Ep. 475: Sean Feucht, Doug Wilson’s Empire, Christianity Today, and Robert Morris
On today’s program, ministry leader Sean Feucht is being accused of moral, ethical, and financial failure by former leaders of his various nonprofits. The accusers issued a formal statement this week detailing their accusations and are calling for an independent investigation.
And, with the construction of a new school campus, Pastor Doug Wilson’s empire continues to grow in Idaho. We’ll take a look.
Plus, Tim Dalrymple is leaving his role at Christianity Today to take the helm of the John Templeton Foundation.
But first, Robert Morris is pushing back on Gateway Church’s claims that they didn’t know the details of his sexual abuse of Cindy Clemishire.
The producer for today’s program is Jeff McIntosh. We get database and other technical support from Stephen DuBarry, Rod Pitzer, and Casey Sudduth. Writers who contributed to today’s program include Kim Roberts, Yonat Shimron, Jack Jenkins, Tracy Simmons, Bob Smietana, Brittany Smith, and Christina Darnell.
Until next time, may God bless you.
MANUSCRIPT:
FIRST SEGMENT
Warren:
Hello everybody. I’m Warren Smith, coming to you from Charlotte, North Carolina.
Natasha:
And I’m Natasha Cowden, coming to you from Denver, Colorado, and we’d like to welcome you to the MinistryWatch podcast.
Warren:
On today’s program, ministry leader Sean Feucht is being accused of moral, ethical, and financial failure by former leaders of his various nonprofits. The accusers issued a formal statement this week detailing their accusations and are calling for an independent investigation.
And, with the construction of a new school campus, Pastor Doug Wilson’s empire continues to grow in Idaho. We’ll take a look.
Plus, Tim Dalrymple is leaving his role at Christianity Today to take the helm of the John Templeton Foundation.
Natasha:
But first, Robert Morris is pushing back on Gateway Church’s claims that they didn’t know the details of his sexual abuse of Cindy Clemishire.
Warren:
According to court documents filed by Morris in Tarrant County, Morris asserted that Gateway elders “knew the facts pertaining to Pastor Morris’s admittedly highly inappropriate relationship with [Clemishire] as early as 2005 and most certainly by August of 2007.” The court documents are part of his effort to seek Christian arbitration in settling the dispute over his retirement benefits.
Natasha:
One of the issues of contention between Gateway and Morris has been whether they knew Clemishire was just 12 years old when Morris began abusing her.
Warren:
Morris pointed to a demand letter written by Clemishire’s attorney, now Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, in 2007 that referred to the sexual assaults beginning when Clemishire was just 12 years old. He said the board of elders received a copy of the letter at the time it was written.
Drummond secured an indictment against Morris in Oklahoma for five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child.
Natasha:
So why is Morris bringing all of this up now?
Warren:
In his court filings, Morris said he was bringing this documentation of Gateway’s knowledge to light due to the church’s “repeatedly and misleadingly accusing Pastor Morris of lacking transparency” and “public blame shifting.”
In his most recent court filing, Morris says he still stands ready to mediate and sent such an offer on May 19, stating, “Morris will agree to mediate the case in Tarrant County provided that such mediation take place with all due haste.”
He asked the court to order the parties to mediation and to grant his request to compel the parties to arbitration before the Institute for Christian Conciliation.
Natasha:
Next, a musician and ministry leader has been accused by former employees.
Warren:
Five former leaders of groups associated with Sean Feucht have issued a formal statement bringing to light what they call “longstanding and serious moral, ethical, financial, organizational and governance failures” by Feucht and calling for an independent investigation into possible fraud and embezzlement.
The statement also urges the removal of Feucht from leadership and financial stewardship positions.
The signers were associated in various capacities with Burn 24/7, a group Feucht started in 2006 that hosts regular prayer and worship gatherings in cities around the world.
Natasha:
What are they alleging?
Warren:
The allegations claim Feucht has a longstanding pattern of moral and ethical misconduct, including manipulation, exaggeration, control, lying, gaslighting, and spiritual and emotional abuse. Even though they claim he has been confronted about these issues over the years, it has resulted in very little meaningful change or repentance.
The signers also claim Feucht has misrepresented his ministry activities, which have allegedly included “ceaseless financial solicitation intermingled with his grandiose visions, which has led to untold financial gain and a steady stream of unpaid labor from volunteers.”
Natasha:
The former leaders also allege financial impropriety by Feucht. For example, the accusers claim Feucht repeatedly used business credit cards for personal expenses, that he diverted donations to personal accounts, that he inflated prices paid to vendors, and that he used ministry funds to rent his own cabin in Montana for a ministry board meeting.
Warren:
Liam Bernard, who was a leader with Burn 24/7 in Oklahoma City and regionally, said he was forced to cover many of the costs of Burn events out of his own pocket. When he confronted Feucht about financial transparency and accountability, Bernard said he was called names like “fascist” and “communist,” after which he left the ministry.
