On Thursday, WORLD published the long anticipated article on Harvest Bible Chapel. Written by Julie Roys, the article gives a summary of various concerns expressed by former members and observers of the Illinois megachurch. Roys is also the defendant in a defamation suit brought by HBC.
In an earlier post about the lawsuit I wrote, “The legal action appeared to be designed to frighten the bloggers and intimidate the magazine into pulling the plug on the article.”
In an email, HBC Associate Communications Director Sherri Smith objected to my characterization of the suit saying, “We have said in multiple communications why we filed this lawsuit. To editorialize, disguising it as reporting, is disingenuous at best.”
Why Sue the Wives?
I also asked Ms. Smith why HBC included the wives of the bloggers as defendants in the suit. She replied, “Regarding defendants wives, we are not at liberty to discuss anything related to the lawsuit. The position of our Elders is published on our website and when they consider a matter worthy of response, they post a response there.”
I searched for a mention of the wives of the defendants and couldn’t find anything on the church website. An elder update in October refers to “three defendants.”
In a specially called meeting on September 29, the Elders of Harvest Bible Chapel carefully considered our biblical options related to three individuals, who have long been outside of our church. Our goal was to end their prolonged and divisive effort to undermine the Elder governance of our church and to discredit our primary leaders. We have chosen to accomplish that by filing a civil suit in Cook County.
With the wives of the two bloggers involved, there are five defendants, not just three.
Response to the WORLD Article
HBC has responded to the WORLD article. Actually, they responded once and then quickly altered at least the headline on their website (see below).
The combative tone continues in the response:
It is a sad day when once-credible Christian publications consider the opinions of a few disgruntled former members, already rehashed ad nauseam, of greater weight than the carefully expressed viewpoint of a plurality of local church Elders.
Harvest Bible Chapel has owned its mistakes and endured to become a happier and healthier church, whose members recently pledged — financially, in their walk/work for Christ, and in their promise to share Christ with others — at unprecedented levels. The anticipated attack that comes with God’s kingdom moving forward has come, sadly, not from those in the world but from other professing Christians.
Christianity Today published an article covering the story yesterday.
I am looking into several other aspects of HBC’s ministry and hope to write more next week based on communications I have had with the church.
In reading through the World article the thing that I found most disturbing about it was the stories about MacDonald taking a knife and stabbing and carving up a picture of an ex-employee in front of a current one and also shooting a picture of current employees which had point values assigned to the different people. Other employees saw these things. I try to imagine going to work one day and finding my boss doing something like this. This would have to be extremely upsetting I would think to anyone seeing this kind of behavior. This has to fall under the category of psychotic behavior.I would think. This would be a horrible thing to see even if your boss was not claiming to be a Christian at all. In this case, it is ridiculous behavior for someone who claims to be a Christian leader and teacher.
I am surprised that the Psych professor here did not mention anything about that. Does anyone else here find this to be way over the top on the evil scale, or is it just me? MacDonald disturbs me over and above the likes of KP and Driscoll. This sounds like the kind of thing that you would expect a drug lord to do in front of his henchmen to try and keep them in line.
From the WORLD article: “…HBF pastors believed Harvest had inappropriately used fellowship funds for its own purposes. […] Langdon said those expenses included… a $50,000 donation to pastor Mark Driscoll’s Trinity Church in Scottsdale, Ariz.”
So, a ‘church’ that has been accused of “financial mismanagement and a culture of deception and intimidation” was happy to help an unrepentant bully escape accountability and build himself a new power base. Looks like birds of a feather really do flock together.
So the church insists that they have already told the world why the church has filed lawsuit against TED and Roys. It’s not that we don’t understand what they’ve said. We don’t believe them and think their motives are pure and the truth is on their side. We don’t believe them!
My blog and social media are very small and new platforms, but I have already gotten PMs from people who were victims of HBC’s spiritual abuse. My church is just a few miles from HBC’s Elgin, IL campus, and we have refugees who have left HBC wounded. Harvest has hurt people, and the more we dissect this story, the more safety we create for people who have been hiding their stories of spiritual abuse to tell their stories.
This isn’t about embarrassing James MacDonald and tearing apart a celebrity for the fun of it on the internet. This is about real people who have been treated terribly in a church culture that oppresses anyone who merely observes something wrong in it. Real people who have left HBC and limp into other churches with signs of trauma. Keep working through this story because it paves the way for victims to tell their stories and gradually find healing.
