Rick Joyner and Morning Star Platform Todd Bentley After Many Years of Sexual Abuse Allegations

When the victims are young women the church considers the words of the abuser more than that of the victims!

This was posted this morning on X that sums up the situation:

Morningstar Brings Back CSA Offender #ToddBentley This is deeply distressing. In 2019, a five-person council of elders declared Todd Bentley unfit for ministry. Bentley initially embraced the council and then rejected it before it finished its work. This council was put together with

@IamRickJoyner‘s encouragement. Todd was accused of multiple cases of clergy sexual abuse, including the grooming of online followers. The cases were from 2005-2019. At what point is a person permanently disqualified from preaching ministry?

This one is simply very distressing on so many levels! Many a long year ago I was heavily involved with the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, going to the conferences, traveling great distances to catch the fire and feel a touch from God. Somewhere on my travels chasing my Holy Spirit Crack Rock I happened upon Todd Bentley. I am pretty sure it was at a TAFC conference because Todd was all about soaking prayer and TACF had a soaking prayer ministry. At one point I was a soaking prayer facilitatory for our area.

What is soaking prayer I hear you say? It’s a type of pray involving laying down in a room, a quiet dimly lit room with candles and soft music. Sometimes the music had the words of the Bible sung or spoken. You lay back, close your eyes and pray, meditate and soak in the word of God. The people running the meeting go around the room quietly praying for folks. We used to do it between two to three hours. It was so refreshing, but in all actuality there’s not a lot of difference between this and regular old meditation.

In those days Todd told some far-fetched fantastical tales of being turned around by a touch from God, taking out of his world of sex, drugs, alcohol and other vices. After nearly a year of daily soaking prayer he arose to start his own ministry – Fresh Fire in Abbotsford, Canada. When I encountered Todd he was pretty firmly entrenched into the whole non denom Evangelical world of those revival churches like TACF. I absolutely loved Todd! Loved to play several of his soaking prayer music songs during soaking prayer times. My favorite!

But in the aftermath of leaving my original church, after the church split that followed my leaving by about 6 months I lost track of Todd in those painful days I was enduring a boatload of hateful words flung at me by former friends. I didn’t hear much about him until Bentley popped up at a revival meeting in Lakeland, Florida. He caused a tremendous stir, making claims that he healed a ton of folks. Media started digging and the entire thing fell apart like a loaf of Wonder Bread outside in a monsoon. The upshot was that he’d been accused of sexual misconduct and forced to step down from Fresh Fire in 2008. Outed as an abusing cheater who’d potentially groomed some in his ministry. His wife left him after the board of directors stripped him from Fresh Fire Ministries Canada. The allegations were pretty awful, different ladies said that Bentley had sex with them after the Lakeland Outpouring meetings and later he paid them off not to tell a soul. Pretty sleazy for a pastor.

In 2009 Rick Joyner helped him start Fresh Fire USA after that first set of allegations. Joyner had been part of a board along with Bill Johnson and Jack Deere that had overseen some sort of investigation and oversite of the restoration of the Bentley’s marriage, trying to affect a healing. in 2010 Joyner released Bentley into a limited sort of ministry before it was right back to the same traveling carnival barker act Todd Bentley was known for.

2019 brought more accusations of sexual misconduct and also faking raising people from the dead and using questionably violent methods to miraculously heal other people. Another board formed to investigate the claims and Bentley sent them a cease and desist! He saw it all as injustice, an attack of the devil. Attendance at his US based church dropped off dramatically!

And now, here we are in that very familiar place. Rick Joyner of Morning Star, one of Todd’s most doggedly determined supporters, has proclaimed Bentley fully restored and he has platformed Bentley at his own church. No real repentence, same song, different day and the abusive beat goes on. Shame on Rick Joyner for falling for the man working his con and his carny like ministry. How many more victims will this create this time?

He’s there right now teaching at the Open Heavens conference at Morning Star. Kind of disgusting. Bentley’s behavior is a pattern now, not a one off.

Speaking of disgusting here is the statement of the board in 2019 on punishing and possibly later restoring Bentley.

As followers of Jesus, we delight in God’s mercy and grace and believe in the power of restoration and forgiveness. At the same time, we recognize that God’s Word holds leaders in the Church to high standards, since they serve as representatives of Christ himself. The question before us is this: Does Todd Bentley, founder of Fresh Fire Ministries, live up to those standards? Is he qualified to be a recognized leader in the Church?