Sean Feucht Ministries earns an “F” transparency grade, no stars for financial efficiency, and a donor confidence score of 19 out of 100, meaning donors should withhold giving.
Natasha:
Next, The Rev. William J. Barber II’s ex-wife has asked a judge to look into allegations that the civil rights and anti-poverty leader has been paying her alimony from the finances of his nonprofit.
Warren:
Barber, who has been leading “Moral Mondays at the Capitol” to oppose the federal budget bill and was arrested as part of those demonstrations last month, is president of Repairers of the Breach, a nonprofit social change organization based in North Carolina.
In a court filing in in Durham County, North Carolina, Rebecca Barber, the preacher’s ex-wife, alleges that since November 2023, Repairers of the Breach has issued William Barber monthly checks for $7,000 to a joint personal bank account shared by Barber and his ex-wife, “under the guise of alimony or financial support.”
Natasha:
Barber divorced his wife of 37 years in November 2024 after separating in 2022. The couple went through mediation to settle parts of the divorce, including alimony, in a process called equitable distribution. But the mediation failed.
Warren:
Barber may be best known for reviving the Poor People’s Campaign, an anti-poverty effort bearing the name and the goals of the movement launched by Martin Luther King Jr. shortly before his assassination. Barber has preached at several Democratic National Conventions and delivered the homily at President Joe Biden’s inauguration prayer service in 2021.
Natasha:
On May 3, he married the Rev. Della Owens in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Warren:
Repairers of the Breach paid Barber more than $224,000 in salary in 2023, according to the most recent Form 990. That year, the organization had $8.2 million in net assets.
Natasha:
Let’s look at one more story before we take a break, what do you have?
Warren:
Bryan Chappell has announced that he plans to retire as stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) following pushback from his recent appearance on the Gospelbound podcast with Collin Hansen.
According to a statement published in byFaith, the denominational publication of the PCA, Chappell said he plans to ask the Administrative Committee to approve his retirement at its meeting next week.
During the podcast with Hansen, Chappell said he held up a small piece of paper that was a “list of social media ‘scandalizers’ who later experienced personal consequences from their commentary habits.”
Chappell told Hansen, “I’m going to show this to you quickly. And every name on that list has either left his family, left the faith, or taken his life. Every name on that list.”
Natasha:
Who’s on the list?
Warren:
Screenshots of the enlarged list circulated on social media revealing some of the names, including Dr. Carl Trueman, Aimee Byrd, Tim Bayly, Michelle Higgins, Andy Webb, Dr. Wes White, and Dr. Peter Leithart.
The podcast video was removed from the Gospel Coalition website and replaced by statements from Chappell and Hansen.
Chappell said, “With deep regret for harm done to others, I am issuing a public apology for not taking proper care to protect the reputation of others.”
“This podcast has been removed. I couldn’t read the names over video and did not check during editing to review the list. I apologize for neglecting that review,” Hansen wrote.
Natasha:
After criticism, Chappell issued the additional statement published in byFaith.
Warren:
Chappell said in his latest statement. “I brought unwarranted disrepute upon persons identified in the screenshot. For this wrongdoing I repent to my Lord and I apologize to the individuals, their families, and the church I serve. I have begun, and will continue, personally to ask forgiveness from those I harmed. I also confess the seriousness of these errors and sin,”
Chappell was elected as the stated clerk of the PCA in 2021, served as the president of the PCA’s Covenant Seminary in St. Louis from 1994 to 2012, and is a founding council member of The Gospel Coalition.
Natasha:
Warren, let’s take a quick break. When we return, the construction of a new school is the latest in Doug Wilson’s decades long effort to transform the town of Moscow, Idaho, into a conservative Christian redoubt.
I’m Natasha Cowden, along with my co-host Warren Smith, and we’ll have that story and much more, after this short break.
BREAK
SECOND SEGMENT
Natasha:
Welcome back. I’m Natasha Cowden, along with my co-host Warren Smith, and you’re listening to the MinistryWatch podcast.
Next, the story we promised before the break.
Warren:
On 30 acres at the edge of Moscow, Idaho, construction crews are erecting a Jeffersonian set of classical buildings arranged around a central quad, resembling a miniature University of Virginia. It’s the new campus for Logos School, part of the influential pastor Doug Wilson’s decades long effort to transform this college town into a conservative Christian redoubt.
The expansion reflects the rapid growth of Wilson’s Christ Church, which he has led for nearly 50 years. Driven by families with four to six children on average and emigration (“people were chased here by blue state governors,” Wilson said), the church has doubled in size since 2019 to about 3,000 people — roughly 10% of the population of this university town in Idaho’s northern panhandle.
