In recent weeks, the right-wing Christ-o-sphere has been alight with outrage over Bethel Church’s protection of an alleged sexual predator and confirmed false prophet, Shawn Bolz. Last time we met up, we talked about how laughably inept Bolz is at what he calls prophecy. But there’s a far darker side to his story, and it involves the alleged sexual predation he committed against a large number of men for many years—and the Charismatic leaders who knew and did nothing to stop him or help his victims.
Today, we’re going to take a look at what Bethel’s leaders knew, when they knew it, and why they didn’t warn anybody sooner.
(This post and its audio ‘cast first went live on Patreon on 2/3/2026. They’re both available now! From introduction: The ChatGPT post; Wartburg Watch’s writeup.)
SITUATION REPORT: Bethel’s leaders protected Shawn Bolz because that would in turn protect Bethel
On January 17, 2026, Mike Winger uploaded a nearly six-hour-long YouTube video. It concerned Bethel Church, a weird Charismatic church in northern California, and their association with a false prophet and alleged sexual predator, Shawn Bolz.
(I capitalize Charismatic to indicate that it’s an add-on DLC module for Christianity. Charismatic Christians go in for all that flashy miracle stuff: Speaking in tongues, magic healing, prophecy, the entire nine yards.)
It’s an incredible video, and it contains a lot of receipts.
In response, on January 25 Bethel Church’s leaders issued what they called “an important statement” about Shawn Bolz.
But this isn’t the first time they’ve had to issue a statement about Shawn Bolz. Just one year ago, they issued a markedly similar one. This new one is a lot longer—and contains elements that are entirely missing from the first one.
Today, we’re going to ask what Bethel’s leaders knew, when they knew it, and why their followers should not ever believe their tearful apologies.
A quick Shawn Bolz timeline: The crony network, illustrated
I use the term crony network to describe a professional clique whose members protect each other, do each other favors, find and train new leaders, and consolidate power for their organization. In evangelicalism, though, they keep their collusion on the downlow. To get an idea of the network’s membership, one must observe who shares stages with and introduces whom, who guest-preaches where, whose endorsements appear on whose books, and the like.
So as I show you the Shawn Bolz timeline, I’ll stop to note important connections he forged within the uppermost ranks of Charismatic leadership.
- Baby Shawn Bolz is born in 1974. His parents attended John Wimber’s very first Vineyard church. John Wimber is royalty in Charismatic evangelical circles. Wimber was also thick as thieves with the Kansas City Prophets, a very important group of Charismatics in the 1980s. Shawn Bolz associated with this group as a “younger prophet” the older guys mentored.
- Bolz graduated somewhere around 1992, then got a Certificate in Theology from Grace Training Center in 1995. This school closed around 2000. Metro Christian Fellowship ran it. Mike Bickle pastored Metro before he started IHOPKC (International House of Prayer). At the end of 2023, IHOPKC cut ties with Bickle after his sex abuse scandal broke, but he and his church are still Charismatic royalty.
- From the mid-90s to about 2003, Bolz volunteered at Metro and IHOPKC under Bickle. Bickle clearly took an interest in Bolz and gave him a number of leadership roles.
- From 2003-2006, he finally left the Kansas City area to work for WhiteDove Ministries in Alabama. Its leader, Paul Keith Davis, had strong ties to the Kansas City Prophets through Bob Jones (not that Bob Jones or his dad with the university; this is a whole other guy).
- In 2006 and with WhiteDove’s help, Bolz starts Expression58, a church in Los Angeles. He keeps busy with speaking engagements and whatnot, but he’s not hot reading people (mining their data and pretending Jesus told him their personal details). Not yet. Social media still isn’t quite ubiquitous enough for that.
- In 2013, Bolz joins HIM (Harvest International Ministry), whose members include Bill Johnson of Bethel Church! It’s tightly tied to all kinds of Charismatic leaders. From 2013-2019, he’d frequently preach and teach at Bethel’s School of Supernatural Ministry (hereafter referred to as Hogwarts).
- 2014: Bolz helps a Bethel pastor, Kris Vallotton, during his nervous breakdown. Unsurprisingly, afterward Bolz begins popping up at Bethel events.
- 2016: Bill Johnson personally introduces Bolz onstage at Azusa Now, a major Charismatic event. Bolz does his prophecy grift there. From here until 2019, he pops up constantly at Charismatic churches to hot read people (you can see one example here).
- 2019: Bethel quietly backs away from this golden-boy prophet. Ron Cantor, a Charismatic blogger with no known connections to anyone in the story, says he found out about the fake prophecies this year. Cantor’s leaders assured him they were dealing with it. (Spoiler: They sure weren’t!)
