The following transcript came from a meeting that was held on February 3, 2026 at Bethel Church in Redding, California. At least four hundred people were in attendance at this meeting. The contents of the meeting pertained to the recent events surrounding the exposure of Shawn Bolz as a false prophet and allegations of sexual deviance in the presence of former staff members. This meeting was held prior to the allegations made public concerning Ben Armstrong. This transcript was provided by an attendee of this meeting. *Note: This transcript originally contained an abbreviated version based on meeting notes focused on key questions. This blog post now contains the Q&A portion, and this is provided for informational purposes only.

Bethel Church – February 3, 2026

Question Regarding Any Regrets

Havilah Cunnington:

“Bill, two Sundays ago was incredibly difficult. Personally, having been in ministry for 30 years
myself and 20 years as a pastor’s kid, I’ve never seen leaders get up and do what you did
ever. All three of you ever.
As I sat here, not as a pastor, I sat here as a parent, as I watched my four kids get to witness
what you did, all three of you, heroically. But I know that, with the repentance of Sunday, I
know we as leadership have talked a lot about it continually for many days, over and over. But,
could you speak or revisit the things you grieved over or you regret? I know you said it on
Sunday, but I think us hearing it as a family is really important.“

Answer- Bill Johnson

“We don’t have enough time to hear what I regret. Honestly, the biggest thing, I think, is when
you see that you’ve made a mistake… First of all, let me go back: when the outpouring of the
Spirit began here, and we would make hard decisions and choose to move with God, and
people were affected negatively by something God was doing. I felt bad then.
So you can multiply that by about a thousand when you realize people are affected negatively
by decisions I made, or we made, and their lives have been horribly impacted in a very
negative, painful way.
I don’t know how you get worse than that, because what we’re here to do is help people get
healed up and be strengthened in life and to make a decision that would have that kind of
impact on people’s life, their walk with God, their walk with people, their walk with the church
family and that’s just the worst thing.
So that’s the stuff that hurts the most for me, and I’m sure the whole team would agree. Just
watching, and the people we’ve talked to who have been affected by it, it’s just painful. It’s
painful to come face-to- face with the results of bad choices. Yeah.”

Key Questions and Full Answers (Context Preserved)

Question: Harm Caused by the Prophetic

Asked by Havilah Cunnington:

“I watched all three of you get emotional that Sunday, and I wonder, for those that do feel victim to the prophetic or to moving their family here, being a part, buying Shawn’s books, attending the conferences, and they are, they feel victim to that for good reason. What would you say to them? And I know you’ve said a lot, but I really think we want to hear from you.”

Answer — Bill Johnson

“I think if I can be totally frank. I think it’s worth it.

I think becoming a part of what God’s doing here, in spite of the failures, in spite of the blemishes, in spite of the wrong decisions. You know, that’s not who we are. It’s what we impart. But what God’s doing here is having incredible impact.

 And I would say, I don’t know, I’m not sure if this is the right setting to say it, but Caiaphas prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, bring the whole nation together into one. He was a man with a murderous heart…he was (unintelligible) that killed Jesus, but God used him to bring the Word of the Lord. Don’t be real quick to throw out anything that you heard from somebody who has been wrong. I don’t know if that sits well tonight. Just pray. Have God confirm it. He can speak His Word.

I said… I had a friend contact me that received one of the strongest words (from Shawn), and he said, “Even if he made the word up, he revealed the Father’s heart.” And he was thankful for seeing it. because it’s backed by Scripture. It may be misapplied, but it’s still the word of God.

And so, I don’t know. I would say, be careful before you throw it out, before you flush it. I mean, I have had to flush words too. I get it, I am a magnet for the prophetic, so I get all kinds of interesting things. I almost crossed over wisdom and told you one of them, and I’m glad I did not, thank the Lord for…”

Follow‑Up: Retaining Words from Disqualified Leaders

Clarification by Havilah Cunnington:

“You’re saying that God, in His wisdom, can… and I think this is the vulnerability for us as a
movement: is to not lose the beauty of what God has done in and through us, and to not put a
stain on the prophetic of what God is doing, and yet, we have been victimized to
something serious.“

Answer — Bill Johnson
“It’s horrible. There’s no excuse. It’s horrible…um and
I’m not talking about the sexual misconduct—I’m talking about the prophetic words. It could be…
I mean, I’ve had words from people that I had zero respect for in their personal lives, but they
spoke the word of the Lord. And to be honest, it’s up to us to discern that.
You may get a great encouraging word from the most “clean” prophet you know—you still have
to weigh it. It’s one of the things that Kris has emphasized for years: is in the Old Testament,
we judge the prophet; in the New Testament, we judge the word that was given. And we do
have that responsibility.
So I just want to encourage you—I don’t know if this is the right time for it or not—but if you
received a prophetic word from somebody that you question, go ahead and question it, but
don’t flush it unless you know for sure it’s not from the Lord. Put it on a shelf. Let it ferment.
Let’s see if God actually uses it to speak to you.
Because I’ve got words I’m saving from people that I no longer trust, but they spoke under the
anointing of the Lord and deposited something in my life. And so I’m not flushing those words.
That’s just my personal journey, but that’s how I live it.“

Havilah Cunnington:

“Yeah, it’s true. It is the mystery, and ultimately God is in control. We said this in the back room:
there’s no man that can take away God’s purpose for your life.
And so ultimately, if the guy got it wrong, and he did, and we all agree he got it really wrong;
he got it tragically wrong, embarrassingly wrong, humiliation. Um, but he has no power over what
God has for us. And he has no power, whether you moved somewhere, bought something,
did something, the plan of God will be sustained in our lives no matter what. And so we don’t
trust in man.“