Natasha:
Doug Wilson has been featured on conservative talk shows, including Tucker Carlson’s. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attends a church in Wilson’s denomination and has praised Wilson’s writings.
Warren:
In July, Wilson will open a new congregation in Washington, D.C., aimed at ”strategic opportunities with numerous evangelicals who will be present both in and around the Trump administration.”
Christ Church now has five churches in all. The growth goes beyond Sunday services. Wilson’s network includes New Saint Andrews College, with about 300 students; Canon Press publishing house; and the growing Logos School system.
Natasha:
Nationally, Christ Church is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which has approximately 150 congregations all across the country.
Warren:
The new campus and continued church planting, Wilson said, are necessary to serve a growing population. With 40% of his congregation under age 14, he anticipates practical needs ahead.
“All those kids are going to have to go to school somewhere,” he said. “All of them are going to have to marry somebody.”
Natasha:
Now this story has a lot to it that we can’t get into here, but can you briefly describe his model?
Warren:
Wilson’s approach emphasizes what he calls “entrepreneurial” Christianity. Church members operate multiple businesses throughout Moscow’s downtown. Wilson describes this as “dominion” — influencing society through service rather than coercion.
“We don’t direct them, but we do teach our people that they should be entrepreneurial. They should be service oriented. They should do good work,” Wilson explained.
The church’s business network helps fund its expansion. Wilson said individual members, not the church itself, own the downtown businesses.
Natasha:
Let’s move to Texas where, For much of the past decade, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Warren:
Once the nation’s largest seminary, and one of six Southern Baptist seminaries, the school has been a center of controversy since the 2018 firing of its former president, Paige Patterson, for mishandling a claim of sexual abuse by a female student at a previous job. Since then, the school has ousted a second president, who then sued the school, admitted to overspending its budget by $140 million, fought in court with ex-employees over a foundation that supported the school, dealt with a Department of Justice investigation, and experienced internal board conflict over declining enrollment and fiscal crisis.
Natasha:
By the time David Dockery, a soft-spoken but well-respected Baptist leader, was named the school’s interim president in the fall of 2022, the school was out of cash. in fact, in September of 2022 they had $4.2 million of short-term debt with the credit line maxed out.
Warren:
Today, the school is in a place of “genuine stability,” according to Dockery, 72, who dropped the interim from his title in 2023. Enrollment is up, the school has paid off its short-term debt and has $10 million in cash on hand. More importantly, perhaps, the trustees and school administration are on the same page. “The spirit on campus is positive, and people are encouraged about the direction of the seminary,” Dockery said.
Before coming to Southwestern, Dockery was president of Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School outside Chicago. And besides a reputation as a solid scholar, according to Hankins, he had a history of effective leadership, including dealing with crisis.
Fixing the school’s finances also meant selling off some of the seminary’s property. In 2023, the school sold a 20-acre property for about $14 million, which helped eliminate its debt.
Natasha:
Now that the school is stable, the next task is to make sure the school has a plan for a sustainable and healthy future.
Warren:
“We have ongoing work to do to be in a place of what I would say is institutional health and flourishing, and so we’re working toward those ends,” Dockery said.
Natasha:
Next, a ministry trainee sues the Atlanta Dream Center
Warren:
A woman, identified as Jane Doe, has filed a lawsuit accusing the Atlanta Dream Center, also known as Frontline Response International, along with the Assemblies of God, of a “sophisticated human trafficking and forced labor operation disguised as a religious ministry.”
The lawsuit filed in federal court in April claims the ministry recruited young people under the auspices of missionary training, who were then forced to engage in “unpaid labor” at events and gatherings across the country.
Natasha:
The “devout Pentecostal teenagers and young adults” were recruited with promises of housing, food, and training for the ministry.
Warren:
Instead, the court documents claim, the students “were subjected to abhorrent living conditions, including being crammed into overcrowded rooms and forced to sleep on cold floors or in vans in dangerous, crime-ridden areas of Atlanta and other major cities. They were often forced to perform chores at the church or other designated locations for 12 to 14 hours a day, typically six days a week, with minimal time scheduled for their promised ministerial education.”
Natasha:
The plaintiff raises claims under the Trafficking and Victims Reauthorization Act.
Warren:
Frontline Response, located in Atlanta, says it works on the front lines “every day rescuing men and women out of homelessness and sex trafficking, while preventing children and vulnerable individuals from falling victim.”
It claims to have helped over 3,000 men, women, and children since its founding in 2006.
The Atlanta Dream Center church is affiliated with the Assemblies of God denomination.
Natasha:
Warren, we’re going to take another break. When we return, our lightning round of ministry news of the week.
I’m Natasha Cowden, with my co-host Warren Smith. More in a moment.
BREAK
THIRD SEGMENT
Natasha:
Welcome back. I’m Natasha Cowden, with my co-host Warren Smith and you’re listening to the MinistryWatch Podcast.
