“Let me be completely, completely honest with you,” Dallas megachurch pastor Matt Chandler said in a May 2006 sermon titled “What Faith Does,” one year before The Village Church Denton Campus hired his sex abuser father as a janitor and handed him the keys to the entire building without telling the church about his father’s past.
“We talk so much in here about this being a safe place to handle our issues, handle our junk, handle our past. And if you know you’ve got issues, you’ve got hurt, you’ve got wounds, and all you do is keep coming in here week after week after week learning the language of what that is but not moving on at all, you don’t have faith. You have something else. You have church,” Chandler continued. “Faith says: ‘Christ can heal me. He commands me to confess. I’m confessing because I have faith that in obedience to Christ I will be healed.’ That’s how faith works. Faith is not, ‘I’m not going to.’”
Matt Chandler
Eighteen years later, the news about the church’s employment of Chandler’s father broke July 10 in an episode of the “Bodies Behind the Bus” podcast, as Johnna Harris and Jay Coile interviewed Chris and Anna, former members of The Village Church’s Denton Campus. Chris also served as chairman of the elder board during the events of this story.
The Village Church is a Southern Baptist church established in 1978. After calling Matt Chandler to be their pastor in 2002, they focused on church planting that led to the opening of six campuses across the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. In 2015, The Village Church Denton became an autonomous congregation under the leadership of Beau Hughes.
Neither Matt Chandler, his father nor Village Church have responded to the allegations in the podcast.
Becoming aware of abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention
In February 2019, the Houston Chronicle published its “Abuse of Faith” investigative series, in which they revealed how Southern Baptist Convention churches participated in the sexual abuse and coverup of more than 700 victims.
Beau Hughes, the Denton campus pastor at the time, attended the SBC annual meeting in Birmingham that year along with Chris. After hearing the likes of Russell Moore and Beth Moore discuss the SBC’s sexual abuse problem, Chris said Hughes told him privately that a previous employee of their church admitted during one of their Celebrate Recovery programs to sexually abusing a child.
Just as another Dallas megachurch pastor, Tony Evans, claimed last month his vague sin of falling short of a standard happened “a number of years ago,” Dallas megachurch pastor Robert Morris claimed his sexual abuse of a child happened 35 years ago, and IHOPKC pastor Mike Bickle claimed his sexual abuse of a child happened “20-plus years ago,” Steven Chandler’s alleged sexual abuse of a child supposedly happened 40 years earlier.
As Chris and the elders were becoming aware of the widespread issue of sexual abuse in the SBC, they decided after the annual meeting to tell the congregation about Chandler’s dad.
Pastors being led by lawyers
Just as Gateway Church’s Morris responded to his sexual assault of a child by following the lead of his lawyer, Village Church elders from the main campus decided to involve their lawyer as well.
Josh Patterson
According to Chris, the lawyer led the meeting and immediately began suggesting there was no legal reason for the elders to make a statement, while the main campus lead pastor, Josh Patterson, added, “This information in the wrong hands could take down The Village and could take down the Chandlers.”
Patterson also is the elder who stepped in and offered virtually no specifics when Matt Chandler had to step down from ministry for three months in 2022 due to what they called “unwise messages” with a woman via social media.
In the Bodies Behind the Bus interview, Chris added: “It was pretty clear though that, as the meeting progressed, and as subsequent meetings happened, the primary purpose really felt like we just need to share this thing and get out of it unscathed. There was a lot of concern for Steve. There was a lot of concern for Steve leaving the church and a lot of concern for how he’ll feel, this being shared publicly, not a ton of concern for any potential victim.”
Then, rather than investigating whether or not there were any more victims during the years when Steven Chandler had access to their entire building, they decided instead to focus on celebrating Chandler’s restoration.
The Village Church Denton statement
“Steve himself made us aware of his history through his testimony of God’s transforming grace in his life,” the statement read. “Steve first shared his testimony publicly with members of The Village Church in Highland Village through the Recovery Ministry before he was hired on staff. Steve’s testimony included him vulnerably sharing many of his past sins, including his past sin of child sexual abuse 40 years ago.”