Bill Johnson
“If I could add to that, I have a real heart for those who made decisions based on those prophetic words, and they were wrong, and it’s cost you. That’s painful. That’s really rough, to see people that… We
believe in the prophetic so much. It’s such a huge part of our culture, our life, and to see
people sell this and buy this and bury this person and do this and do that. And as a result of
prophetic words that were in error, you know, obviously, there’s no excuse, but we grieve over
that, because we have this mandate to protect the purity of the prophetic. Kris and the team,
Ben, these guys, they work hard to maintain purity and accountability in the prophetic. Which, for us, it
just makes it all trustworthy.
And then for us to bring someone in that we trusted, and then find out that’s going on, and
undermine people’s faith or relationships. It’s just horrible. Horribly painful to see it happen.
Because we still have to fight for the prophetic. We still have to… Thessalonians says, “Don’t
despise prophetic utterances.” Well, how do you get to a place where you despise it? Maybe
abuse is one of the ways you despise it.
And so we’ve got a challenge right now to really protect in our heart the prophetic, you know, and just because we have it in this culture, and I don’t want that changed. We fought hard to build that, and you
(Havilah) are a huge part of it. We brought you in every year for a long time to help build that here. So I
treasure that part.
I…We’re going to strengthen accountability. That’s something our team has practiced over
themselves for years. But we have to hold a higher standard for who we bring in, and we’ll
learn from this. We got that one wrong, but we’ll learn from this.“

Question: TBN Appearance and Endorsement After Meeting a Victim

Asked by Havilah Cunnington:

“And I hope you hear that- we are obsessed with getting this right. So, we are…
I mean, I’m telling you: every leader, our fathers, as well as the younger SLT, we are going to
get this right. We are asking hard questions. We are digging deep. We are being uncomfortable
together. We are being awkward. We are saying things we would never have imagined
ourselves saying in rooms, because we want things to be pure on every level.
And so I want you to know, and I’ve witnessed Bill do that in our environment, and he’s not
afraid for us to ask those questions. And when he doesn’t have an answer, he says, ‘I don’t
know.’
I think part of the purity of the movement was you didn’t believe somebody would be this
deceptive. I hate to say that. As someone who’s been prophetic for 30 years, it was hard to
imagine: “You’re malpractice. You’re a doctor, and you are mutilating bodies.” I’m so sorry. We
all took an oath. We just assumed you would honor the oath.
And so part of the delay was not even that we saw it, but it was this unbelievable, how could
someone be so insane and so manipulative and not have the fear of God, that they would be
willing to put everything at risk, somebody else’s life at risk? Was shocking and violating.
and so I think it took a while for that to become true in our hearts, because of the purity that
we’ve held as a house over that.
Um, the last question is a hard question, Bill, and I think it’s a necessary question, and something
that we’ve been asked over and over, in every meeting. One of the most painful and confusing
parts of this journey and this part of the experience was after you met with a victim, why go on
TBN? Why write an endorsement? Why?
And again, we’re looking back, that’s the question, right? And so I want to ask it so I can ask it
for everybody who wants to ask that question.”

Answer — Bill Johnson
“It’s the right question to ask. You know, probably in the last…I don’t know, 10 or 20 years, I
don’t know if there’s one thing I could change, it would be that one thing.

I need you to know my frame of mind. I used a biblical concept that I live by, but I misapplied it. So I
want you to make sure you hear that, I misapplied it, and I’ll tell you how in a moment.
Jesus called Peter a rock when he was a broken reed. He called Gideon a mighty man of valor
when he was hiding for fear.
And so I look for awkward situations to speak something of what I believe is the heart of God
for that individual, even if circumstances look the opposite. I started practicing that in
Weaverville 40 years ago, and it’s a standard that I live by, and I’ve been able to call people into their
destiny.
I blew it on this one, and have badly. Had I remembered, or had I considered, the effect it would
have on the victims, I never would have done it. But I didn’t. I only had one thing in mind: and
that was I wanted to get into this and deposit something of faith, of courage, into somebody that
has been a friend.
I did Shawn’s wedding. Shawn and Cherie, I did their wedding. So we all have history. But I
have that history (choked up).
You know, look, the bottom part is to try to bring the heart of God into impossible situations, and that’s
what we do. Everybody on this team, that’s what we do day in and day out.
On this one, I was wrong. I was really, really wrong. And had I just thought for a moment of the
effect what I was doing would have on victims, it would have been an easy decision,
but I missed God on that so badly.”

Response to Bill and Question Regarding Accountability and the Culture of Honor

Havilah Cunnington:

“Wow. Can you guys… I mean, that’s… beautiful.
Let me say something. When I came to Bethel 13 years ago, I had been in a lot of green rooms, a lot of leadership places. And to be honest, you were raised in ministry too-ou would know this, usually
leaders don’t talk nicely about each other. There’s gossip, slander, competition, all kinds of
things.
When I got here, I was stunned that no one talked negatively about anybody in any room,
even SLT. I’ve never heard Bill, Kris, Dan speak negatively about someone in a slanderous way, ever. And it was so profound.
It brought such trust in me that I could be myself in this environment, and no one was going to
talk ill of me, and they weren’t going to judge me on my worst day.
The underside of that is: no one talks about the negative thing that somebody else does. That’s
the underbelly of this. You so reject the negative that when you’re hearing it, you’re so used to
saying, “I’m going to believe the best,” that you don’t see it.
And so I believe that is the heart of God for us, that we would always see the gold. That is the
heart.
And if there is an issue, we have each other to say, “Hold up.” He’s an idiot. He’s an idiot. He
might be your idiot.
He might have done the idiot’s wedding, but we can all agree he’s an idiot, right?
No, no, but you know what I’m saying. We’ve got to be able to say, “We love you—and you’re
an idiot.” And it’s Greek for… you are weak. You have a weakness.
So there are things we want you to ask tonight. We’re going to ask you questions, Bill. Thank
you for opening your heart. I know this is painful, and I respect it immensely.
We will talk more about victims and all the things we have planned. But tonight is about you.
It’s about your questions.
And I hope you saw we’re trying to ask the hard questions. We’re trying to go there. It is
painful. It is a lot.
Michelle is going to ask some questions, and Dann and Kris are going to come up.
I want to ask a few questions for Dann and Kris, Dann, let me ask you… and we’re going to
put a chair… yeah, you’re good. We’re going to bring one up. Dann, if you just kneel (unintelligible laughter) I don’t know. It feels appropriate.
There are two kinds of people, there’s those that laugh during tragedy, and those that cry. My parents
taught me wrong.
So, Dann: what does accountability, repair, and the culture of honor look like as we move
forward?”