Warren, we like to use this last segment as a sort of lightning round of shorter news briefs.
What’s up first?
Warren:
Tim Dalrymple, currently the CEO and president of Christianity Today magazine, will become the third president of the Templeton Foundation, based in West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, at the end of July. The foundation, which controls more than $3 billion in assets and distributes more than $130 million in grants each year, funds “interdisciplinary research and catalyzes conversations that enable people to pursue lives of meaning and purpose.”
Dalrymple, who holds graduate degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary and Harvard, will succeed Heather Templeton Dill, granddaughter of the foundation’s founder, who is ending her 10-year term as its president.
For the past six years, Dalrymple led Christianity Today — an influential evangelical magazine and media ministry founded by the famed evangelical preacher Billy Graham.
During Dalrymple’s tenure, Christianity Today’s revenue grew from $9.7 million in 2019 to $18.3 million in 2023, according to the ministry’s IRS disclosures. Net assets grew from $6 million to $9.9 million over the same period. The publication also expanded its international content and launched a capital campaign that has raised close to $28 million.
Natasha:
What’s next?
Warren:
About 27% of Christian ministry leaders told MinistryWatch they believe the Trump administration’s policies will have a negative impact on the organization they lead or the work they do. This is an increase from 19% who gave the same answer in our January survey.
In January, nearly 55% of respondents were optimistic that the new administration’s policies would have a positive impact. That has dropped to 38% in this month’s survey. About 27% of respondents say they don’t know what impact the new administration will have.
MinistryWatch has been conducting its quarterly survey of the leaders of the nation’s 1,000 largest Christian ministries since October 2022.
Natasha:
Next, we’ve got a list of the largest advocacy groups in our MinistryWatch 1000 database
Warren:
The organizations on this list are those whose primary work is in advocacy, not direct aid. This includes the arena of public policy, which may focus on life, marriage, and religious liberty.
While the top five largest groups remained the same as last year, there was movement in the top 10.
Natasha:
Global Christian Relief moved down the list five spots, from 6th to 11th place. Giving Children Hope moved from 8th to 20th on the list.
Warren:
This list should not be interpreted as a list of recommended ministries. They are ranked by revenue, and not by ministry effectiveness, financial efficiency, or any other measure. That said, the Financial Efficiency rating, Transparency Grade, and Donor Confidence Score of each ministry is listed.
A few ministries on the list have a donor confidence score exceeding 90: Safe Families for Children, Kingdom Advisors, Christian Alliance for Orphans, and National Religious Broadcasters.
To see the complete list, go to MinistryWatch.com
Natasha:
Who did Brittany look at in this week’s Ministry Spotlight?
Warren:
This week, TCM International Institute’s Transparency Grade fell from a C to a D. The organization does not file a Form 990 or make its audited financials available on its website.
According to TCM’s Guidestar profile, its IRS classification is “a church.”
The organization’s website states that TCM exists to develop “Christian leaders for significant service through higher learning.” Its strategy is to come “alongside Christians who are leading in their own countries and have a passion for reaching their people for Christ. Through our institute we can develop a Christian leader for a fraction of the cost it would take to send a U.S. missionary to that same country.”
According to its 2024 Audited Financial Statement, the organization had a revenue of $3.95 million, and expenses were $3.96 million. It also has $9 million in net assets.
Natasha:
And who did Christina highlight in Ministries Making a Difference?
Warren:
Through the work of Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), nearly 30 million children worldwide were exposed to the gospel in 2024—an increase of 2.2 million children from the year prior. CEF also trained more than 534,000 teachers. The ministry’s primary discipleship programs are its Good News Clubs and Christmas Party Clubs, but it has also expanded its digital U-Nite platform, which includes TV, radio, and games.
MidAmerica Nazarene University (MNU) in Olathe, Kansas, has elected Dr. Jon North as its 6th president. North, who will take the helm July 1, is an MNU alum and has worked at the university for 15 years. He led the “university’s most extensive fundraising campaign, raising over $90 million for scholarships, academic initiatives, and capital development.” Before his tenure at MNU, he was CEO at Heart to Heart International.
Natasha:
Warren, any final thoughts before we go?
Warren:
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Natasha:
The producer for today’s program is Jeff McIntosh. We get database and other technical support from Stephen DuBarry, Rod Pitzer, and Casey Sudduth. Writers who contributed to today’s program include Kim Roberts, Yonat Shimron, Jack Jenkins, Tracy Simmons, Bob Smietana, Brittany Smith, and Christina Darnell.
I’m Natasha Cowden, coming to you from Denver, Colorado.
Warren:
And I’m Warren Smith, in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Natasha:
You’ve been listening to the MinistryWatch podcast. Until next time, may God bless you.
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