Matt Redman claims ‘significant’ abuse at hands of Mike Pilavachi

Worship leader Matt Redman and his wife Beth are opening up about their experience under disgraced Soul Survivor founder Mike Pilavachi. 

The ‘10,000 Reasons’ singer said that Pilavachi “often” desired to wrestle him and that if he and his wife offended him in a roundabout way, they were subjected to “silent treatment” that lasted “months and months and months”. 

Redman said that on one occasion he was ignored by Pilavachi for 3 weeks because he added an additional song to the worship list without checking it with him first. Beth said that once they were still dating, they were “frozen out” by Pilavachi after they went to the cinema without telling him.

Redman says he has forgiven Pilavachi but that their years in ministry together have taken their toll. 

“I’m still working through all that happened. I used to be subjected to significant emotional, spiritual and physical abuse in a situation that I didn’t know find out how to get out of. I’ve spent years attempting to heal from that point. I’ve forgiven Mike, but I still feel the impact today,” he said. 

The pair first met when Redman was just 13 years old and attending St Andrews Chorleywood church, in Hertfordshire, where Pilavachi was a youth employee on the time. 

They went on to co-found the hugely successful Soul Survivor youth movement that saw hundreds of young people converted to Christ at a time when the broader Church was struggling to succeed in them. They travelled the world along with Pilavachi preaching while Redman led the worship. 

In the documentary, Redman credits Pilavachi with freeing him from sexual abuse by the hands of his stepfather after the vicar helped him go to the authorities but he says that this led him to have an “undying loyalty to [Pilavachi] obviously” and that this in turn stopped him from walking away sooner.

Looking back on his experience as a teenager with Pilavachi, he said, “I used to be probably seeing him day by day, I’d think. And then he began to counsel me about my sexual abuse. Which, looking back, I do not feel awesome about because he wasn’t a trained counsellor.

“He’d actually been an accountant just just a few years before and, you recognize, I used to be telling the deepest, darkest things and he was asking me for the main points of what happened. The real problematic thing to me about that’s he would often wrestle me afterwards.

“Wrestling was definitely his thing. I do know a variety of individuals who were physically wrestled by Mike, and it was very often in a hidden room within the church or it will be around his house away from everyone.”

He said that on the time he tried to rationalise it by considering that “perhaps it is a youth leader attempting to break the stress and it’s what youth leaders do”

“Sometimes it could go on for 20 minutes, it was like full-on wrestling,” he continued.

“But obviously it is a youth leader. This is an adult, that is hidden away from everyone. Looking back, I actually don’t be ok with it. And especially as sometimes it happened straight after we might been talking about the main points of the sexual abuse that I’d suffered.”

Redman shares his experience in the brand new documentary, Let There Be Light, out now on his YouTube channel.

If you might have been affected by the problems raised on this story, call thirtyone:eight on 0303 003 1111, or the Safe Spaces helpline on 0300 303 1056.