The statement goes on to say that while some people knew about Steve’s sexual abuse, Steve’s immediate supervisor was not aware of it until two years later. “Per our hiring protocol in 2007, a background check was run, but his history of sexual abuse did not, and still does not, show up on his background check. This is because Steve was never indicted by the court due to his voluntary compliance with and completion of all the requirements set forth by the court, including a period of intense counseling for five years.”
When this statement was read to the church, the congregation responded with a standing ovation. And the statement never was shared with the main campus.
Thus the church elders attempted to tell a story that allowed them to cast Steve as a transparent, repentant sinner who shared his abuse publicly, while in the same paragraph explaining why they were not complicit for hiring him due to not knowing about it.
Then they said the reason they chose not to fire Steve after everyone else found out about his past was “based on the theological underpinnings of God’s redemptive grace and sanctification.”
“These theological convictions led the executive staff of The Village Church to not terminate Steve from our staff but to place the safety protocol around him for the remainder of his time on staff,” the statement explained. But of course, it also failed to detail what was involved with the “safety protocol.”
A history of sexual abuse
Given how their elders based their decision to retain Steve Chandler’s employment without informing their church of his sexual abuse, it seems reasonable to expect other stories of abuse might pop up at Village Church over the years.
2012
- Matt Tonne, a Village Church youth pastor, allegedly molests a teenage girl during a church camp.
- Tonne is fired by Village Church in 2018 for repeated drunkenness.
- Tonne is indicted in Dallas County in 2018 and has the charges dropped in 2021.
- Matt Chandler says a detective told the elders not to tell the church Tonne’s name so as to not “obstruct the investigation.”
- The Village Church agreed to a settlement with the parents in 2022, while claiming, “We committed no wrong.”
2015
- Church member Jordan Root confesses to possessing images of child sexual abuse.
- Jordan’s wife, Karen, files for divorce.
- The Village Church sends a letter to 6,000 church members threatening to excommunicate Karen over her divorce proceedings.
- The elders justify their actions by suggesting Jordan “repented and appears to be under submission to the direction of his elders and pastors.”
- The church backed down only after experiencing pressure online.
2017
- Anthony Moore, a former youth pastor at The Village Church Fort Worth, is fired for what Chandler announces to be a “sin issue.”
- Chandler shares no specifics, other than that it is due to “grievous immoral actions against another adult member that disqualify him as an elder and staff member.”
- Moore is hired by Cedarville University that same year.
- Three years later, Moore is fired from Cedarville University due to sexual misconduct.
- Cedarville admits its leaders had learned in 2017 that Moore was videotaping another Village Church male youth pastor without his consent who was showering in his home.
- Cedarville President Thomas White says he didn’t talk to the victim about what happened because the elders at The Village Church Fort Worth gave him the impression the person being filmed “didn’t want to talk about the experience.”
2019
- The Village Church Fort Worth youth volunteer Andy Landrum confesses to “having some inappropriate sexual contact with a child and also having tried to videotape children at his place of employment,” a school).
- Landrum previously confessed to a group of 12- to 13-year-old boys that he struggled with watching pornography and wanted to help any of the boys who also struggled with it.
- The elders denied anything ever happened on any of their campuses.
- The elders told some of the parents at one of their campuses that Landrum “confessed to having tried to take pictures of former students and staff without their permission,” without informing the entire church and all the parents whose kids Landrum had been in contact with.
2022
- Matt Chandler takes a leave of absence due to sending “unwise” messages on social media to a woman in the church.
- Village Church elders respond by bragging about how high their standards are for elders, but without sharing specifics about Chandler’s messages.
- Josh Patterson claims he’s excited about God showing “himself to be mighty.”
- Chandler jokes about having to sit down and wonders if his “unwise” messages were due to his brain tumor.
