Mega Church Pastors who fell to Adultery

The Sun Online Reports:

The most trending news in Nigeria
at present, apart from Ebola and
terrorist attacks, is that of the
impending divorce of charismatic
Pastor Chris Oyakhilome of the
Believers’ LoveWorld, better
known as Christ Embassy. Tongues
are wagging. However, this is not
the first time a reverend, pastor,
bishop, evangelist or a cleric will
be enmeshed in divorce.

The list is growing both locally and
internationally. Incidentally, a
neighbour to Pastor Chris at
Oregun in the Ikeja area of Lagos
State and his namesake, Rev.
Chris Okotie, has even broken a
record by divorcing twice, the last
one being in June 2012.

Internationally, there was the case
of the revered tele-evangelist,
Pastor Benny Hinn, who earlier
divorced his wife, Suzanne, and
later remarried her.

Besides pastors and clergy whose
marriages are in shambles, there
are those living with their spouses
like familiar strangers. Many have
not divorced out of sheer fright of
scandal. Others are papering over
the cracks in their marriages in
deference to God’s injunction in
Malachi 2 verse 16 while praying
and hoping for restoration.

Over the years, men of God, made
up of pastors, evangelists,
prophets, and their ilk who
superintend over mega churches,
have unwittingly succumbed to
the tempestuous whirlwind of
adultery, contrary to the fifth
commandment of God: Thou shall
not commit adultery. And each
time this happens, it raises a lot of
issues, bordering on morality,
spirituality, and most times put on
hold or ends abruptly, the
productive Christian service of the
victim.

Early this year, David Loveless,
head pastor of Discovery Church,
Orlando, U.S.A, one of America’s
“10 healthiest churches”
relinquished his pastoral duties at
the mega church over adultery. The pastor resigned after
confessing he committed adultery
three years earlier.

But Loveless is not the only
Orlando-area pastor to confess an
adulterous relationship lately. In
the past six months, two other
pastors, Isaac Hunter of Summit
Church and Sam Hinn of The
Gathering Place also resigned.

A statement by elders of
Discovery Church confirmed that
Loveless’s affair ended
approximately three years ago. However, he only made it known
to church leaders within the past
few weeks. The elders stated that
David Loveless could be restored
to Christian fellowship and
productive service, but not as a
full-time pastor.

On April 3, 2014, Bob Coy, host of
one of iTunes most-popular
podcasts on Christianity and
known for his teaching on
marriage, resigned as longtime
leader of one of America’s largest
multisite churches after confessing
to a “moral failing.”

Coy, senior pastor at the 18,500-
member Calvary Chapel, Fort
Lauderdale, Florida since he
founded the mega church in 1985,
said the failing disqualified him
from “continuing his leadership
role at the church.”

Coy, who wrote the popular
series, Building a Godly Marriage
along with pastoring one of the
fastest growing churches in
America, also reached audiences
through his Active Word Radio
Podcast, which ranks No. 12 on
the iTunes chart for Christian
podcasts, between offerings from
Joel Osteen and T. D. Jakes.

The Active Word Media Ministry
has been suspended, according to
the church. Coy’s past sermon
series on marriage was taken
offline and unavailable, as were
other media pages at the church’s
website.

Among the hundreds of reactions
on the church’s website are
requests from people who still
feel Coy’s past teachings are
beneficial.

Coy will be focusing his attention
on God and his family, according
to his church’s statement. “The
governing board of the church is
providing counsellors and
ministers who will help guide him
through the process of full
repentance, cleansing and
restoration,” said the church.

Coy joins three other Florida mega
church pastors who recently
resigned in those cases after
acknowledging extramarital affairs.
One pastor, Isaac Hunter of
Summit Church, later died by
suicide.

While experts say churches can
heal after adultery scandals and
pastors can be restored to
ministry, the process has obstacles that aren’t easy to navigate. The time it takes to work through the healing process can be its own point of contention: witness Benny Hinn’s brother Sam, who raised eyebrows after returning to the pulpit just eight months after admitting to a four-year extramarital affair.

In 1988, Jimmy Swaggart,
America’s leading television
evangelist, resigned from his
ministry after it was revealed he
had been consorting with a
prostitute.

In front of a congregation of 7,000
in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he
sobbed and confessed to “moral
failure” without actually going into
any detail.

“I do not plan in any way to
whitewash my sin or call it a
mistake,” he told shocked
members of his Family Worship
Centre.

Turning to his wife, Frances, he
said: “I have sinned against you
and I beg your forgiveness.”
Swaggart’s confession is all the
more scandalous since he himself
unleashed fire and brimstone
against rival TV evangelist Rev Jim
Bakker a few months earlier for
committing adultery with minister
and secretary Jessica Hahn.