- 2020: Vallotton warns at least one other person about Bolz. The leader of HIM also learns about the allegations. Neither leader warns anybody else.
- 2025: The first statement about Bolz goes out—but church leaders address it only to the alumni of Hogwarts.
- January 17, 2026: Mike Winger’s video goes out. About a week later, Bethel’s second statement goes out—to Bethel church members.
- Between January 17 – now: Bolz DFEs (deletes fucking everything), but he accidentally leaves up a draft statement about “prophetic integrity” that was edited and published in January 2025. Somehow, he avoids mentioning the whole sex abuse thing in either version. (I’m still laughing about the sheer number of technical things that had to go wrong for that draft to A) stay on his site through a DFE and B) get indexed by search engines.) Neither version can be accessed through his site, which is largely empty now.
Just imagine the sheer number of people who had to know that Bolz was a fake and an alleged sexual predator—yet did nothing whatsoever to warn anyone. Not even that blogger Ron Cantor did, for all his moral posturing on Facebook. Nobody did. His connections to so many high-ranking leaders and important churches meant his victims had to navigate a minefield around him.
I wanted to give you an idea of the size of the crony network, its interconnected leaders, and its protective power. Now that we have that established, let’s connect it to Bethel’s first not-pology.
Bethel’s 2025 not-pology
On February 3rd, 2025, Bethel issued a statement about Shawn Bolz. They addressed it “to alumni.” It’s extremely likely that they released this statement only because rumors about him had grown too big to ignore. After all, warning and protecting their flocks hadn’t mattered for six years. That stuff certainly wouldn’t matter to them in 2025. The brand, however, matters always.
At first, I thought “alumni” was their weird word for “congregation,” but it isn’t. Rather, they refer here to the graduates of Hogwarts. According to La Wiki, that school has “more than 10,000 alumni.” They did not see fit to alert their 8k-11k church members or the 2M-4M fans of their music, or the 20M-ish people listening to their podcast every week. No, they just wanted to talk to the 10k people who’ve graduated from Hogwarts.
It’s also noteworthy that their primary concern appears to be the hot reading. They admit that they got “a dozen” pieces of evidence that Bolz was using social media to craft divine-sounding fake prophecies for specific people in his audiences. But they didn’t consider that a lot of evidence considering “the hundreds [of words] he’s given.” (In Christianese, “words” here means “words from the Lord.” They’re a form of prophecy.)
Because Shawn Bolz insisted he hadn’t mined his data, Bethel’s leaders say “we ended up in a stalemate.” So they didn’t make any kind of public statement. But here’s where it gets sinister. After excusing themselves for not making their suspicions public, they write this:
Without definitive proof, repentance, and/or team consensus, we made no public statement because we weren’t sure. The leaders who previously investigated and gathered the evidence were, of course, free to do what they thought best going forward.
And I would really, really like to know who exactly wrote that and if he really, really expected any Charismatic leader to blow the whistle on Shawn Bolz when the royalty of the movement refused to do so. That’d be one quick way to torch one’s career, I reckon. And predictably, nobody seems to have felt up to taking that risk.
They also briefly cover Bolz’ alleged sexual predation on the men who worked for him. When Bethel leaders confronted him about it, Bolz promised he had “stopped” doing that stuff. Problem solved! They told his victims to contact the police, and do not consider it their problem that none did it. I can easily see a less-powerful evangelical man being very reluctant to take that step, especially if he knows that other big-name leaders know what’s going on and refuse to lift a finger.
The statement contains absolutely no remorse, and no concrete plans for doing anything different when—not if—they encounter another predator operating in their sheepfold. It exists only to exonerate Bethel’s leaders from any hint of blame for staying silent about Shawn Bolz for six years.
Bethel’s 2026 not-pology: What, you expected anything different?
*cracks her knuckles, settles in*
In vivid contrast, Bethel’s 2026 statement about Shawn Bolz is addressed to the “Church” itself. This could mean just the 10k-ish people attending Bethel now, or it could mean them plus the many millions of people who engage with their religious content. Also in contrast to the 2025 statement, this one gives us specific names of each section’s writer. We get not-pologies specifically from Bill Johnson and Kris Vallotton, though the statement also names Dann Farrelly (lead pastor and Dean of Hogwarts) and Danny Silk (a senior Bethel leader).
Even as evangelical not-pologies go, this one uses a striking amount of Christianese to manipulate readers. It begins by asking readers “to cover us with grace as we seek the Lord for forgiveness in the face of some grievous mistakes.” That means they want readers to ignore what happened because Jesus is making them feel super-sorry. (“Grieved” is Jesus-flavored sadness—a potent manipulation word. When you hear it, fan out your ninja whiskers. It’s important.)