Now in 2024, we learn that Matt Chandler’s church hired his own sexually abusive father to be a custodian and gave him the keys to their building. It wasn’t until July 9 this year that this information became public knowledge thanks to Chris and Anna sharing their story.
But this episode came after five years of healing and processing for Chris and Anna. How many other people connected with The Village Church may have stories they’re privately processing and healing from that we don’t know of yet?
And how many other Dallas megachurch pastors are we going to hear about? We’re up to five in the last month.
Calls for Matt Chandler to lose his job
Chandler has not been secretive about the history of sexual abuse in his family. He told John Piper in 2009 that his childhood home was filled with “every kind of abuse imaginable.” He admitted to Village Church in a 2006 sermon that his family history included sexual abuse by Chandler men. He told the SBC annual meeting in 2019 that his family has a history of sexual abuse.
To think Chandler didn’t know his dad had admitted to sexual abuse, or that his dad was hired by his own church, defies common sense.
As a result, many people online today are calling for Chandler to lose his job.
“If this is true, and I believe it is, Matt Chandler needs to resign,” Wartburg Watch editor Dee Parsons posted.
“There is no sane universe in which Chandler keeps his job w/ this information coming to light,” added Lauren Chastain, who has 17,000 followers on X. “As Anna says, ‘What else are they covering?’”
Matt Chandler’s inner darkness
While Chandler losing his job over this makes sense, it also can’t be the ultimate solution. It’s just the beginning of what needs to happen. The next step is for Chandler to be honest with himself.
In that May 2006 sermon, Chandler told his church he’s had to see multiple counselors over the years “‘cause I had issues.”
Family photo posted to the Facebook page of Steven Chandler, father of Matt Chandler.
“My dad was actually in here in the last service,” he pointed out. “The last hundred years of Chandler men have been pretty wicked. Everything from a guy getting hung because he robbed a train to everything from sexual abuse to physical abuse to emotional abuse. You can track it down over the last hundred years.”
Then Chandler began to personalize it. “And it’s created in me issues. Self-hate. Lust. Anger. It’s created in me those things. And I seized the opportunity for those things. And so every once in a while, I get hung up and I need to go get some help.”
What exactly does Chandler mean by admitting he “seized the opportunity” for self-hate, lust and anger? Given the history of his family and the church he’s led, it seems some questions should be asked. It’s especially concerning when we know he began dating a 17-year-old girl when he was a 23-year-old camp counselor at the camp she was attending. They were engaged once she turned 18 and married a year later.
At the very least, some questions should be asked.
“Thirteen years, I’ve been following Jesus. Thirteen years. Thirteen years,” Chandler reflected in his sermon. “And you know what? I have experienced a lot of freedom from my junk. But let me be completely, completely honest with you. Sometimes I really still have to wrestle it. … What if I have to struggle and fight these things for the next 50 years? What if I never fully get whole, but my son does because I fought? What if I have to plead with Christ in the middle of the night? What if I have to wrestle the dark things in me for the rest of my life, but my son doesn’t have to, and neither does my daughter? … What if my lot is struggle, wrestle, hurt so that there would be a new legacy of Chandler men born?”
Of course, one hopes Chandler’s children can experience a life of freedom Chandler and the men before him in his family haven’t experienced. But if you’re going to be a megachurch pastor with the family history of sexually abusing children and the church history of mishandling and covering up abuse, especially in today’s culture of rampant sexual abuse coverups, shouldn’t being “completely, completely honest” include some details about the “dark things” you’re wrestling with?
What have you and your elders given us that would lead us to trust you in your vagueness?
This is a theological issue
Whatever happens with Matt Chandler’s job or personal healing, the megachurch will still exist.
And remember, Village Church elders have consistently justified their mishandling of abuse by pointing to “theological convictions” and “the theological underpinnings of God’s redemptive grace and sanctification.”
So if Chandler loses his job, but the theological underpinnings remain in place, then what progress will have been made? As long as the theological convictions that led Village Church elders to cover up abuse and shame survivors remain in place, their church members will continue to be harmed.
