Months after Bethel Church announced Pastor Ben Armstrong had been placed on administrative leave, the church says it’s bringing in additional third-party oversight and has confirmed the firm leading an independent investigation into sexual abuse allegations against the longtime ministry leader.
In an April 2 update, Bethel leaders said they’re engaging an out of doors expert to review the church’s governance, leadership structure and internal culture, expanding their response beyond the continued inquiry into Armstrong, the church’s Prophetic Ministry director and former Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry Revival Group pastor.
The announcement comes two months after the church placed Armstrong on leave following the discharge of a YouTube video during which a former student publicly alleged clergy sexual abuse dating back to 2009.
“As a broader leadership team, we would like to know and address how we are able to do higher in the longer term by bringing in a third-party expert to review our governance, leadership structure, and culture,” the church said in an announcement. “We wish to ensure we have now established clear accountability structures [and] prioritized the security of all those engaging with Bethel, and upheld the standards that Scripture calls our leadership and culture to reflect.”
Bethel confirmed for the primary time that Sintra Group Investigations is leading the inquiry into the allegations. The organization, based on the church, has greater than 20 years of experience and uses what has been termed trauma-informed investigative protocols.
The church emphasized that the method stays ongoing and said additional steps tied to the governance review will probably be announced in the approaching weeks.
“We imagine this type of accountability isn’t excellent, but needed,” the statement said, adding that leaders have been in continued dialogue with those impacted, in addition to current and former students, staff and outdoors advisors.
“As we have now said before, we don’t take the pain that those that have spoken up are experiencing calmly, and we will not be moving past it quickly — this process matters deeply to us, but more importantly, to the guts of God.”
The April update also highlighted Bethel’s use of “Safe Church,” a reporting system designed to permit individuals to confidentially raise concerns about misconduct, including allegations involving senior leadership. The platform is operated through a third-party provider, Mitratech, which enables anonymous reporting and preserves submissions of their original form.
Church leaders said the system is meant to make sure privacy and forestall reports from being altered.
Bethel, led by senior leader Bill Johnson, has grown into a world influence through its worship music, conferences and the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. The latest developments come because the church faces renewed criticism over its handling of past allegations and leadership accountability.
In earlier statements, Bethel acknowledged it’s revisiting the way it addressed the 2009 situation involving Armstrong, citing a necessity for greater awareness of power dynamics and pastoral responsibility.
At the time, Bethel leaders said they became aware late Feb. 13 of “a video containing serious allegations of clergy sexual abuse pertaining to Ben Armstrong and events that took place in 2009.”
“Earlier that day at 1:30 pm PT, we released an announcement on our website based on the data that we were aware of at the moment, and our understanding of Ben’s lived repentance since that point,” the church said in a February statement. “However, in light of those recent and previously unknown allegations, we have now placed Ben Armstrong on administrative leave. He won’t be ministering while an independent third-party investigation takes place.”
In the video, “Bethel Survivor Sarah Shares Her Experience of Clergy SA by Ben Armstrong,” posted to YouTube by the “Wake Up and Win” podcast, a girl identified as Sarah says she was a 23-year-old intern and member of Bethel’s ministry school when Armstrong, then a pastor and mentor, groomed her under the guise of spiritual fatherhood before crossing sexual boundaries on multiple occasions.
Armstrong had previously characterised the 2009 incident as an affair. In past public remarks, he said he “had an affair” and was “getting my emotional needs met after which it turned physical with a girl I worked with” outside his marriage before repenting and entering a restoration process.
However, Sarah disputed his version of events, saying she never viewed the connection as consensual or romantic and that she felt groomed and pressured inside a culture that emphasized spiritual authority and obedience.
“It has been extremely confusing to deconstruct what happened and figure it out,” she said within the video.
The church has also faced criticism in recent months for platforming Shawn Bolz, who was later accused of fraudulent prophetic practices and sexually inappropriate behavior. Following an investigation by Christian apologist Mike Winger, Bethel acknowledged failures in the way it handled concerns related to Bolz, saying it didn’t act with sufficient clarity, urgency or transparency.
In its April 2 statement, Bethel said it is continuous to approach the situation with “sobriety and care” and reiterated that it just isn’t moving quickly past the concerns raised.
“We don’t take the pain that those that have spoken up are experiencing calmly, and we will not be moving past it quickly,” the statement said. “This process matters deeply to us, but more importantly, to the guts of God.”
The church didn’t provide a timeline for when the investigation will conclude.
In wake of the controversies, Jenn Johnson, who together with her husband, Brian, have served as senior worship pastors at Bethel since 2000, told podcaster Alex Enfiedjian the church is a “very big organization” with people of assorted beliefs and “good hearts and good intentions, but type of just doing quite a lot of various things that necessarily we wouldn’t all on a leadership level vouch for.”
“I definitely have seen a lovely, healthy correction along the years,” she said, adding the church’s leaders are “excellent, trustworthy people who find themselves very human and try to live their lives based on the Bible and run the great race and shepherd an insane amount of individuals.”
“We definitely don’t all imagine the identical things at Bethel,” she continued, “and there are definitely some very weird things which have happened from people who find themselves in lower levels, especially of leadership, but additionally higher, [myself] included, because we’re all human.”
Source: https://www.christiantoday.com/news/bethel-church-announces-governance-review-after-sexual-abuse-allegations
