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.

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.

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.

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 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?

After Harvest found out some of the nature of Julie Roys’ articles, James “suddenly” announced in September 2018 that HBC IL was taking over the small HBC Naples church plant and is now making it a full HBC Satellite Campus. Then in November HBC Naples moved into their new much larger church. The building was paid for in full, by a local multimillionaire named Douglas Bartholomew. HBC will have to pay for all of the renovation to make it state of the art. Now JMac can justify wintering on the beach of Florida each winter and do it in style, courtesy of that slush fund. There is a rumor that he just closed on a new vacation home in the area. His brother John apparently also bought a winter home there.

Right after Christmas, James is planning on bugging out during the worst of the IL winter months, while his tithers stay behind and shovel snow and pay into the mystery $10M high-life fund. I guess he got the most out of his HBC multi-million dollar (FMV) hunting lodge, so time for a new millionaire’s toy. This time it will be Douglas and Joyce Im Bartholomew getting to help fund James’ latest dream. I hope that Joyce takes some time to read the remaining articles. Right now she refers to James with glee as her “famous pastor!” It may be time for her to learn the difference between famous and infamous.

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….

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.

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.