William Hybels is an American church figure and author. He is the founding and former senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, one of the most attended churches in North America, with an average attendance of nearly 24,000 as of late 2018. He is the founder of the Willow Creek Association and creator of the Global Leadership Summit. Hybels is also an author of a number of Christian books, especially on the subject of Christian leadership.
Sovereign Grace Churches is a group of reformed, continuationist, and confessional Christian churches primarily located in the United States. Sovereign Grace believes that churches should exist in a close partnership with one another and describe themselves as a family of churches. In addition to the U.S. congregations, there are also congregations in Mexico, Australia, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Great Britain, Germany, and many other countries.
Overlake Christian Church is a non-denominational megachurch in Redmond, Washington.
Michael Leroy Bickle is a former American evangelical leader and founder of the International House of Prayer (IHOPKC). Once the leader of IHOPKC, Bickle oversaw several ministries and a Bible school until his dismissal in December 2023 after confessing to sexual misconduct. Bickle has also been accused of child sexual abuse.
Various individuals, courts and the media around the world have raised concerns about the manner in which cases of child sexual abuse are handled when they occur in congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses. An independent 2009 study in Norway was critical of how Jehovah's Witnesses dealt with cases of child sexual abuse but stated there is no indication that the rate of sexual abuse among Jehovah's Witnesses is higher than found in general society. The organization's stated position is that it abhors child sexual abuse.
Hillsong Church, commonly known as Hillsong, is a charismatic Christian megachurch and a Christian association of churches based in Australia. The original church was established in Baulkham Hills, New South Wales, as Hills Christian Life Centre by Brian Houston and his wife, Bobbie Houston, in 1983. Hillsong was a member of the Australian Christian Churches – the Australian branch of the US-based Assemblies of God – until 2018, when it separated to form a new denomination. The church is known for its contemporary worship music, with groups such as Hillsong Worship, Hillsong United and Hillsong Young & Free with many musical credits and hits and a series of scandals and criticisms.
The Meeting House was an Anabaptist church located in the Greater Toronto Area suburb of Oakville, Ontario. A member of the Be in Christ Church of Canada, the Canadian branch of the Brethren in Christ Church, at its height it consisted of nineteen regional sites that met mostly in cinemas, each of which had a lead pastor with a team of elders and part-time staff. It was started in 1985 by Craig and Laura Sider and a board of overseers. From 1997 its senior teaching pastor was Bruxy Cavey during whose tenure the congregation grew to an average weekly attendance of around 5,000—ranked by the Hartford Institute of Religion as the third-largest church in Canada—and expanded to multiple sites in southern Ontario. Cavey stepped down in late 2021 after claims of sexual abuse were substantiated against him. The church paused all public ministry in late June 2024 as it had been denied coverage for abuse liability insurance and employment practices liability. It ceased operations at the end of August, with its remaining sites rebranding as the "BIC Church Collective", a loose association of churches that that shared preaching and support functions.
John Carl Ortberg Jr. is an American evangelical Christian author, speaker, and the former senior pastor of Menlo Church in Menlo Park, California, an ECO Presbyterian church with more than 4,000 members. Ortberg has published many books, including the 2008 ECPA Christian Book Award winner When the Game is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box, and the 2002 Christianity Today Book Award winner If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat. Another of his publications, The Life You've Always Wanted, has sold more than 500,000 copies as of 2008. On August 13, 2012, Ortberg's book Who Is This Man? debuted at #3 on the New Release chart at Amazon.com.
Richard Joseph Malone is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who served as bishop of the Diocese of Buffalo in New York, from 2012 to 2019. He previously served as bishop of the Diocese of Portland in Maine from 2004 to 2012 and as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston in Massachusetts from 2000 to 2004.
Richard Frank Stika is an American Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of Knoxville from 2009 to 2023.
William Graham Tullian Tchividjian is a pastor and author of more than a half dozen books about Christianity and current issues, including One Way Love and It is Finished. He is a grandson of Christian evangelist Billy Graham.
The parish transfers of abusive Catholic priests, also known as priest shuffling, is a pastoral practice that has greatly contributed to the aggravation of Catholic Church sexual abuse cases. Some bishops have been heavily criticized for moving offending priests from parish to parish, where they still had personal contact with children, rather than seeking to have them permanently returned to the lay state by laicization. The Church was widely criticized when it was discovered that some bishops knew about some of the alleged crimes committed, but reassigned the accused instead of seeking to have them permanently removed from the priesthood.
Robert Morris is a former American televangelist pastor who founded Gateway Church, a megachurch based in Southlake, Texas, in 2000. He served as senior pastor at the church until 2024, when he resigned after allegations that he engaged in sexual misconduct with a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s.
Gateway Church is a non-denominational, evangelical Christian multi-site megachurch based in Southlake, Texas, near Fort Worth. As of 2023, it was ranked as the 9th largest in the United States, with attendance of 25,805. In 2024, its founding pastor, Robert Morris, resigned after allegations of past sexual abuse of a minor. Max Lucado, of Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, became the interim teaching pastor, and Joakim Lundqvist of Sweden also has interim pastoral duties.
Brian Charles Houston is a New Zealand-Australian former pastor and evangelist. He was the founder and senior pastor at Hillsong Church, based in Sydney with locations around the world. He was the national president of Australian Christian Churches, the Australian branch of the Assemblies of God, from 1997 to 2009.
Gilbert Bilezikian is an American Evangelical Christian writer, professor, and lecturer. Along with Bill Hybels, Bilezikian is a co-founder of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois. In 2020, Willow Creek announced that allegations of sexual abuse had been made against Bilezikian.
Timothy Bruce Cavey, known as Bruxy Cavey, is a Canadian author and former pastor. He is the author of The End of Religion and Reunion. Cavey, along with Greg Boyd, has been an important voice in recent discussions of Christian nonviolence theology in North America. Cavey has been a guest professor teaching university-level courses around North America, particularly Tyndale University, Messiah College, and Fresno Pacific University Biblical Seminary. He was a pastor at The Meeting House church in Oakville, Ontario, for 25 years, but was asked to resign from his role as teaching pastor in March 2022 after a third-party investigation revealed his years-long sexual abuse of a member of his church. According to the Toronto Star, a church official stated that the investigation found his conduct to be an abuse of power and that it amounted to sexual harassment. In June 2022, Cavey was arrested and charged with sexual assault.
#MeToo was a social movement and awareness campaign against sexual abuse, sexual harassment and rape culture, in which women publicize their experiences of sexual abuse or sexual harassment. The phrase "Me Too" was initially used in this context on social media in 2006, on Myspace, by sexual assault survivor and activist Tarana Burke. The hashtag #MeToo was used starting in 2017 as a way to draw attention to the magnitude of the problem. "Me Too" is meant to empower those who have been sexually assaulted through empathy, solidarity and strength in numbers, by visibly demonstrating how many have experienced sexual assault and harassment, especially in the workplace.
Widespread sexual abuse cases in Southern Baptist churches were reported by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News on February 10, 2019. The report found roughly 380 clergy, lay leaders and volunteers had faced allegations of sexual misconduct, leaving behind over 700 victims since 1998. The extent of misconduct is further complicated by work within the Southern Baptist Convention to move sex offenders to other communities and resist attempts to address the culture of abuse.
William Scott Sanford is an American minister and politician. He has represented the 70th District in the Texas House of Representatives from 2013 to 2023. A member of the Republican Party, Sanford also serves as the executive pastor for stewardship and operations of the Cottonwood Creek Church in Allen, Texas.