The signers of this statement are leaders in ministry who were asked to review a matter that invokes these beliefs, and to judge the fitness of a person for ministry according to biblical standards and the leading of the Holy Spirit. In conducting such investigation there are limits on what can be known with certainty, but we look carefully at long-term track records and the accumulated testimony of many witnesses.

The opinion we have reached here is theological, answering the question: Does Todd Bentley, founder of Fresh Fire Ministries, live up to the high standards required of those who serve as representatives of Christ? Is he qualified, according to our understanding of biblical standards, to be a recognized leader in the Church?

As part of this process we sought to hear Todd’s side directly, but he declined to answer a list of 60 questions compiled by the investigator after initially agreeing to respond. (Todd required the investigator to submit the questions through his attorney, after which he ceased communicating with Dr. Brown or the investigator.)

Based on our careful review of numerous first-hand reports, some of them dating back to 2004, we state our theological opinion and can say with one voice that, without a doubt, Todd is not qualified to serve in leadership or ministry today. There are credible accusations of a steady pattern of ungodly and immoral behavior, confirmed by an independent investigator’s interviews dating from 2008 up through 2019, along with other testimonies dating back to 2004. And while we only took into account first-hand reports, there are many other second and third-hand reports repeating the same accusations, often from people in different parts of the country (or, world) who had no connection between them, other than their interaction with Todd.

We love Todd and believe that he has been supernaturally gifted by God, and our highest joy would be to see Todd coming before God and the community of believers in humility and repentance, openly desiring help to get his life fully healed and surrendered to Jesus. Sadly, we see no signs of true, lasting repentance. Instead, we see a steady pattern of compromised behavior, including credible accusations of adultery, sexting (including the exchanging of nude pictures or videos), vulgar language, and substance abuse.

And, to repeat, these charges have been brought by numerous witnesses over a period of roughly 15 years, right until 2019. Even more importantly, many of these activities have involved people for whom Todd was spiritually responsible (interns, staff, team members, individuals he was ministering to), making these violations all the more serious.

In our view, this disqualifies Todd from public ministry until such time that he has demonstrated true, lasting fruits of repentance, which would include: the breaking of these long-term, sinful habits; public acknowledgment of his sin, without equivocation, including asking forgiveness of those he sinned against; and submission to local church leadership until trust had been rebuilt. This would likely take a period of years.

We also recognize that formal ordination into the ministry amounts to a recognition by other leaders of a candidate’s qualifications to serve as a leader in the Church. We therefore recommend that Todd’s current ordination be rescinded until the process of repentance and restoration, described above, has taken place.

It is also our opinion that, while it is possible for Todd to do public ministry again in the future, at no point should he lead his own ministry. Instead, if he was truly restored to God and in submission to godly authority, he could serve in another leader’s ministry. But we believe it would be unwise and even potentially dangerous for him to lead his own ministry again.

Unfortunately, what’s missing in the modern church is often the combination of relational and organizational accountability, which would ensure each minister’s ability to navigate turbulent emotional, organizational, and spiritual waters. We pray that Todd would find such relational and organizational accountability, and it is our hope that this will become the norm, rather than the exception, for other leaders in the days ahead.

We recognize, of course, that we have no legal authority over Todd or his ministry, nor do we seek to have such authority. Rather, as elders in the Body of Christ who have been asked to judge righteously, and in the fear of the Lord, we make our viewpoint public, praying that this will help bring confidence and hope to those who have been sinned against as well as encourage deeper accountability in the Church.

We pray for God’s best for Todd and his family and encourage them to seek out godly help with the hope that their lives may be fully restored in God.

Dr. Brown will be issuing a separate statement outlining the process to this point, and we encourage you to direct all questions to him. May 2020 be a year of redemption, restoration, and hope for the Body of Christ.

Dr. Joseph Mattera, Overseeing Bishop of Resurrection Church, Brooklyn, NY, and Convener of the US Coalition of Apostolic Leaders

Dr. James W. Goll, Founder of God Encounters Ministries, Franklin, TN

Dr. Jane Hamon, Co-Pastor, Vision Church @ Christian International, Santa Rosa Beach, FL Bishop Harry Jackson, Senior Pastor, Hope Christian Church, Beltsville, MD, and Presiding Bishop of the Ambassadors of Hope Fellowship of Churches Dr. Don Finto, Pastor Emeritus, Belmont Church, Nashville, TN, and President and founder of Caleb Company

All those words, all the allegations and still Todd Bentley is allowed to be around a potential victim pool yet again. I leave you with the words of someone I know on X about the entire situation.