The lawsuit was filed 1 day before and X Harvest Youth Pastor turned himself in to Kane County for CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/ct-met-harvest-bible-chapel-pastor-child-sexual-exploitation-a20181018-story,amp.html
Harvest terminated Paxton Singer in January but allowed him to continue to attend Church along side the alleged victim(s).
P Singer was involved in many full campus youth / student camps and events as well as the assistant boy basketball coach. The Church sent a vague letter to a small group of parents.
No mention of same sex sexual exploitation.
No mention of DCFS
No call to police
No mention of victims
https://www.harvestbiblechapel.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Letter-to-Student-Ministry-Parents.pdf
IMO The lawsuit continues to serve its purpose..
To keep the heat off Child Sex Abuse cover up.
At this point, who knows how much more is burried.
It’s time to put an end to all of this.
I tried to dissect and write up the publicly-available info on that case a couple weeks ago, https://www.walkingwithalimp.net/2018/11/30/a-closer-look-at-the-controversies-at-harvest-bible-chapel/ .
That was before the Roys report came out. To be fair, I don’t think the lawsuit is a smokescreen for the sex exploitation case. My concerns were that Singer was allowed to return to worship at the Aurora HBC campus after he was terminated. The church filed 3 separate DCFS in January, but DCFS didn’t start an investigation until June, when a HBC pastor called the hotline to follow up… maybe with new info, maybe out of concern that it wasn’t moving fast enough. I don’t know. There was a report in the Daily Herald with all this info with DCFS confirming details of the church’s actions.
In addition, it doesn’t look like all participants at summer camps at which Singer was present were notified that Singer is a predator. Only a some church members. So there are certainly a few mishandlings, but its not a complete cover-up as far as I see it. And it didn’t show up in the Roys report.
I know this
The June call was from an outsider.
The June call produced all the evidence.
I contend this
The HBC calls in Jan were not transparent or forthcoming enough to trigger the proper investigation.
I reference this
The HBC letter posted on line minimized the story and did not warn parents that they needed to question their boys about interactions with the male youth pastor
Ok, we are working with the same reports. What is the basis for you saying that the June call was from an outsider and not the church?
DCFS can’t reveal who placed the June call, and the church says it was a pastor at the church. So either the church is knowingly lying and your line of reasoning would be correct, or the church called to either follow up or provide new info in June.
DCFS confirmed that the church filed three reports in January; for whatever reason, that didn’t trigger the investigation. Maybe the church was incomplete, but it is also possible DCFS dropped the ball in some way.
I don’t blame you if you are not inclined to give the church the benefit of the doubt at this point, but I am also not inclined to make assumptions like that without compelling evidence that they have lied. I would also not call it a ‘cover-up’ until I have that evidence, because the termination was information available to at least some in the church by email on January 7th. So I’m just wondering if you have solid evidence that is not publicly available.
I have seen the final DCFS report.
It is not addressed to Harvest.
It is addressed to an outsider.
Okay, that helps some, and if that is true, then Scott Milholland’s statement would be a lie to the public. At least that could be solidly concluded and the whole thing on the church’s end would smell fishier. Do you have anything you could point us to other than your claim to have seen the final DCFS report? Or were you involved and affected directly by Harvest and/or Singer?
You commented on my video warning on Youtube. My kids were not abused but were involved in camps
The whistleblower is working with legal and others to figure out the best way to go public
Dont give Harvest any benifit of doubt as you work thru things..
Ok, that’s all I needed to make sense of it. I remember your video. In that case, once the lie and the cover-up is exposed, HBC will never recover. And we know full well that MacDonald won’t be able to claim ignorance on a situation of this magnitude, he ordered the statement on that case to be worded that way. That will cripple the empire.
I made sure to grab a screenshot of the all-church email HBC has up on its website that says Craig Steiner, the pastor in Aurora, was the June call. Plus, Scott Milholland was the executive pastor wordsmithing the church’s statement to the Chicago Tribune on the case, and he abruptly resigned a couple weeks ago. It wouldn’t surprise me if he has a nondisclosure and nondisparage agreement signed as a part of his severance, so he couldn’t reveal what actually happened behind the scenes.
The Roys’ report you refer to is part of a series, stemming from an 8 month long investigation. It is not a single stand-alone long-read article. There are a lot of things that have not shown up yet, which IMO are far more egregious than what has already been revealed. There is a rumor that another installment will be published this week – possibly tomorrow. WORLD, historically, has been a bi-weekly magazine, meaning the next regular issue doesn’t drop online until December 27th. Regardless of the final date of the next installment, it is too soon to conclude that her investigation has in any way exonerated Harvest Bible Chapel on this or any other issue. Stay tuned….