Dann Farrelly:

Dann Farrelly
“When we talk about the culture of honor, I think we need to do some retraining of what that is
and what that means.
Every once in a while, it’s misunderstood, I’ve had, I’ve done confrontation with people
because they’ve made poor decisions, and they’ll be like, “I feel dishonored.” And I’m like,
‘ You made a really poor decision. So, you should probably feel a little sad about that.’
So this doesn’t mean nobody says hard things to me. It…uh… Jeremy reminded us of something you
said to his brother, Jeremy Gonzales, fabulous Revival Group Pastor, he said: honor is
… that honor isn’t in the content; It’s in the way you say it. Does that make sense?
Because sometimes the content is really hard and really frank, but honor is in the way you say
it. I think that’s really helpful. So when it’s functioning, it has a powerful truth-telling component
to it that is necessary.
I do think that there’s, um, I would just say I think Bill mentioned there’s weaknesses overstated sometimes,
the inability to kind of look at something broken and say, “That might be broken,” even though you’re
like, “It’s a broken reed; I don’t want to break it.” And we’re like, “It’s still broken. We’d better do
something about it.”
And so that ability to be able to look at things through those eyes and say, “That thing needs repair;
it’s not well enough.”
And then the ability to just work together with us and with outside voices that can give feedback, because sometimes you don’t know your blind spots. It’s a blind spot because you don’t
know it’s there. Most blind spots I have, it’s not that I don’t know something is there, it’s that I
think something else is there. I don’t know if that’s ever occurred to you. It’s not like there’s nothing there. I look and go, “That thing’s fabulous,” and it ain’t fabulous. So there’s a misunderstanding that’s really sitting there that’s
wreaking havoc on my thinking. So those would be some of the ways.”

Havilah Cunnington:
“It’s excellent. And again, this is a long conversation, not a moment to solve the tension, but to
manage it. And I think we’re going to do that well, because you’ve added really incredible people to
the team.“

Dann Farrelly
Can I just stop real quick. I mean, I think there’s still some forgiveness to be… You know, I just talked to the board about forgiving
me for not giving them information in a timely fashion, so they weren’t able to make good
decisions. So there are real mistakes we’ve made and we need to be able to own them when we make them.
Havilah Cunnington
That’s awesome. Um, Kris, I’m going to give you an easy one. I’m teasing. No,this is not easy. I’m warning
you.
What are we going to do about the other men that have been brought up, like Bob Hartley? I’m
naming him because we’ve named him publicly. But there’s others that are being brought up, um
…what are we, what’s our plan for that? And ah are we expecting, as a church community, to
watch us go through this? Or are we actually, like, what’s the process?

Kris Vallotton
I think um… with Bob Hartley, I think we’re looking at timelines, because we obviously did
excommunicate Bob Hartley, and we sat him down in 2017.
Um, the question in 2017 is what information did we have?
The information I remember was that Bob was…Ja-Jason had watched him Google someone he
was sitting behind. So that was the first time. There was no information that came to us.
We saw…we caught him, and so I met with him.
I think it was Jay and I met with him…no, I met with him the first time, and I just said, “You can’t minister in our anymore.” And he had went through a divorce, I think around 2015, don’t quote dates,
because I’m really bad at dates.
Dann Farrelly
But your point is that we are going to go through the timeline and nail it down.
Kris Vallotton
Yeah, so we, you know. he went through a divorce He was having really tough times, as Bill said, our culture tends to want to see people healed and well.
And so, you know, when we sat him down, we wanted him to stay in our environment to get well. And he
wasn’t a full-time person here. He was mostly at IHOP. So, you know, we sat him down. There were many
conversations like, “Hey, you’re still ministering.” “Well, those are my friends.” And no, no, we
said, “No ministry.” And then later on it came out, it was a few years later, sometime later,
that there was really serious sexual misconduct. And that led to…you have to be… you’re a
danger.
And since then, we’ve had interaction with some victims. Very dangerous man.

And you know, obviously, again, as Bill said, hindsight is 20/20. Having grown up as a victim
myself, yeah, that wouldn’t have last more than one week. But you look back and you’re like,
“Okay, how come it took so long?” And those are good questions to ask ourselves and ask
ourselves how we can do it better.
Um, I do want to address something, I don’t know if you’re going to ask the question, but I do
think that, when it comes to leaders who have this passion, as Bill said, to see everyone
restored, and leaders are, at times ,tend to be the people who people are like, “You failed; you
can’t come back.” And I think Bill, growing up fifth-generation pastor, saw that so much that it
created part of our passion. But I think that one thing that has to change in our environment is, the victim has to come first, no matter who we’re dealing with.
And so I’ll say, this is a shift for me—we have to understand that when there’s a powerful
person in the room, whether it be a Bill Cosby who’s famous, or there’s a pastor, or a business
person, someone powerful, someone has money or influence, that people will do things for them that they…
They’ll behave in ways that are not righteous, and they really are a victim of that person’s
power.
And then when they, when there is a fall, when they’ve been violated, they fear that there’s retribution if
they come out.
I was, you know, I grew up with Bill Cosby, you know and obviously defines my age, but it took years for the first victim to come out for what he was doing. And I mean, we have to learn from that. Like there really is…
people really are victimized when there’s a powerful leader in the room, and they cannot be
blamed for their part. And that is a new revelation for me. The level of that is a revelation for me.
And I think we have to work. First of all, I think what we’ve done is a great first step, the Safe
Church, so people can report anonymously. And of course, the goal is to try to have the victim
safe, you know. And…we have a lot more to do, but that one element right there will shift our culture.
And…and and now we have to build a structure around our repentance,not just talk about it.
But that is the main area that I grieve over, personally. Uh, I think that if we, if I would have done that
better… you look back and you’re like, “I think it would have changed things.” But I definitely
know going forward it will change things.
And we will be, if we get famous for listening to the victim, we’ll get more feedback.

