Months after Bethel Church announced Pastor Ben Armstrong had been placed on administrative leave, the church says it is bringing in additional third-party oversight and has confirmed the firm leading an independent investigation into sexual abuse allegations against the longtime ministry leader.
In an April 2 update, Bethel leaders said they are engaging an outside expert to review the church’s governance, leadership structure and internal culture, expanding their response beyond the ongoing inquiry into Armstrong, the church’s Prophetic Ministry director and former Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry Revival Group pastor.
The announcement comes two months after the church placed Armstrong on leave following the release of a YouTube video in which a former student publicly alleged clergy sexual abuse dating back to 2009.
“As a broader leadership team, we want to understand and address how we can do better in the future by bringing in a third-party expert to review our governance, leadership structure, and culture,” the church said in a statement. “We want to ensure we have established clear accountability structures [and] prioritized the safety of all those engaging with Bethel, and upheld the standards that Scripture calls our leadership and culture to reflect.”
Bethel confirmed for the first time that Sintra Group Investigations is leading the inquiry into the allegations. The organization, according to the church, has more than 20 years of experience and uses what has been termed trauma-informed investigative protocols.
The church emphasized that the process remains ongoing and said additional steps tied to the governance review will be announced in the coming weeks.
“We believe this kind of accountability isn’t just right, but necessary,” the statement said, adding that leaders have been in continued dialogue with those impacted, as well as current and former students, staff and outside advisors.
“As we have said before, we do not take the pain that those who have spoken up are experiencing lightly, and we are not moving past it quickly — this process matters deeply to us, but more importantly, to the heart of God.”
The April update also highlighted Bethel’s use of “Safe Church,” a reporting system designed to allow individuals to confidentially raise concerns about misconduct, including allegations involving senior leadership. The platform is operated through a third-party provider, Mitratech, which enables anonymous reporting and preserves submissions in their original form.
Church leaders said the system is intended to ensure privacy and prevent reports from being altered.
Bethel, led by senior leader Bill Johnson, has grown into a global influence through its worship music, conferences and the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. The latest developments come as the church faces renewed criticism over its handling of past allegations and leadership accountability.
In earlier statements, Bethel acknowledged it is revisiting how it addressed the 2009 situation involving Armstrong, citing a need for greater awareness of power dynamics and pastoral responsibility.
At the time, Bethel leaders said they became aware late Feb. 13 of “a video containing serious allegations of clergy sexual abuse pertaining to Ben Armstrong and events that took place in 2009.”
“Earlier that day at 1:30 pm PT, we released a statement on our website based on the information that we were aware of at that time, and our understanding of Ben’s lived repentance since that time,” the church said in a February statement. “However, in light of these new and previously unknown allegations, we have placed Ben Armstrong on administrative leave. He will not be ministering while an independent third-party investigation takes place.”
In the video, “Bethel Survivor Sarah Shares Her Experience of Clergy SA by Ben Armstrong,” posted to YouTube by the "Wake Up and Win" podcast, a woman identified as Sarah says she was a 23-year-old intern and member of Bethel’s ministry school when Armstrong, then a pastor and mentor, groomed her under the guise of spiritual fatherhood before crossing sexual boundaries on multiple occasions.
Armstrong had previously characterized the 2009 incident as an affair. In past public remarks, he said he “had an affair” and was “getting my emotional needs met and then it turned physical with a woman I worked with” outside his marriage before repenting and entering a restoration process.
However, Sarah disputed his version of events, saying she never viewed the relationship as consensual or romantic and that she felt groomed and pressured within a culture that emphasized spiritual authority and obedience.
“It has been extremely confusing to deconstruct what happened and figure it out,” she said in the video.
The church has also faced criticism in recent months for platforming Shawn Bolz, who was later accused of fraudulent prophetic practices and sexually inappropriate behavior. Following an investigation by Christian apologist Mike Winger, Bethel acknowledged failures in how it handled concerns related to Bolz, saying it did not act with sufficient clarity, urgency or transparency.
In its April 2 statement, Bethel said it is continuing to approach the situation with “sobriety and care” and reiterated that it is not moving quickly past the concerns raised.
“We do not take the pain that those who have spoken up are experiencing lightly, and we are not moving past it quickly,” the statement said. “This process matters deeply to us, but more importantly, to the heart of God.”
The church did not provide a timeline for when the investigation will conclude.
In wake of the controversies, Jenn Johnson, who with her husband, Brian, have served as senior worship pastors at Bethel since 2000, told podcaster Alex Enfiedjian the church is a “very big organization” with people of various beliefs and “good hearts and good intentions, but kind of just doing a lot of different things that necessarily we wouldn’t all on a leadership level vouch for.”
“I definitely have seen a beautiful, healthy correction along the years,” she said, adding the church’s leaders are “very good, trustworthy people who are very human and are trying to live their lives according to the Bible and run the good race and shepherd an insane amount of people.”
“We definitely don’t all believe the same things at Bethel,” she continued, “and there are definitely some very weird things that have happened from people who are in lower levels, especially of leadership, but also higher, [myself] included, because we’re all human.”