To be clear, my line of dialogue with this individual was not at all exonerating HBC on this particular issue. My point was that according to the publicly-available information on the sexual exploitation case, some things certainly do not add up and I am looking at exactly where HBC could be caught in a blatant lie to its church about how it handled the case. It wouldn’t make sense to time a lawsuit against a few bloggers and Roys as a distraction away from the sex exploitation case with the Chicago Tribune already having a big article about it. It would make sense if they had info about how the case was handled by the church and the church was trying to silence them. If this particular issue shows up in future reports, then hopefully it clears up why there are still loose ends in the story. I absolutely believe that HBC is in full brand-protection mode and is desperate to discredit anything and anyone that threatens to cripple their empire.
What difference does the sex of the child make?
How the hell would I know to question my son?!
Fair enough.
Another important thing to consider is that only one year earlier, Harvest Bible Chapel had to fire a different youth pastor. He was a 48 year old married man who was having sex with one of his former students. She had reached the age of legal consent, but had been available for years of grooming prior to the youth pastor making his move. Because she was of legal age at the time of the sex acts, Harvest chose to say and do nothing in response, beyond the termination.
That pastor had worked there for years and had access to thousands of children during this time, including having overnight access to them during the annual Winterfest camps plus the summer camps at Camp Harvest. Harvest chose to not alert parents, which would have allowed the parents to have a conversation with their children about their experiences with this youth pastor.
Most sexual abuse victims end up suffering all kinds of trauma and often turn to drugs or suicide when they can no longer cope with the shame, guilt and fear. It is imperative that victims receive professional counseling immediately. Harvest chose to put the good of their brand above the emotional, spiritual and psychological well-being of their students.
What HBC was willing to do was to have the elders pray for the predator youth pastor and make the necessary efforts for his “ultimate restoration to his family and church family”. Not one single word was said about the female victim. This was similar to HBC’s response to the predator Paxton Singer, where HBC said that Paxton was allowed to return to the campus where he met his first HBC victim and that Paxton “will be given pastoral care on that campus and we are committed to him and to helping him move forward” while nothing was said about helping the victims.
The reality is that if the predatory actions of the youth pastor fired in 2016 had been made known to the parents of all children attending HBC, then it may have been a lot harder for Paxton to have been able to go after victims a year later (The Christian Post cited that there were “three affected families”).
Paxton served as an intern at HBC during the summer of 2016, shortly after the other youth pastor was terminated for sexual misconduct with the former student. He was able to witness that the consequences for that youth pastor amounted to him losing his youth pastor job, but he still received care and concern while the victim was not addressed at all. Sounds like a pretty safe place for a predator. Not even public shaming or parental warnings took place. If Paxton was ever caught, he could expect similar treatment, which is exactly what happened, until someone else forced the issue several months later.
Right now HBC has the responsibility of supervising thousands of kids every single year including for multiple overnight stays – none of this with parental supervision. In less than two months, Harvest Students will be hosting children from 30 different churches from 7 states for a multi-day overnight conference, again, without parental supervision. https://www.harvestbiblechapel.org/wakeup/
HBC officially has a pattern of under-responding to victims and parents on this vital issue, making them attractive to predators. If HBC failed to report these crimes to DCFS in order to protect their brand, Landon MacDonald, as the pastor over youth pastors and staff, may be guilty of a class 4 felony. This is serious stuff and it is troubling that Harvest has such a blase’ attitude where victims seem to be ignored while the predators are cared for. This needs to stop.
Developments like this – where the rest of the world is wrong- and not the church(or its leaders)- is how cults develop.
If HBC is suing parties who do not have direct liability, they could be exposing themselves to a serious malicious prosecution action after the case is resolved. A plaintiff cannot willy-nilly bring in the spouses of the people it has a grievance with just to increase the pressure. I have no idea if that’s what is happening, but just noting this.
The defendants don’t have to wait until after the case is resolved. In fact, it can be used as grounds to dismiss the case outright. I’m curious who HBC’s lawyers are, because any decent lawyer would know better than to include the wives without good legal reason. I wonder if they went to the same school as Cohen.
http://www.winwithyoung.com
Mike Young..Criminal Justice / DUI.
Represented James Macdonald’s buddy Mancow Muller of B list Shock Jock radio fame.
The one reason I heard/read was that the wives provided some communal financial support for their households and, therefore, they had helped to pay for computers, wi-fi, phone plans and the like. There is no indication that they had anything more to do with the blog outside of owning joint checking accounts. This “church” chose to name two young mothers in the lawsuit in order to strike terror into them, likely with the expectations that their tears and distress would incline the TED guys to shut down their blog.
