Turmoil at John Lindell’s James River Church Escalates As Staff Fired, Members Shunned

Last year, James River Church in Springfield, Missouri, made headlines when it hosted a men’s conference featuring a shirtless sword-swallower who moonlighted as a pole dancer at gay nightclubs.

The performance was so offensive, it prompted disgraced pastor Mark Driscoll to decry the provocative act as being filled with a “Jezebel spirit.”

But James River Lead Pastor John Lindell wasn’t having it.

“You’re out of line, Mark!” He shouted as he booted Driscoll from the conference.

Driscoll publicly huffed his way back to Arizona. But many say the contentious conference was the tipping point in the ongoing ruin of James River Church.

The Roys Report (TRR) has unearthed numerous troubling stories about leadership and governance practices that are driving the faithful away. Former and current members cite deceptive changes in church bylaws, an armed posse kicking a mother out of church on Mother’s Day, and the firing of a staff member under questionable circumstances as examples.

Once one of the largest churches in the Assemblies of God (AG), Lindell abruptly removed the congregation from the AG because of actions “detrimental” to the church, he said.

Now a part of the scandal-plagued Association of Related Churches (ARC), the megachurch operates four campuses and claims 16,000 weekly attendees.

But its detractors say attendance has plummeted.

“People are just walking out the door,” former member Don Carter said. “West (campus) used to be packed while we were there. It was all the way back into the nosebleed section—every row had people in it. Now they are blocking off the upper sections entirely. People don’t even sit there.”

Carter added that the church’s west campus parking lot this summer looked like a “ghost town.”

TRR reached out to James River leadership numerous times for comment by phone and email but did not hear back.

It started with a sword-swallower

For former church member Rahela Petian, the sword-swallower debacle prompted the incidents that led to her departure. Petian had attended the church for 18 years when its leadership booted her out over a Facebook post.

She wrote the post after the drama with the 2024 men’s conference escalated.

In a Wednesday service following the 2024 men’s conference, Lindell urged Driscoll to “repent” for his actions. Lindell then shared screenshots of texts between the two of them, pointing out what he thought was wrong about Driscoll’s behavior.

Lindell also claimed the sword-swallower, Alex Magala, was a born-again Christian, though the performer later contended otherwise.

Lindell and Driscoll eventually reconciled, but “(i)t was all about Pastor John, almost like a high school drama,” she said.

In a nearly 3,000-word Facebook post, Petian confronted Lindell for not taking responsibility for his part in the controversy and for accusing Driscoll of seeking “personal gain” while being guilty of the same thing.

“What agenda has our leadership had in the last few years far greater than ever before? Financial growth and fame. Being known,” Petian wrote. “John, I pray that you are able to repent of pride and greed and address the church under more sincere circumstances one day.”

It wasn’t long before Petian got summoned to the church about her post by Pastors Josh and Laura Longanecker. On May 1, 2024, Josh told Petian her words were “inflammatory.”

He added that her post caused “disunity” in the church, according to a recording of the meeting Petian provided TRR. She should have gone to church leadership with her concerns before posting them online, Josh emphasized.

He concluded the meeting by asking her to pray about what she posted.

“At the end of the day, if you truly feel and stand behind what you said online and that’s where you’re at, then this is probably not the place for you to call your church home,” Josh said on the recording. “You can’t be here as a church member and say, ‘I think my pastor is prideful and greedy.’”

Petian told TRR that she prayed about the post but felt led to keep it up.  

On the Saturday before Mother’s Day, Josh called. He informed Petian that because she had not taken her post down, executive leadership had determined that she couldn’t come to church until the matter was discussed further.

Petian objected, but Josh turned a deaf ear, she said. Nevertheless, Petian went to church the next day, hoping for a quiet Mother’s Day with her five kids and to potentially discuss the matter with church leaders.

Five security men kick out one mother

Just minutes after she walked into the church’s north campus, five towering men surrounded 5’2” Petian and informed her that she had to leave. Three members of the church security team and two Green County sheriff’s officers, who normally are on campus as an extra safety measure, made up the ensemble.

It was “so embarrassing, so humiliating, so distraught, so disturbing for my kids to see,” she recalled.

Petian asked one of the officers, Stan Hamilton, who was a friend, if this was happening because of her Facebook post. 

“I don’t care ‘cause I’m not involved with the church. We just work here, so if you’ve been told not to come here, you can’t come here,” Hamilton said on a recording Petian made and gave to TRR.

“The last thing we want to do is arrest you in front of your kids.”

While Petian headed outside, church youth pastors Megan and Tyler Gibbs talked with her children, encouraging all five to remain for the service. The children were ages 4-17, and the youngest two were “sobbing,” said Petian’s daughter, Valeria (“Val”).

“I’ve known (these pastors) forever, and they were like family,” Val said. “Just hearing things that came out of their mouths, that my mom doesn’t belong there, that hurts you in a different way.”