In his 2006 sermon, Chandler portrayed a back and forth conversation about why someone in his supposedly safe church wouldn’t be honest about their sin. And in doing so, he accidentally got to the heart of the problem, while missing the point entirely.
“Why? Why wouldn’t you?” He asked.
“Because it’s embarrassing.”
“OK, that’s top level,” he responded. “Let’s peal that back. Why won’t you?”
“Well, because I have pride.”
“OK. What’s under that?”
“Well, because I don’t know that he can really heal me.”
Then Chandler concludes, “That’s a lack of faith.”
A gospel of retribution is a false gospel
Chandler was spot on in saying the deeper issue of not being honest about your sin is not knowing if God can really heal you. Where he erred was in assuming that comes from a lack of faith.
The fear of God not healing you is not the fruit of a lack of faith but the fruit of a faith in a false gospel.
1 John 4:18 says: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”
In other words, the fruit of a justice of punishment is fear.
So what does Village Church believe theologically about justice?
According to their doctrinal statement, Village Church believes Christ’s death “satisfies the demands of God’s holy justice and appeases his holy wrath.”
To put it plainly, the gospel of The Village Church hinges on punishment transactions. The reason they were primarily concerned about coming out unscathed is they’ve been theologically formed by a gospel of punishment transactions that allow them to move on from their sin unscathed.
And what is the fruit of punishment transactions? Fear.
Powerful men who come from generations of abuse, who fear their churches and their names being taken down, who consistently are dishonest about their sin, and who fear God might not heal them are simply living out the fruit of a theology that claims justice is punishment.
Before men like Chandler can be completely honest with us, they have to be honest with themselves. They don’t believe God really can heal them because they don’t believe in a justice of healing love, but in a justice of retributive punishment.
Intense, intense deconstruction
Based on their conversation on the Bodies Behind the Bus podcast, Chris and Anna seem to agree there are theological consequences underneath this story.
“It cost intense, intense deconstruction,” Chris said. “Because everything literally, my entire worldview is built on certain beliefs and the practical ramifications of those beliefs. So like, everything I know to be true, I’m now going like, ‘Is it true though?’ Is it true that the only way to access God is through these specific steps? And so I just started to unravel.”
“My faith, it looks nothing like it did,” he continued. “And I’m still just trying to have grace for myself still five years out. I still feel shame and responsibility about what happened and how I was complicit. And so I’m at a point where I believe there’s a God. That’s about as far as I’ll go. I think he’s good. The church gave me the answer to literally every question. And so when Anna would have a question, I would have an answer. And in my mind, I would have the correct answer. After leaving, it felt like, ‘God, I literally have no answers to any of these questions anymore.’ And it’s almost freeing because it’s like now I can actually hear. I can actually hear where other people are struggling, where Anna’s struggling.”
“I’m very thankful that we sort of saw the light and got out before our children got older,” Anna added. “And it definitely has brought us together. We attend a Methodist church very loosely now. We will probably never again in our lives have the same ‘Church is everything’ type of attitude. People live and they learn. And we’ve learned some very hard lessons.”
In other words, being willing to face their complicity and question the theological underpinnings that justified their actions has led to an intense deconstruction and healing for Chris and Anna.
Of course, Matt Chandler once said, “Deconstruction has become some sort of sexy thing to do.”
But consider Chandler’s words in light of Chris’ conclusion: “Jesus always talks about the fruit. What is actually being produced?”
“The fruit is that LGBTQ people don’t feel safe. People of color don’t feel safe. People who have experienced sexual abuse don’t feel safe,” he said. “This is not me saying this. This is what other people have told us. So the fruit is the fruit. I implore you to take that seriously. And maybe the reason why we’re speaking up is exactly what I just said. I want to apologize and I also want to say, ‘Look at the fruit.’”
Rick Pidcock
Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.
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What have we learned about Matt Chandler’s sin and restoration? Not much | Analysis by Rick Pidcock
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What transactional sexuality could teach us about Matt Chandler’s odd leave of absence and confession | Opinion by Mallory Challis