Havilah Cunnington
And the perpetrator will not be empowered and will be nervous.
Kris Vallotton
And the perpetrator will not be empowered.
Havilah Cunnington
Exactly. That’s the goal.
I’m going to give my mic to Michelle. She has questions for you. Excellent Kris.
Michelle
Am I on? All right. Thank you for sharing your heart, Bill. Thank you, guys

All right. Why did…

Kris Vallotton:

Are we going to have another hard one?

Michelle:

I’m giving this to all:

Why did our pastors wait until a podcast came
out drawing attention to this to openly apologize?
Dann Farrelly
We talked about it on Sunday. We didn’t think it was our responsibility.
Kris Vallotton
Yeah, I’d say a few things. One, yes, exactly. So, uh, in the case of Shawn, we took good steps to get Shawn off of our platform. That happened, I think, as quickly as you can when you’re trying to, when you’re believing in someone, and then you realize he’s not good. That did take a little time, admittedly, but once that happened, we took him off our platform. We took all his materials out. We did tell our churches that we were not having him in, and we communicated that. And so…and I, in my thinking, which is flawed, can everyone hear me say that? Okay, was, he has a church–the Expressions58 board, he has a board over his ministry. He’s not on our staff. He’s not even in our network. He’s a person, our friend, who’s been on our staff. So we alerted them. We sent them all the information. We even talked to them. In one case, we all but begged, ‘Can you guys please do something?

At that point, I felt that we had done what we could do. I no longer feel that way. So let me be really clear. The Lord spoke to me, I said this three weeks ago, ‘You have global authority. You don’t want global responsibility.’ And I’m like, oh, thinking, Weaverville, this isn’t working. So that’s why…that’s what happened. I thought we did, I thought we did our bit. And then when people started saying, ‘Why didn’t you do this? Why didn’t you do that? How come you didn’t do that?’ I was like, ‘Well, that’s their responsibility. It’s not my responsibility. ‘But the truth is that not only did we put him on stage…I don’t know how many times over the years…and people are like, ‘Oh, you believe in him.’ And then we didn’t tell the world, ‘Oh, we don’t now believe in him. ‘So how can that not be our responsibility? And especially with someone as…at that level. There are people who are idiots that are not immoral, that immoral. So yes, that was a huge failure. Again, I apologize so many times, but you are bearing the weight of something, you didn’t make the decision. I made that decision, so I am deeply sorry. I apologized to my family, they carry my last name. I apologized to my team, to our regions people, to our business network that we just started, those poor guys. So yeah, the business guys are like, ‘We make worse decisions than that. we’re just not on TV.’ It was comforting for about five minutes. So, but yeah, I’m deeply sorry. But being sorry is not fixing the problem. We are reaching out to the victims. We’ve reached out to several and had some really beautiful conversations. So far,

they’ve been like the most gracious, at least the ones…Now, there have been some that don’t want to talk, so I’m sure they’re probably the ones that are still very much hurting. But the ones who had.. who’ve wanted to talk, one of them said, I wrote to him and said, ‘Your forgiveness changed my life yesterday.’ And he wrote back, ‘Your forgiveness changed my family. ‘So, you know, we’re having some hard conversations too. Had some hard conversations. And we’ve got some really…a whole bunch of information where I thought the fire was this big, it was actually this big, and I’m like, ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea that that man was that dangerous. I’m so sorry.’ So that’s where we’re at. And uh, we are having a lot of really hard conversations inside for our own accountability, making sure we’re changing our culture, making sure, if it ever happens again, that we are on it. I pray to God it never does, but the environment we live in, probably, that’s a pipe dream, to be honest.

Michelle
What does the Bible say leadership should do to protect us from known offenders who have not
yet been exposed? When leaders fall, is it correct that they are restored into leadership, and are
there actions that biblically should remove someone permanently from leadership?
Love to hear your thoughts on that.
Bill Johnson
It’s a little bit [unintelligible talking]… 25 meeting

A lot of these guys are going to answer, but my initial response is really a case by case situation.
It’s not that one person gets more favor. It’s that each situation demands a different response.
Sometimes people just need to be removed from ministry entirely altogether.
When I’ve been involved in situations like that, I say, “Listen, I have zero interest in you being
restored to ministry. My only interest is you being restored as a human, as a man before
God.”
And so, that’s my conversation with them. They’re wanting to get back to ministry; I have zero desire
for them getting back to ministry. I don’t even want that to be the rabbit that motivates them. I
want them to get right because they need to get right.
And so that’s my interaction. And if, after time, somebody has been removed, and you see that
God’s put a grace on their life, that’s where you get a council of people together. They can
pray through it, evaluate that situation.
I don’t like hard and fast rules. Personally, I don’t like, “If somebody commits this sin, they have
two years to recover,” because they may not deal with it in two years.
I think it’s case by case, where people are known and tested and tried, and really see if we can
entrust stuff to them. And then when you do, you don’t give them the whole deal. You let
them…you test the waters with responsibility. Can they handle conflict? Can they handle
disagreement? Can they handle correction? Can they handle someone deciding, “No—you
don’t do this; you do this”? Can they function in that world? If they can, then they become
more and more trustworthy in the environment.
So that’s the kind of approach I have, generically speaking: it really is case by case, what
they’ve done wrong, and what they’ve done to make it right.

Michelle (To Dann)

Want to weigh in there?

