so powerful in 2022 that "hospitals and clinics will become empty," AIDS will be stamped out, and "cancer is going to begin to disappear." pic.twitter.com/1kom9Vtmcd
This is just more of the sad, sick leaven of the charismatic movement, where false prophets can speak for God and then when proven wrong, are given a pass by fellow continuationists who don’t care.
Earlier this week, former SBC Leader Johnny Hunt announced dates for his upcoming long-standing men’s conference “Hunted” on his website, then quickly deleted details following pushback after an apostate brought it to light.
Before being deleted, the promo page listed the first week in February as the conference date- which is when the conference has historically been held, along with the location: the church he pastored for decades before being suspended and put under church discipline. Now, the details are gone, with a simple thanks for attending the 2022 conference remaining, and a request to “stay tuned.”
BeforeAfter
Four months ago, First Baptist Church of Woodstock formally suspended Pastor Emeritus Johnny Hunt, 69, after being accused of sexually assaulting another pastor’s wife a decade earlier.
You can read more about the details here, but the gist is that 12 years ago, while on vacation with another pastor and his wife, Hunt is accused of making inappropriate comments about her body, such as her tan lines. He then manoeuvred himself into her room, where he is alleged to have pinned her to the couch, got on top of her, forcibly removed her clothes, groped her and put his hands and mouth on her breasts and body.
Afterwards, he apologized to her and her husband, and they all did some counselling and collectively decided not to bring it up again.
Hunt copped to the interaction but not on any of the details. After the news first hit, Hunt tweeted out a brief message, reiterating that he “vigorously denies the circumstances and characterizations set forth in the Guidepost report” and that “I never abused anybody.” later, he put out a message on social media to his church family at First Baptist Woodstock, further denying the claims against him.
Though he doesn’t go into any detail, he describes their interaction as a “brief, improper encounter” that was fully “consensual” but which he fled after feeling conviction about it. He states in no uncertain terms, “it was NOT abuse NOR was it assault” and that “the most absurd allegation is that this brief, consensual encounter constituted assault.”
When asked about the conference being hosted at his old haunts, FBC Woodstock Executive Pastor of Ministry Matt Lawson allegedly replied in an email: “The information on the Johnny Hunt Men’s Conference website yesterday was incorrect. That website does not belong to First Baptist Woodstock. There will not be a Johnny Hunt Men’s Conference at First Baptist Woodstock.”
Since his fall, Hunt has been completely absent from social media and from the public eye, with his last post being a video denying the allegations against him.
Steven Furtick is the Lead Pastor of Elevation Church. As head of Southern Baptist-associated, 25,000-member multisite campus with 17 locations, he is known for having the term “narcegesis” (narcissistic exegesis) named after him based on his inability to exegete scripture in a way that doesn’t make every story revolve around him, as well as his penchant for wearing outfits that cost more than most mortgages and buddying up to Trinity-Denier T.D Jakes.
Last year, he replaced Kenneth Copeland at the always-heretical TBN, filling the role of the Innkeeper Monsieur Thénardier from the musical Les Miserables (TBN being the Inn), with these “Masters of the house” doing whatever is the theological equivalent of “Charge ’em for the lice/Extra for the mice/Two percent for looking in the mirror twice” in his efforts to promote his brand of prosperity preaching.
Fast becoming one of the most prominent, well-known pastors in North America, positioning himself to possess the same level of prominence as the Franklin Graham’s or T.D Jakes of the world, many have forgotten some of the scandals he has been embroiled in, and none gives perhaps so clear a picture as the infamous’ coloring book’ The Code.
The Code coloring book was created by Ryan Hollingsworth in 2010. At the time, he was a 26-year-old graphic designer but would soon become the Creative Director at Elevation Church. This is where he has spent the last 15 years, now leading a ‘multi-disciplinary team of designers, videographers, social media managers, motion designers, audio engineers, and project managers to design all of Elevation Church’s print and media projects.
In 2010, he hired artist Whitney Cogar, an artist known as BadWhitney and later as Smashpansy, who was commissioned to create a series of drawings for the book. She did the illustrations for it, as per spec, and the church would later fill in the text, customizing and elaborating on her images.
The book was designed to serve as an easily digestible breakdown of “The Code, ” a set of 12 core values at Elevation Church, which they have since altered and given another name to. It was an internal project, not designed for outsiders or mass publication. Each page contained one of these values, with a bible verse and the message modified to be more kid-friendly and easily understood.
We Act in Audacious Faith – In order to dominate a city with the gospel of Jesus, we can’t think small. We will set impossible goals, take bold steps of faith and watch God move.
We Are a Generation of Honor – We freely give honor to those above us, beside us and under us because of the calling and potential God has placed inside of them.
We Lead the Way in Generosity – Our staff and church will go above and beyond to give sacrificially to the work of God in our city.
We Are United Under the Visionary – Elevation is built on the vision God gave Pastor Steven. We will aggressively defend our unity and his vision.
We Need Your Seat – We will not cater to personal preference in our mission to reach this city. We are more concerned with the people we are trying to reach than the people we are trying to keep.
We Think Inside the Box – We will embrace our limitations. They will inspire our greatest creativity and innovation.
We Dress for the Wedding – We will continually increase our capacity by structuring for where we want to go, not where we are. We will remain on the edge of our momentum by overreacting to harness strategic momentum initiatives.
We Are Ruth’s Chris, Not Golden Corral – Simplicity enables excellence. We place a disproportionate value on creating a worship experience that boldly celebrates Jesus and attracts people far from God.
We Are All About the Numbers – Tracking metrics measures effectiveness. We unapologetically set goals and measure progress through all available quantitative means.
We Eat the Fish and Leave the Bones – We will always maintain a posture of learning. We seek to learn from everyone and incorporate a variety of influences into our methodology.
We Are Known for What We Are For – We will speak vision and life over our people. We will lift up the salvation of Jesus rather than using our platform to condemn.
We Will Not Take This for Granted – What we are experiencing is not normal. This is the highest calling, and we will remain grateful for God’s hand of favor.
Faced with a host of negative criticism once the book was released and images of the book started to leak, Elevation changed the wording of the 4th point, taking it from “We are united under the visionary” to “We are united under one vision.” It was this page that caused the most commotion:
“Unity: We are united under the visionary. Elevation Church is built on the vision God gave Pastor Steven. We will protect our unity in supporting his vision.”
Other pages were more benign, but only because none ever leaked. They have been the discernment ministry’s holy grail, and a decade of emailing, calling, and perusing long-dead and archived links has yet to produce any results. We have contacted its creator, Ryan Hollingsworth, and artist, Whitney Cogar, but they declined to comment on the fabled project.
Here are some of our pages, bringing together all known images. You can see the initial draft and then the final result.
Steven and Holly Furtick moving to Charlotte in pursuit of the visisonNew believers getting baptized at ElevationA snapshot at the diversity at ElevationPlanting trees around their new campus
If anyone has any more images, please send them along. We’d love to restore and recreate this. As for Elevation, there are no plans for another coloring book, as they would only leave them exposed. They haven’t changed in the last decade, only gotten bigger and bigger. At the same time, Steven Furtick gets further entrenched and emboldened in seeker-sensitive, prosperity preaching, self-help, moral therapeutic deistic affirmations. His sermons have no hard truths, only soft edges of the pursuits of dreams and visions for your best life.
Even now, they continue to unite under the visionary: sold out and bought into the unique vision that God gave their pastor. It’s heresy, but it’s theirs, and this coloring book will forever be a testament to the cult-like figure their leader has ascended to.