I believe Julie Roys’ husband works in education and may likely help pay a few bills around the house, yet he was not listed in the lawsuit. Could it be because James expected only the women would freak out when the process server banged on their door?
I wonder whether they will add the magazine now that it has indicated it is standing behind its writer by publishing the article? It would look odd if they don’t yet the magazine almost certainly has lawyers and funds to vigorously defend themselves. Certainly the magazine is much more liable than the not directly involved spouses.
It speaks volumes that they would use the words “desired scandal” – clearly imputing nefarious motives for which they offer zero evidence. That alone is a despicable act of slander. As Roys makes clear in a recent facebook post, she wasn’t looking for any scandal, especially having recently dealt with the fallout of her Moody expose. But a former HBC pastor came to her and *urged* her to hear his story and those of dozens of others, and on doing so felt obligated to investigate.
“We have chosen the high road and refused to engage in public assault on people we once served closely with who just can’t seem to ‘let it go,’ even after all these years. The Elders are privy to many grace-filled private attempts to reconcile, extended in hopes that these unhappy Christians would find peace.”
“We have chosen the high road and refused to engage in public assault on people we once served closely with who just can’t seem to ‘let it go,’ even after all these years. The Elders are privy to many grace-filled private attempts to reconcile, extended in hopes that these unhappy Christians would find peace.”
“We have chosen the high road and refused to engage in public assault on people we once served closely with who just can’t seem to ‘let it go,’ even after all these years. The Elders are privy to many grace-filled private attempts to reconcile, extended in hopes that these unhappy Christians would find peace.”
If the situation weren’t so sad the above paragraph from their response would border on the hilarious … you announce you have chosen the high road and then proceed before the end of sentence and again in the next sentence to use passive/aggressive language to denigrate your critics.
So an angle I would be interested in someone pursuing is the SBC one. Harvest joined the SBC and so they are a part of a local association and a state convention. Historically the SBC is very weak on accountability of their member churches and isn’t a traditional denomination as it relates to their influence over a local church since they are autonomous. But…on occasion they will get enough gumption to disassociate a member church. If someone managed to interview some regional SBC leaders there in Chicago it would put some extra eyes on the situation.
The only time the local/state SBC organizations care about individual churches is if a church calls a woman to be pastor or if a church is nice to LGBTQ people. At that point, the local/state orgs will give these churches the left foot of fellowship. Otherwise, they’re useless.
We have made contact w the SBC on the grounds that Harvest governace structure does not and has not complied with SBC requirements. I expect James will be spiked from speaking at SBCPC19 and Harvest removed from the Conference sooner than later. Moody is also speaking with the SBC directly.
Good to hear and you called it. He’s no longer speaking although it’s being spun that it was his idea. My guess is this was like the classic PR resignation designed to save a little face. Either he chooses not to speak or he was going to be removed.
The rumor inside the HBC C-suites was that former SBC President and Sr Pastor of Prestonwood Baptist, Jack Graham, phoned James and helped him to see the wisdom of stepping down from public speaking “for a season”. Presumably this happened so that the SBC wouldn’t have to ask James to step aside.
It was Graham who was the one who asked MacDonald to join the SBC after HBC had the blowout with TGC. Jack got James the speaking spot at the June 2015 SBC Pastor’s Conference and SBC annual meeting to announce HBC’s defection to the SBC (despite not being Southern or Baptist)
When SBC’s Highpoint Memphis Head Pastor Chris Conlee had his recent fall, the following happened:
1) Conlee lost his upcoming speaking gigs at leadership conferences and racial reconciliation conferences.
2) Conlee’s much awaited release of his big new book “Love Waits” was cancelled by Baker’s Books
3) Highpoint had to cancel upcoming HP Conferences
4) Highpoint left the SBC. Both Highpoint and the SBC refused to say why
5) About 1/4th of Highpoint members/attendees left HP
6) Elders were finally forced to act like grownups and start leading the church in a meaningful and godly way.
7) Six months after the Andy Savage scandal broke, Chris Conlee was “released” by the church and elders to go pursue new pioneering opportunities
8) Elders had to call a meeting to explain all this and when they refused to answer the members’ questions, a melee ensued and the police had to be called to break it up
9) Highpoint lost about 1/2 of their members/attendees
10) Highpoint had to institute some layoffs. across the board paycuts for staff, plus they had to resort to selling off assets including some of their real estate in order to stay afloat.