Dann Farrelly
I think there are lots of Scriptures that need to be brought to bear on that.
And so as far as the, is the…did they respond in repentance when and when they’re confronted? If you have somebody respond in repentance, I think you can have a new vision for who they are and who potentially they can be. You know, the classic one is Peter, right? He denies Jesus three times, when Jesus needs him the most. And then Jesus finds him and says, ‘Feed my sheep, you’re going to be leading my church.’ and so the idea that people can–that Christ put that guy, the biggest failure, when Jesus needed him the most, in charge. So Jesus has a bit of an odd take about that. That is a little uncomfortable. I’m sure, when other people were martyred, they’re like, ‘Peter lied,’ you know? And just as you think about people who gave their lives in martyrdom, they had to look and go, Jesus actually trusted His church under this apostolic gift that was on Peter as well. So it gets confusing when you’re like, ‘well, how come…if we gave our lives, and Jesus, and this guy didn’t give his life, and yet he’s in charge.’ The Lord sees it a little different than we do with our cut-and-dry understanding. But again, you don’t want to empower scary people. Um…Peter again got rebuked by Paul. He really was messing up the gospel. He withdraws and begins to eat with the Jewish Christians, and Paul had to rebuke him. And so he didn’t stay perfect either. He…Paul read him the riot act in public. So there’s some nuance to this. It is easier to lift straight-on rules, I get that. It’s easier to live with straight-on rules. I just don’t seethe gospel functioning that way.
Michelle
“We have some questions about accountability.
Who is Bill accountable to, and what does accountability for our senior leadership look like? Do
we have a board of elders that are empowered to bring oversight to leadership, and what is
their role?
So maybe you want to start us, Bill.“
Bill Johnson
“The board’s role, you know, six, seven years ago, when this blew up. We had a wonderful board, but they
weren’t as intimately involved as they are now. So we’ve already made changes in the last few
years, actually, a lot of it through Kris’s leadership, while I was out with my wife, but they’re
much more involved.
Who am I accountable to? To the team. Um…I’ve got the Revival Alliance. I have a group of… it was
12 of us, there’s 11 of us still on. I have a group there that I speak with, and they can speak
into my life. And there’s that relationship. Uh, have the board itself, if they have an issue with me, can
address anything with me at any time.
This whole situation has brought up all kinds of things that I’m sure will be discussed in the
future meetings, but…it….
I have a number of people that come into my office and tell me what they think.“

Kris Vallotton
“I do think that the situation we’ve been in this season is, and we talked about this, a sign that we
need to strengthen our accountability. Not just like, “this guy I’m accountable to,” but the fact
that we need to be talking. We need to be having conversations. We need to be saying, “Hey,
don’t go on TBN, that’s a bad plan, and here’s why.”
And so we need to have more of those conversations. And we have. We’ve begun to make
agreements like, “Let’s move together as one person.”
I think that…I think that these things… Sometimes you don’t know it’s broken until you put
weight on it. You do something wrong and you realize: you know what, hard conversations
with each other probably would have…I don’t know if it would have solved everything? I don’t
know. It’s hard to look back and say. But we probably would have made better decisions if we
had some hard conversations. And we have struggled at times to have hard conversations with
one another.
And then you add on top of that… you know, how hard those conversations are when you’re
losing your wife, you lost your wife, so that compounds a problem you already have.
You know, we…saying hard things to each other is not the most fun thing to do.
So I think we’re working on strengthening that right now.
 Just conversations in the last three weeks, and like we need to strengthen holding each other accountable, to the Senior Leadership Team, to the board. And we have to make sure that…I watched the Bickle thing. I got to see it firsthand for about a month, and I’m like, this is the master case of no accountability. We have to make sure we are not the second master case of no accountability, so we have to strengthen that, and we are. That’s been probably 30% of our conversations. How do we strengthen accountability?

Michelle
Okay—this is a really good question.
What does repairing trust and reconsidering our implementation of a culture of honor look like
as we move forward?“
Kris Vallotton
“Well, I mean, right now is part of it. We’re taking responsibility.
And then you guys are going to hold…like, you want to talk about who we’re really accountable
to besides God? Right here.
Like the deal is, if we don’t bring forth fruit of repentance in the next 18 months, you guys are never
going to trust us, and shouldn’t. So I think ultimately, if I have a breach with my wife in some
way and I say I’m sorry, and then I do the same thing two months from now, “sorry” is not
going to mean a whole lot.
So, you know, if we’re not taking care of victims well, if we’re not listening, you know, if we’re not seen… two years from
now if we’re not seen as a safe place for people in general, we’re not going to have a
congregation, and we shouldn’t be trusted by the congregation.“

God is the one holding us responsible. These are His people. These are His people, this is His church. So we better
get it right—and we are determined to get it right.
You will watch us repent. I promise you—not just talk about it. But it will take us a while. It will
take us a while to actually get it right consistently. We have broken pieces that we obviously are
being very open about. Some pieces people think are broken in some of those talks…
it’s not the time to defend ourselves. It’s the time to stay low.
Not everything you see is accurate, and it’s not our time to go out and say, “That’s not how that
happened,” or “That’s not why that happened,” or “By the way, no, no told him about that…” No.
This is not the time for that.
This is a time to get low, take our hits, learn what we can. And there’ll come a time when we
can tell our side of the story where it needs to be told, but this is not the time for that. This is a
time for us to be the student, not the teacher. We have failed, and we need to… we are not the
victim. So let’s get it right. We are determined to get it right. We are vigilant about getting it
right. And we are exhausted from answering the same questions.
Michelle

Let’s answer a different one.
In what ways will Bethel’s culture and process with the prophetic change, and how will it guard
against the misuse of it? Is there a process of retracting words in the church body that were
inaccurate and/or poorly communicated?
Kris Vallotton
You know, okay, I just said I’m not going to do this…
We’ve done a really good job teaching people about the culture of fallibility and giving people
tools to judge prophetic words. And by the way, everything I just said is absolutely true.
But the prophetic ministry that was birthed out of here—we are not the king of anything. That
prophetic movement is all over the place—there’s no one church that’s going to be able to… I
mean, what we can do is equip the saints to discern words as Bill said. We have that
responsibility. There’s no way one church—one ministry—can run around the world trying to
figure out: was that the word of the Lord, was that not? And so everything we ever teach—I’ve
written a manual, I’ve written a book, and the team and Havilah has been doing this forever—
Dan McCollum…we don’t ever do prophetic training without spending a whole session on:
what do I do? How do I judge prophetic words?
So you know I think we’ve done a good job with that.
The challenge is the credibility…Anybody can make a mistake. Shawn didn’t make a mistake.
Shawn had serious character flaws that should have been called out by many people—
including us.
And so those things we have to take care of. But people with the best intentions can make
mistakes.
And as Bill pointed out: 1 Thessalonians 5—don’t quench the Spirit, do not despise prophetic
utterances, examine everything carefully, hold fast to what is good. This is New Testament
prophetic ministry

So same thing when you hear a preacher. I mean, you hear a preach and someone preaches something and you’re
like, “Oh, that was off.”