Rev Bakker was subsequently
defrocked and fired from his
multi-million-dollar Praise the
Lord TV station.

This time it was Jimmy Swaggart’s
turn to repent after officials from
the Assemblies of God Church
were given photographs showing
him taking a prostitute to a
Louisiana motel.

Rival TV evangelist, Martin
Gorman, who was also defrocked
after Pastor Swaggart, accused him
of “immoral dalliances” in 1986
handed them in.

Gorman, who ran a successful TV
show from New Orleans, had
launched an unsuccessful $90m
law suit against Jimmy Swaggart
two years earlier for spreading
false rumours.

He also suggested Mr. Swaggart
was trying to undermine rival TV
shows.

The Jimmy Swaggart Hour is
watched by up to two million
families and donations raised
amount to about $150m a year.

After the Bakker scandal,
donations from the faithful
dropped dramatically and the
same is likely to happen to Jimmy
Swaggart’s show.

Rev Robertson has threatened to
sue anyone who calls him a TV
evangelist and prefers to be
described as a businessman.
Four days later Debra Murphree,
the prostitute photographed with
Jimmy Swaggart, told a New
Orleans TV show he was a regular
customer but insisted they had
not had sex. She said he liked to watch her undress.

Along with his son, Donnie, Jimmy
Swaggart continues to broadcast
to 30 countries but viewer
numbers are not what they used
to be when he was preaching to
more than 100 nations around the
world.

In March this year, after asking his
parishioners to stay a bit longer
after a Sunday service, Bishop
Bobby Davies a pastor in
Connecticut literally dropped
dead. His request was made so he
could confess his past infidelity
and “seek forgiveness.” But only
moments after he told his
congregation what he had done,
he fell over and died from a heart
attack.

One person in attendance, Judy
Stovall, told the Connecticut Post
that Bishop Bobby Davis – the
founder of the Miracle Faith World
Outreach Church in Bridgeport –
“wanted to come clean.”

“We were shouting, ‘We forgive
you, we love you,’ but the stress
of all of it — he had a heart
attack,” Stovall recalled. “I held
his head as he lay on the floor …
Our congregation is hurting now.”
But some of the crowd was pretty
angry. Stovall admitted that the
yelling got pretty loud. “A woman,
who wouldn’t give her name, said
she had been outside the church
at the time and heard yelling
coming from inside, but didn’t
know what was being said,” the
report added.

Pastor Blaine Bartel of Northstar
Church in Dallas, Texas is the most
recent pastor caught in adultery.
On April 22, 2014, Charisma
Magazine reported that he
stepped down from his post as
pastor after he acknowledged that
he’d had an affair. Bartel and his
wife Cathy have been married 28
years and are in pursuit of
repairing their marriage.

That day must have been a
strange day for members of Re­
demption World Outreach,
Greenville, South Carolina, U.S.A,
one of the area’s first mega
churches. Pastor Ron Carpenter
basically dedicated his sermon to
explaining why he’s leaving his
philandering wife of 23 years.

More awkwardly, Hope Carpenter
was apparently Ron’s co-pastor as
well as his wife. For as long as
Redemption World Outreach was a
thing, Ron and Hope were the face
of it, and their solid marriage was
an example for their flock. Too
bad it was all a front, according to
Ron.

During his sermon on Sunday, he
explained that his wife had been
living a double life for years. It
came to a head, culminating in her
isolation in a one-year, out-of-
state treatment program, the end
of what he called a “tragic”
situation.

Ron explained that he and his wife
had been struggling for at least a
decade.

Though he described his marriage
as a “fairy tale” at first, things
started to go south in 2004. She
removed herself from the couple’s
ministry completely, and she
became increasingly distant until
2010 when she admitted to having
multiple affairs.

Coincidentally, this confession
came on the eve of a planned
marriage conference organised by
Ron and his Redemption World
Outreach church.

“The marriage conference was
already half way sold out, and
$25,000 worth of deposits were
made for rooms and we couldn’t
back out. I had no idea what to
do,” said Carpenter.

Ron Carpenter told Word Radio
that his wife’s infidelity is only five
percent of what’s going on.

“There were two distinct double
lives. This is not a fling. Not an
affair. There was a whole other life
and culture and dress code and
friends,” he explained.

In Kenya, pastor of a growing
church was last month, beaten,
stripped and forced to kiss in
public, the wife of a policeman he
was caught with during an orgy in
the neighbourhood. Although the
angry mob spared his life, he was
said to have preached against
adultery at a crusade the previous
week in Nairobi. And nemesis
quickly caught up with him even
while he was still married and had
children.