11) We will see if Highpoint can make it through 2019. Over five months after Conlee resigned, Highpoint still does not have a replacement senior pastor. A handful of large donors are basically keeping HP afloat.
Comparing MacDonald to Chris Conlee
1) James is not speaking at the SBC conference which is 6 months away and indicates he will not be speaking anywhere outside of HBC during that time.
2) James’ upcoming book is not being published by Moody Publishing, who normally publishes his books. It is being published by David C Cook books, which is an imprint of Integrity Music down in Focus on the Family country. Cook is the publisher who agreed to publish disgraced and disqualified pastor and serial adulterer Tullian Tchividjian’s upcoming book, so this deal may still go through. Oddly, integrity seems to just be a company name and not a company trait.
3) The big upcoming Wake UP Student conference is still taking place in mid-February. We’ll have to see if any conferences or community activities are cancelled. James was planning on throwing a massively expensive Easter celebration at the Sears Tower this coming Easter. We will see if that remains on the schedule.
It takes a while for churches to shake out what will finally happen, but the stepping down from all outside speaking gigs for at least the next 6 months is a big deal. It seems to be one of the few times that James has had to submit to pressure. It will be an interesting next 6 months. Will James even attend the SBC meeting now that he can’t headline? Will the SBC allow HBC to remain in the SBC, or like Highpoint, will HBC just disappear from the roster altogether with no explanation as to whether they resigned or got kicked out?
We are seeing shades of similarities here.
The rumor inside the HBC C-suites was that former SBC President and Sr Pastor of Prestonwood Baptist, Jack Graham, phoned James and helped him to see the wisdom of stepping down from public speaking “for a season”. Presumably this happened so that the SBC wouldn’t have to ask James to step aside.
It was Graham who was the one who asked MacDonald to join the SBC after HBC had the blowout with TGC. Jack got James the speaking spot at the June 2015 SBC Pastor’s Conference and SBC annual meeting to announce HBC’s defection to the SBC (despite not being Southern or Baptist)
When SBC’s Highpoint Memphis Head Pastor Chris Conlee had his recent fall, the following happened:
1) Conlee lost his upcoming speaking gigs at leadership conferences and racial reconciliation conferences.
2) Conlee’s much awaited release of his big new book “Love Waits” was cancelled by Baker’s Books
3) Highpoint had to cancel upcoming HP Conferences
4) Highpoint left the SBC. Both Highpoint and the SBC refused to say why
5) About 1/4th of Highpoint members/attendees left HP
6) Elders were finally forced to act like grownups and start leading the church in a meaningful and godly way.
7) Six months after the Andy Savage scandal broke, Chris Conlee was “released” by the church and elders to go pursue new pioneering opportunities
8) Elders had to call a meeting to explain all this and when they refused to answer the members’ questions, a melee ensued and the police had to be called to break it up
9) Highpoint lost about 1/2 of their members/attendees
10) Highpoint had to institute some layoffs. across the board paycuts for staff, plus they had to resort to selling off assets including some of their real estate in order to stay afloat.
11) We will see if Highpoint can make it through 2019. Over five months after Conlee resigned, Highpoint still does not have a replacement senior pastor. A handful of large donors are basically keeping HP afloat.
Comparing MacDonald to Chris Conlee
1) James is not speaking at the SBC conference which is 6 months away and indicates he will not be speaking anywhere outside of HBC during that time.
2) James’ upcoming book is not being published by Moody Publishing, who normally publishes his books. It is being published by David C Cook books, which is an imprint of Integrity Music down in Focus on the Family country. Cook is the publisher who agreed to publish disgraced and disqualified pastor and serial adulterer Tullian Tchividjian’s upcoming book, so this deal may still go through. Oddly, integrity seems to just be a company name and not a company trait.
3) The big upcoming Wake UP Student conference is still taking place in mid-February. We’ll have to see if any conferences or community activities are cancelled. James was planning on throwing a massively expensive Easter celebration at the Sears Tower this coming Easter. We will see if that remains on the schedule.
It takes a while for churches to shake out what will finally happen, but the stepping down from all outside speaking gigs for at least the next 6 months is a big deal. It seems to be one of the few times that James has had to submit to pressure. It will be an interesting next 6 months. Will James even attend the SBC meeting now that he can’t headline? Will the SBC allow HBC to remain in the SBC, or like Highpoint, will HBC just disappear from the roster altogether with no explanation as to whether they resigned or got kicked out?
We are seeing shades of similarities here.