Frankly, I’ve been in Bill... in Dann’s office a couple of times like, “Bro, we need to clean
that up next Sunday.”
[Ben Armstrong talking – unintelligible]
Yeah, yeah. Ben was saying, “You know, I got the Donald Trump word…” I don’t want to start a
firestorm because (unintelligible).
Yeah, I mean, I got, I had this prophetic word about Donald Trump having a second term. I thought it was consecutive. I didn’t say that in the preach, but it definitely made the impression that it was consecutive. Plus, you don’t have to agree with me. I understand. We are a beautiful body here of diversity. But I felt the Lord told me…I thought He was going to say ‘contend,’ and He said ‘repent.’ So I didn’t even ask these guys about the repentance part, because I would have been disobeying the Lord if Bill said, ‘No, I don’t want you to do that.’ Now I’m stuck. So I got up and repented, because that’s what I’ve taught people for 25 years, if you get it wrong, you take responsibility for it. Put your big boy pants on. You want the global authority, but you need to have global accountability. So you may not have liked what I did, but I hope that you liked why I did it. And so, you know, and that’s…we need to model for people. We do something, we get it wrong… You know, I was, for four years, being called a false prophet. Lost 10,000 people in one day on my social page. Everybody thinks ‘This is the worst thing that Bethel’s ever been through’, Bethel’s ever been through, not me, though. I was a false prophet for four years, and then when he, Donald Trump, became president, it was like, See, you weren’t a false prophet, but you were a wrong prophet for [unintelligible]. Whatever. Whatever. And I’ve had, but I’ll tell you this, I walked away with a clean conscience because I did what I believe the Lord was leading…[unintelligible].

Michelle

Thank you, Kris.
This question asks: Where was discernment in this, and how are we growing in this area?
Bill Johnson
It’s a good question. It was playing left field, and we were playing right field the whole time. We were playing baseball, and discernment was playing football.
Actually, in defense of Kris and Dann and some of the others that were involved: they actually
picked up stuff early on. I can’t speak for them, but I know the conversations that we had, and
there was discernment involved.
But it wasn’t… but, we didn’t have the conviction that we had international responsibility. As
soon as you can see something, you can try to adjust on a small scale, which is what we did,
what they did, and try to be responsible on that level.
And then later find out we missed it entirely, because the problem wasn’t discernment. The
problem was the awareness of responsibility. And I made the exact same mistake that
Kris is addressing.
I think their discernment was functioning quite well. Kris has unusually good discernment and
functions very well. And uh, so I think they were involved on a discerning level very early on.
But again, it was the concept of “what is our responsibility?” that really messed us up.
Kris Vallotton
I’ll say this: love covers a multitude of sins. And part of the challenge is when you love
somebody, it’s easy to turn your discernment way down. Shawn helped me get off the couch
when I had a nervous breakdown, so it’s easy to turn discernment down when you love
somebody.
And I very…I did say stuff to Bill way, way before there was anything, like, “I’m concerned about his
prophetic stuff.” I didn’t have any idea how big it was, so I’m going to be clear so I’m not trying
to be Superman. I had no idea about a sexual perversion, none.
So no.
So, uh Bill always honors my discernment. I feel like in this case it pretty much got turned down.
He was my friend who helped me. And… Well, I was on a couch for five or six months. I didn’t
leave my house for five months. Shawn called me probably six times. For all of the craziness,
he was a man of great compassion. He called me and said, “Hey, I have this word of
encouragement for you. The Lord told me you’re like an eagle that’s molting, when you get off
this couch, you’re going to be better than when you went in.” And nonetheless… it felt like I
was getting worse. So yeah, I turned my discernment down quite a bit. Yeah. In this case, I’m
very sorry. So again, I take full responsibility.

Havilah Cunnington
Kris, something you said in our meeting that I hope I’m not overstating, and you all said this,
he had a prophetic gift.
Kris Vallotton
Oh my gosh-
Havilah Cunnington
I think this is important, because I didn’t know… there’s a point where I’m thinking: is this kind of
fraud all the way through? Like, what?
And you said it was as if somebody started taking steroids, and you didn’t know. It was as if all
of a sudden this person is enhancing their gift. So you’re thinking: is it elevated? And then the
judgment of, “Well, God… we want more.”
But I think that’s really important, because that wasn’t just somebody coming in and lying.
There was a gift that got distorted. Is that fair?
Kris Vallotton
Yeah, I’ll say partly…and Bob Hartley. But Bill and I, I don’t know if you remember this, we were in Pennsylvania, and Bob Hartley called
and said, “Hey, you know, I’m like…he was like two hours from us.” Bill said, “Why don’t we have lunch? We have
lunch at noon.” And he came to lunch, and it was ten leaders, and Bill and I—I’ll never forget
this as long as I live.
He had no idea who was in the meeting. None. He couldn’t have known who was in the
meeting. There was no way for him to Google information. And I think it was before Google anyway.

And we sit down, and Hartley looks over and goes, I think he goes, “Oh, you have a son named Joshua.” “Yeah.”
He goes, “Oh yeah—the Lord healed his brain last year.” And the guy starts sobbing. He said,
“Joshua had a brain tumor and had a brain tumor operation.” And Hartley goes, “And it’s never
going to come back.”
He did that ten times. I’d never seen anyone operate in a word of knowledge like that.
I watched Shawn do that in meetings where I’d bring him in and he would just minister to
leaders that I just brought him randomly. He couldn’t have known who was in the room. “Your
daughter plays piano.” “Her name is… Beth? Bethany?” Yeah.
And so, you know, the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable. Someone falls off the Jesus
wagon, they get to take the gift with them. And so that was very confusing, too.
But then, on the Shawn side, he started having words of knowledge like on steroids. And I
questioned him many times. He was like “The Lord came to me at night.” And I’m like, “Well, is
that an angel of the Lord or is it an angel of Google?”
And I really did. I talked to Bill about a couple of times that seemed like, “I’m concerned.” And
then the way he brings the words, like, has them written down when he gets there—and there
was… looking back, hindsight’s like…obvious, really, but not so obvious when you’ve watched
someone perform, like -I said perform, sorry—minister like that behind the scenes for years and
years and years, and then, you know the question you have to ask yourself, in all these men’s cases: the sexual stuff is
really hard. I can’t imagine it. But why did you even do that? You had such a beautiful gift. You
didn’t have to fake it. Why did you fake it?
And so I still ask that question. It’s such a warning to our teams—such a warning that the need
to be amazing in ministry can kill you. And kill a bunch of people.