In fact, that’s really all this letter is: An attempt at damage control in the face of a catastrophic optics failure. They repeatedly insist they’re totally “taking responsibility” without doing any such thing, repeatedly stress how they feel about getting caught staying silent about an alleged predator and fraud, and offer weak “reforms” that amount to letting more Bethel foxes watch the henhouse. Here’s one excerpt:
The truth is, we have hurt and scared people because we did not tell the truth enough, early enough, long enough, or loud enough, and this is a just criticism. Our hearts are grieved, and embarrassed.
Let me say this really loud for the folks in the back:
NOBODY CARES HOW PREDATOR SHIELDERS FEEL AFTER THEY SHIELDED PREDATORS FOR YEARS AND FINALLY GOT CAUGHT RED-HANDED DOING IT.
The time to express how grieved and embarrassed they are about associating with Shawn Bolz was back in 2019. They missed their shot.
And still it gets worse, somehow
In Kris Vallotton’s section of the 2026 statement, he writes about how Bolz helped him during a nervous breakdown in 2014. That undoubtedly predisposed Vallotton favorably toward Bolz. Vallotton tells us that in 2019, he learned that the sex abuse allegations were completely credible. But he did nothing about them. Instead, he confronted Bolz several times about that and the hot reading. Bolz continually insisted he was innocent.
Though Vallotton very obviously didn’t believe these protests, he still felt reluctant to publicly reveal his suspicions. Instead, Bethel’s leadership decided just to quietly distance themselves from Bolz. Vallotton writes that they:
. . . felt that we had done what we could. However, this was a major mistake. We should have told our church and wider community in 2020. We did not. That was wrong.
He adds that he’s “grieved” that Bethel chose not to say anything publicly until Mike Winger’s video came out. In fact, it gets even worse. Vallotton blocked a victim trying to contact him for help:
And regrettably, when one of the victims of Shawn’s sexual allegations reached out to me for help in this crisis, after several conversations and phone calls, I made a decision to remove his access to me without compassion due to my personal overwhelm. I am grieved by my actions.
Oh yes. Vallotton is incredibly grieved. GRIEVED, he tells ya!
Nobody should trust Bethel leaders, ever
Bethel’s leaders knew six years ago that Shawn Bolz was a liar and predator. How many people were conned and abused by Bolz since then? If it’s a nonzero number at all, then those leaders should need to do a lot more than cry Jesus-flavored tears. Their flocks deserve better than a crony network closing ranks for years at their expense.
In the next section from Bill Johnson, we see Johnson admit he’s “not good at confrontation.” Johnson also tells us he’s finally realized he really needs to learn how to “place the victim as the first priority” before eventually trying to “restore the victimizer.”
Folks, Bill Johnson is completely on board with allowing sexual predators to operate amidst his flocks—as long as he thinks they’re GRIEVED enough and all better now. I am just reeling at the sight of him saying this in his out loud voice. What, does Yahweh have only a very limited number of prophets he can send to his followers? Why is there not a one-strike-you’re-out rule for serious transgressions?
And Johnson still doesn’t understand that watchdogs are only as good as their lack of standing in the crony network. He thinks an internal watchdog committee will keep predators away from the flocks.
Alas, Johnson and Vallotton themselves have shown that their first instinct is to protect the Bethel brand above all other considerations. I’ve no doubt they remember Paul Cain of the Kansas City Prophets, who humiliated Charismatics with a sex scandal years ago! I doubt they want a repeat of that experience.
But to be effective, church watchdogs must be third-party and completely immune to all manipulation by church leaders. Otherwise, Bethel’s leaders are just moving their problem one step over—and hoping the flocks don’t notice.
Bethel’s leaders can’t lead effectively. Their two main leaders have even said so themselves. And now that good leadership matters more than ever in their current crisis, Bethel’s consumers and members only have these schmucks. I suspect Shawn Bolz’ cronies protected him for years because they knew it’d be disastrous for the brand if such a well-connected guy got exposed for fraud and sex abuse. And now they’re desperately protecting themselves and their brand by saying whatever they think will get the flocks off their backs.
They’re just grieved that they got caught. I hope nobody takes them up on their offer to chat with the people Bolz hot-read or abused, because these guys don’t have the leadership or ethical chops to deal with either situation.
NEXT UP: Despite what Mike Winger thinks, the Shawn Bolz situation is not just a Charismatic thing. See you soon! <3
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