Val said the siblings lingered for a few minutes at the church but ultimately joined their mother in her exile.

“Five men. Yes, five men huddled and cornered me,” Petian wrote on Facebook shortly afterward. “On Mother’s Day, did you know it is the 3rd largest attended service in the year?

“Why did our pastor preach on Mother’s Day about tithing? Do we all not know the principle of tithing? Or was it to seize another opportunity to bank on the third-largest attended service and pray (sic) on the emotions of families, mothers, visitors, and bring in the cash cow flow on Mother’s Day.”

Petian says she tried to call the church to set up a meeting with leaders to discuss what happened, but leaders skirted around doing so.

A year later, Petian is still barred from the church’s property, even to attend her sister’s baby dedication. 

Fired under questionable circumstances

Meanwhile, Craig Biernbaum, then-facilities coordinator at the church, was also upset about how Lindell portrayed his encounter with Driscoll during the same Wednesday service that Petian posted about. The senior pastor, he told TRR, was directing church members not to post false information online about the conference, while Lindell himself was misrepresenting the sword-swallower’s faith. 

As unfavorable publicity about the service spread, Lindell had the video of the Wednesday service taken down, which the church had not originally planned to do, Biernbaum contends. Biernbaum added that he was essentially told by Lindell to “gaslight the congregation” and tell members that taking the video down had always been the plan.  

Biernbaum decided to message some of his qualms to Grant Olson, a former member of the church who is known for critiquing the congregation.

Olson then asked Biernbaum if he could share screenshots of Biernbaum’s texts to Olson on his social media accounts (without including Biernbaum’s name). But when Olson posted pictures, he failed to remove Biernbaum’s profile picture on one of them.

The next morning after Olson’s post, Biernbaum got called into a meeting with John Lindell’s son, David Lindell, and Cameron Elmore, the online campus pastor.

“Somebody in the community posted some interactions this morning with a staff member and included part of their profile picture and that staff member was you,” David Lindell told Biernbaum, who secretly recorded the meeting. “Does that ring a bell now?”

The younger Lindell then pressed Biernbaum on why he talked to an outsider first, rather than sharing these feelings with his supervisor. (Lindell never referred to Olson by name.) Lindell repeatedly expressed that Biernbaum should not have done this, and if Biernbaum didn’t agree,  that’s a “massive concern for me.”

“Either it’s right or it’s wrong. I need to know where you are at on that,” Lindell said. “Because my goal is for you to continue in your role. But I need to know you’re a minister according to our constitution bylaws.”

Biernbaum contended that he was simply sharing information with the body of Christ. After nearly 45 minutes of back and forth, Lindell said they were at an “impasse.”

“Your time on staff is coming to an end today. We’d like to give you a severance,” Lindell said. “However, we’re not going to be interested in giving a severance if you’re going to actively cause disunity. So, we want to; I want to bless you, like I really do. I mean, I realize we don’t agree, but . . . I’m not going to do that if you’re going to walk out the door and cause dissension.”

Biernbaum, who suspected Lindell was trying to get him to sign an NDA, told the pastor that he can advocate for unity around Christ, but not around one leader.

Lindell told Biernbaum he would be getting his last check that day. There would be no severance.

Tensions rise with departure from the AG

James River’s decision to suddenly severe ties with the AG made big news locally.    

According to Ozarks First KOLR, a CBS affiliate, several prominent members of the AG’s national and regional staff have attended the church over the years. Additionally, the church is located less than 20 minutes from the national headquarters of the AG’s national office.

In a statement, Lindell didn’t give a specific reason for leaving the AG but said only that things occurred that were “detrimental to the church.” Lindell said he voiced these unspecified concerns to the AG over several months, but they were not addressed. Lindell claimed that AG General Superintendent Rev. Doug Clay asked him not to state publicly the specific reasons.

Lindell also argued that he wasn’t trying to shirk accountability by leaving the denomination. “That is completely false and was not the reason for our disaffiliation,” he said. “Debbie and I love the Assemblies of God.”

However, the denomination dismissed Lindell’s ministerial credentials two months after the separation, raising questions.

When pressed for details, Don Miller, the superintendent of the AG’s Southern Missouri Ministry Network, told TRR, “There is a well-defined process for disciplinary action. Our leadership closely followed those guidelines.”

When TRR pressed Miller what he meant by “disciplinary action,” he said, “Dismissal as an Assemblies of God minister was the disciplinary action” and declined to comment further.

In his statement, Lindell claimed that dismissal of ministerial credentials is simply denominational protocol after a church disaffiliates.

Was vote by church board really unanimous?

The decision to leave the AG was further scrutinized when Lindell stated that James River’s board of trustees’ vote to leave the AG was unanimous.