And so, you know, my take on… I like what Bill said, by the way, I agree with Bill, but Shawn’s ministry
became a mixture. It became a mixture. Like, it was ministering often powerful prophetic
words, and then there was like, that crap. I don’t know what that is.
And so it became very confusing. And uh, it became more and more confusing towards the end, as he
obviously started to rely more and more on the other things he was doing. And I think honestly
the anointing lifted from him. And when it did, I think, this is my observation, when anointing
began to lift from him, because the gift and calling are always there, I think he started leaning
more on that other thing he was doing. And I think as time went on, the mixture got worse and
worse. And I think, had he not got caught, he would still have gotten caught, but the mixture
was getting so, so bad.

Havilah Cunnington
I think one of the questions was: how can we avoid this? And I think it’s just having women
prophesying.
[Unintelligible laughter]
Dann Farrelly
I think, if I could jump in with a different question real quick, um, I think part of the grief is why it took… so when this is happening, like why did it take five years for us to do this? What were we doing? I mean, I have an idea what we were doing, but what were we doing? Why did we delay?
Havilah Cunnington
Why it took five years?
Dann Farrelly
Yeah. I mean, I would say that, [unintelligible], why does it take five years? So what you’re saying is, there’s a mixture going on, and you’re seeing it, that’s what it said. But still, it takes us five years to move toward action, and then even then, we only move into action because of an internet report.
Havilah Cunnington
The internet thing—we have spent so much energy having critical videos sent toward us and
conversations. So, you know, the theme that your greatest strength will become your greatest
weakness.
The reason it took the video was not because we weren’t listening. It was that there’s an innate
nature to ignore what has been said consistently for decades over a criticism about everything
we’re doing.
So it took a wake-up call like that. I don’t think it was that we weren’t listening. It was just our
innate… “No, no, no, no.”
Dann Farrelly
I think it’s multifaceted.
When you have so many accusations, grave sucking or this or that, you’re just like, “I’m done with you guys.
Like, if you won’t pay attention, “Bill doesn’t think Jesus is God’s Son”… there’s a frustration in some level and…
you’re just done dealing with accusations.
I think we had accusation fatigue and resentment potentially going on.
I also think we do have, you mentioned in your repentance statement that you move really slowly, too
slowly sometimes, and you’re okay with the waiting when a decision should be made, but it
gets stuck there.
So I think there’s multi…there are several things going on. It sounds like you had an additional…so many things going on…
Kris Vallotton
Again, I’ve already said there are other questions answered. But I don’t think we moved, for me, I don’t think we moved slowly. I think we didn’t finish. Like, what did we not do? We didn’t tell the world but I wasn’t planning on telling the
world about Shawn. So we took care of it quickly. We were there. I flew down. Dann flew down.
I mean, I don’t think we could have done…I mean, we still had jobs, so, you know, we’re not
the police.
I think we did well. I think we took everything out. I had no intention of telling the world. I didn’t
think that was our responsibility. So that’s, that took a long time.
But you know, but again, gosh, I don’t want to make excuses. How are we going to learn?

Michelle
Okay, we’re doing good. I think what we’re doing here is really good, but we’re going to
demonstrate speed because we want to get through more questions. And we’re going to take
about ten more minutes.
So let’s do it.
We’re talking a lot about our responsibility. How far does that extend? Does that extend to
things like BLN? How are we handling other leaders who we’ve been connected with? And how
are we wanting to vet speakers and leaders that come in now?
Kris Vallotton
We don’t actually… listen—we don’t know the answer to that question, and this is one of the
biggest questions we have.
Todd White was on our stage. Are we responsible for what Todd White did? We have no idea
what Todd White’s doing. We’ve had hundreds of people on our stage. So this is a great
question that we are just beginning to ask. So we don’t have an answer to that question, and it
needs to be answered.
Michelle
That’s good.
Is there a plan for pastoral care for the local church? If there had been a middle level of pastoral
care for the local church, some of these issues might have been discovered and remedied.
What would you say about that?
Dann Farrelly
I think that elevating Gabe [Valenzuela] and Hayley [Braun] and their gifting…Because when I was leading, when I was primarily leading, I had the local church, and I was still the dean in the School of Supernatural Ministry, and I was finishing up Kingdom Prophets. So I think there’s going to be more eyes and ears and attention. I think that Gabe has a plan. The Revival Regions are going well. I think the discipleship that Tom and Leslie are moving in, there are some beautiful places for that going forward. I do think, not just empowered laity, but actually more of our team, our paid staff, tasked to that, is part of the solution going forward as well.