But multiple sources confirmed to TRR that three members of the church board, one of whom was Lindell, voted for the change, while one member, Don Headlee, resigned over the matter. (Headlee was unavailable for comment on the grounds that he works for AG Financial Solutions, a financial business connected to the denomination.)

How had three people made such a drastic change? Didn’t the church members have a say? According to the AG’s General Council’s Constitution and Bylaws, “A decision to disaffiliate shall require a two-thirds vote of the membership, or a more restrictive rule prescribed by the governing documents of the church or district.” 

And according to James River’s original Articles of Agreement, in the event of a dissolution from the AG, “all property of the corporation and the church shall remain with those members, whatever their number, desiring continued affiliation with the Assemblies of God.” And if no members desire to stay, then “the corporation shall be dissolved and liquidated.”

But, according to filings with the Missouri Secretary of State’s office, these pivotal articles were altered and members’ rights stripped several years ago.

Momentous 2019 meeting

In June 2019, the church held a meeting regarding its nonprofit status. According to a recording of the meeting obtained by Olson and given to TRR, Lindell urged church members to vote to change the church nonprofit’s status from a Chapter 352 Nonprofit to a Chapter 355. 

Jordan Ault, an attorney at Husch Blackwell, told TRR that this sort of shift is “very common.” The Chapter 352 nonprofit status is “antiquated” and requires court intervention anytime the organization amends its governing documents, he said. 

In the 2019 meeting, Lindell told members to vote for the shift for similar reasons. But Lindell added that he didn’t want an “activist” judge standing in the way if the church wanted to change its governing documents to reflect a politically incorrect position on something like marriage.

To make the shift, church members had to vote to allow the board to amend the church’s articles of incorporation/articles of agreement. These documents are filed with the state and externally outline the church’s basic governing structure.

The motion easily passed.

Lindell then asked church members to vote to give board members the sole power to change the church’s constitution and bylaws. These documents internally establish church governance and theology. Lindell didn’t ask church members to give up full membership rights; rather just to alter voting rights concerning these internal documents.  

Several members voiced concerns about how their loss of voting power would mean less accountability for church leaders. Lindell reassured them they didn’t need to worry and affirmed his desire to submit to Assemblies of God leaders.

“I’m too afraid to go out from under leadership,” Lindell said in the recording “I believe in that principle, and it’s served this church and me through the years very, very well. So that’s what I think is the safeguard for this congregation.”

But Lindell added that congregants “vote every single week. They vote with their attendance, and they vote with their pocketbook.”

Once again, members voted to pass the resolution.

Articles significantly altered

Following this, the church submitted a request to change its nonprofit status with the state, according to documents filed with Missouri. In doing so, James River also resubmitted its articles of incorporation (also known as the articles of agreement).

But sometime between the 2019 meeting and the 2020 meeting, the articles were altered; key provisions were either left out or changed, and church congregants were none the wiser.

Under the guise of the nonprofit shift, the articles underwent a serious makeover.

The newly filed articles said that the church “will not have members” and removed any mention of the church’s ties to the AG. Additionally, the documents took out a provision that severely restricted the ability to change any of these articles. 

These changes set the stage for James River to leave the Assemblies of God easily.

Years past this filing, after James River had already left the denomination, Olson unearthed these secretive changes. Olson believes Lindell and some accomplices must have “totally removed some really key components.”

“Nobody’s thinking that they are going to shred all the original articles; they are thinking that this is just simply a conversion from a 352 to a 355,” Olson said. “It was under the guise that was some sort of, ‘Oh, we are just trying to keep the judges from messing with our churches.’”

For former member Dayton Loven, who attended the church for nearly a decade, the 2019 meeting made it sound like stepping away from the AG was not an option for the church. 

“Few years later, here we are,” said Loven, who left the church about a year ago. “Removing that authority when it was pronounced so clearly in the 2019 meeting—it did not sound like something that would happen at all.”

Avoiding accountability

The move has a stark similarity to allegations against Houston-based Second Baptist, said Barry Bowen, an investigator and analyst at the Dallas-based Trinity Foundation.

Earlier this year, Second Baptist made headlines when members filed a lawsuit claiming leaders deceptively stripped church members of their voting rights and transferred “nearly dictatorial authority” to the senior pastor.

Bowen said that he believes that James River’s actions with the new articles “are not in compliance” with their original articles.

Bowen added that informants have shared with the Trinity Foundation that James River’s attendance seems to be dropping, confirming what Carter and other former church members have said.

Bowen added that the church also seems to have a problem with nepotism in that Lindell has appointed his sons, David and Brandon, to be the next head pastors, starting in 2027.

“Church leadership owes it to their congregation, to their donors, transparency, not just in financial matters but in governance ones, as well,” Bowen said. “John Lindell does not want to be accountable to anyone.”

Video below has expanded details on this story, along with excerpts from all the recordings mentioned in the article:

Liz Lykins is a correspondent covering religion news for The Roys Report, WORLD Magazine, and other publications.