Michelle
Okay.
How long did we know about Shawn’s behavior with his staff? And can you clarify: did we
understand what Shawn did to his team as abuse, assault, or as harassment?
Kris Vallotton
Yes, we knew it was harassment. There was no…it was not “Hey, he was mean.” It wasn’t
anything like that. He was being sexually inappropriate in front of men. Yes, there was no
question. When did we find out? It took us a little while.
Danny did all the investigation on that part. One person complained, and then Shawn denied it.
And then Danny started calling other people that worked for him.
And after—like, I don’t know, Danny would know better—after several… like, five people all
gave the same report, it became very obvious that this wasn’t an incident, this was a culture.
So we found out… I mean, how long did all that take? Oh goodness. I don’t know. It might
have taken six months, seven months. Again, we’re back and forth trying to have a meeting
with him… it’s not like you pick up the phone and the police are like, “Hey, we’re going to come
to the station.” It doesn’t work like that.
So it probably took us took six months to figure that out. And then it probably took us… gave
him some time to repent because we felt that was right. And then we took everything out. And then
from there… you’ve already heard the rest of that.
Dann Farrelly
Yeah. It’s nuanced and difficult. In the sense of…if you begin to say all Shawn’s team was
experiencing this, these are people that are 15 years out of that scene, 20 years out of that
scene, Then you start getting questions like, “Hey, did this happen to you? What was going
on with you?” And so you want to work with those.
There was a hope we’d be able to work together, but at some point we had done such a poor
job when we had the opportunity to work with them. But it felt like we needed to take our lead
from you guys—from the men who experienced this harassment.
And whenever you try to say, “Hey, we need you to come forward with this really fast right now
because it’s convenient for us,” it’s distasteful and we didn’t want to do that.
So I think because we weren’t helpful, we weren’t able to be the agent of transformation for
them. And it’s inappropriate to push toward that solution when we hadn’t pushed toward a
solution earlier. [Unintelligible]

Kris Vallotton

Oh yeah

Dann Farrelly

And whenever you try to say, ‘Hey, we need you to come forward with this really fast, or right now, because it’s convenient for us,’ it’s really distasteful, and I didn’t want to do that, we didn’t want to do that. So I think because we weren’t helpful, we weren’t able to be the agent of transformation for them.

Kris Vallotton

Totally

Dann Farrelly

And it’s inappropriate to just push toward that solution when we hadn’t pushed toward a solution earlier [unintelligible].

Michelle
All right.
What processes will be implement for feedback within the church and school including BCS?
Where can we go for situations that feel less serious than the Safe Church reporting system?
It’s a good question.
Kris Vallotton
Yeah, we just had a conversation today—we have the emergency up right? It’s like the
emergency is Safe Church, but it almost feels like you have to have an emergency to do that.
So our team today we met with our staff and that was one of the questions and we have to
figure out the answer to that. We have a huge staff (unintelligible), we have like 650 on staff. So, you know, how do you to hear from 650 people and make sure they all feel heard. I think that’s a challenge and we need to do that.

Dann Farrelly

But with this question was the 6,000 adults in our congregation. It’s like, how do you hear from them?

Kris Vallotton

Yeah, it’s from them too.

Dann Farrelly

Right. I would say there’s always generally leader over something, so there’s a leader over the school. So we have Dave Ward and Leslie is a contributor. We’ve got Susan Allen over the high school, the preschool, and the elementary. So there’s generally a leader that you can, you should, email, I mean, getting to, would be the first place to go.

Michelle

So that’s something we will be working…

Bill Johnson

We will be strengthening the structure

Dann Farrelly

Well, just straight out, it already happens. Like, my leaders get tons of feedback about this was on fire, and why is this happening? And so there’s a good chunk of people that are already communicating very powerfully. Um, but if you don’t know, like, how to get those emails or they seem like a mystery to find, then certainly more availability of who you should contact in times of crisis and confusion. But you said BCS specifically, that would be Susan Allen and then her team

Michelle

All right.

Could we do another meeting like this again soon? And how will we hear an update on progress?

Dann Farrelly

It sounds like accountability. Ah, yes.

Bill Johnson

Dan and Kris (unintelligbile laughter)

Havilah Cunnington

Are we going to choose the right day now? No, I’m kidding.

Dann Farrelly

No, again, that’s probably wise. We have a big problem. It needs a lot of communication and proactivity in it. It’s a great suggestion for the group that’s holding us accountable. So, yeah, beautiful.

Michelle

And then how will we hear an update on progress?

Dann Farrelly

We have a communication team that will probably be rolling out a communications format through and I don’t know exactly how…I would imagine be generally emails to folks that are on our normal local church emails and [unintelligible] so if you don’t get the Friday nights, if you don’t get the Friday email, you’re you’re not on the right email, so you need to put you’re mail in so that you get that. And I don’t imagine we’ll discuss it there, but we might put a link in that email to something else that would just be something that’d be a little more tidy moving forward.

Jaon Vallotton

All right, guys. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thanks.

Dann Farrelly

Yeah, I just, I mean, Havilah’s being funny. And again, we all need grace. And Shawn needs grace. Shawn needs grace. He needs to come into repentance and receive…how it is, and currently have to be transformed. And so we did, again, we said, “Hey, this guy hurt us. But again, because we are gospel people, we pray for those who persecute us, or we don’t understand. So I want to lead in that way quickly. So Father, again, if any way we’ve…You love that man. You love that man. He’s made in your image that we gave your life, that he might be conformed to the image of your Son. And so we, again, every single one of us have been, have received grace we didn’t deserve. And so we just, for our brother, we pray that you mark him and his wife and his family for your, your powerful conviction that leads to godly sorrow, that leads to a crying out and saying, I would be healed. I would be healed.

And so we just, as Bill’s taught us, so many times we just say in the presence of Your Holy Spirit, mark him for an encounter that transforms him. And again, if you’re worried, like, that he’s going to get back in the ministry, that’s not what we’re having there. He needs a touch from Jesus that brings him to his senses. So again, we just say, let him be an object of grace. Let him be one of the trophies in your house of like, that man, I walked heaven and earth to reach him again when he was lost and alone. And so we love that part about you, Jesus, when we say extend it, show him many chances.

Jason Vallotton

We know that there’s a lot of questions that we did not get to. We’re going to take some time to go through your questions. We’re going to work with them, and we’ll be talking about them. Uh, some of the questions we know that we’ll have to answer to you guys for, some of the questions are just great for us to reflect on. So thank you, guys, for that. And also thank you so much for coming out tonight, for taking the time to, uh, deal with your kids. A lot of you probably fed them very quickly, put them in the nursery tonight, risk the seasonal flu. All the things that we do to protect our kids’…[unintelligible]…it means a lot to us, to do this with you guys, it’s a privilege to, you know.

Listen to this episode discussing Ben Armstrong and the recent Bethel meeting here:

The Very Awkward Prophetic Flo… – The Lovesick Scribe Podcast – Apple Podcasts