Thoughts on the Chi Alpha Sex Abuse Scandal
Part 1: For me, it started with a dream.
Last week, I published a series examining the conflict between the apostles Peter and Paul about table fellowship with the Gentiles and what it might teach us about the public rebuke of Christian leaders. The study was inspired by my own pondering about how clear public rebuke might have prevented years of sexual abuse in certain Assemblies of God (AG) Chi Alpha college campus ministries in Texas.
Today, I want to tell you about an experience I had one year before the scandal became public and continue on next week with a series reflecting on how the AG (and any movement in a similar situation) might embrace the opportunity for refinement and pruning that presents itself whenever abuse has thrived under cover for years. But first, you may need some context. Here is a condensed overview of the scandal as best as I understand it:1
In the spring of 2023, stories of cult-like behavior and sexual abuse enabled by college campus ministers in my fellowship, the Assemblies of God, broke the news cycle. The roots of the abuse spanned decades, a continent, and several Chi Alpha campus ministry chapters from which ministers took students to visit a convicted sex offender, a man named Daniel Savala. In short, college students (and the young children of one minister) were pressured by leaders to practice nudity, masturbate with others, and/or they were sexually assaulted by Savala.
While many students did not know of specific acts of sexual abuse that were occurring behind the scenes, “nudity is unity” or “nudity brings unity” reflected the unorthodox practice, encouraged by their Chi Alpha leaders, of getting naked together. Leaders suggested that group nudity was somehow linked to Christian bonding and emotional/relational vulnerability with one another.
Although both district and national leaders in the Assembly of God were notified several years before the story became public that Chi Alpha campus ministers were presenting Savala as a spiritual mentor to students, no district or national leader stepped in in such a way so as to insist that student exposure to Savala cease. As a timeline of events unfolded, it became evident to many that ambiguity existed concerning governance over the Chi Alpha ministers involved—where did the buck stop? With the national office or the local districts? This ambiguity delayed justice and was costly for many.
The experience I had a year before the scandal went public might be a little woo woo for some of my readership, but please charitably keep in mind that we pentecostals are by definition a little woo, given that we believe the Spirit is still pouring out dreams, visions, and prophecies two thousand years after the first “tongues-of-fire” Pentecost (read all about it in Acts chapter 2).
Here’s the scoop:
I’ve been a dreamer for the last twenty-five years. My dreams, at times, have been so explicitly detailed and profoundly true to events I could have no possible knowledge of that I learned to take them seriously—to lean into the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, to ponder, to pray, to discern what God might be saying and whether he was saying something for me alone or as a word of encouragement or direction to others.
Reader, I should also tell you that I’ve had plenty of non-spiritual, unspectacular dreams, too—dreams I initially thought were prophetic or full of promise but were not. Who can say if they were byproducts of my desires or a green smoothie I drank? Regardless, the last two-and-a-half decades of dreaming have caused me to remain on a journey with the Lord, to stay close to him in order to discern how to weigh what I hear and see in my dreams, and to become more fluent in the “language” the Spirit speaks to me in my dreams.
April of 2022 was no different than other months in that regard, but the dreams were frequent and far more intense.
In the middle of the month, I had a series of three in one week. Today, I’ll tell you in detail about one of them. For brevity’s sake I’ve collapsed some of the details and left out some parts that don’t seem relevant to the main message.
I am in a building in Springfield, MO, surrounded by ministers from my fellowship—the Assemblies of God. One by one, these ministers leave the building and I remain alone inside. In search of a restroom, I wander the halls for a while and stumbled upon a door that opens up to a college dorm-style room.2 A bit later, as I come out of the dorm room, I stumble upon a scene of horrific physical and sexual abuse taking place in a hallway near a set of stairs leading down to the lobby. A man is abusing a woman and a child in one of the most heinous ways I could ever imagine (on the level of the abuse and dismemberment of the concubine in Judges 19). The man abusing the woman and child is not an AG minister, but somehow he is there, in a context dedicated to ministry [just like the sex offender, Daniel Savala].
Uncertain as to how to stop him, and shaking with fear and horror, I race down a large staircase into a rotunda-like lobby. Flanked against the curving walls are a row of old-school pay phones. I grab one off its receiver, frantically dial 911, and shout at the operator, “I am in the Assemblies of God Historical House. Someone is being sexually assaulted right now.” [Friend, you should know there is no such building as the ‘Assemblies of God Historical House.’ I knew, even as I was shouting those words at the operator that they represented the institution and governance of the Assemblies of God.]
In my dream, I can see the 911 operator tracking my location on her video displays of the city’s street grid. The ‘AG Historical House’ was in a section of the city lit up with flashing white lights on her screen, and the operator tells me that my call is coming from “neutral territory.” By this, I know she means the police will not come, that local authorities will not intervene. In desperation, I scream into the phone again, thinking she doesn’t understand: “Assault is happening right now in the Assemblies of God Historical House!”
As you might imagine, I was shaken by such a pointed and horrifying dream. As I woke up, the face of one of the members of the AG’s executive presbytery (EP)3 floated into my mind, and I felt prompted to email them. In fact, earlier in the week, I had had a dream in which I was wearing a t-shirt from a ministry this EP member was involved in. (I’ll refer to this person as “Q” since they could not give consent for showing up in my dreams.)
I felt certain that I was being led to share the dream with Q because I know them to be someone who hears from the Lord and functions in prophetic gifting. I knew Q would hold the disturbing dream with me in prayer as something of importance—asking and praying with me that the Lord would reveal any hidden evil within any AG ministries and heal the destruction wrought by it. Q did just that, and said they would let me know, without breaking the EP rules of confidentiality, if and when they saw something come before the EP that matched the magnitude and import of my dream.
Just one brief aside (because hindsight is always 20/20): At the time I had my dream, I couldn’t have known what all the details signified, but now I understand that the lack of intervention by the local authorities mirrored a posture of non-intervention by various parties who were given reason for concern about Savala. Ryan Beaty, a PhD candidate in the Department of Communications at the University of Oklahoma, demonstrates in this podcast interview4 how the language of governing documents and policy within the AG create gray areas and opportunities for good leaders to “pass the buck” to another leader, department, or district—resulting in delayed or non-intervention. As I mentioned above, this dynamic enabled abuse to go on for years.
I assumed God had given me the dream so I could pray—for truth to be known, for victims to be healed, for evil to be stopped. I watched and waited, wondering if anything would come to light. Thirteen months later it did.
But, that week’s dreams weren’t yet over. I’ll share more next week in Part 2. Subscribe below to get posts delivered to your inbox.
Thanks for reading. I’m a book-obsessed pastor, seminarian, podcaster, and author. For essays and podcasts that come straight to your inbox, subscribe to this Dear Exiles newsletter in the subscription box above. Fun fact: I’m also the author of Dear Boy:, An Epistolary Memoir and the host of the Your Pastor Reads Books podcast.
You can find a repository of information, eyewitness statement, news articles and resources for victims at https://xalionsden.com. Account creation is required to access the site.
This detail feels significant to me because the abuse revealed 13 months later took place through college campus ministries.
The Executive Presbytery of the Assemblies of God functions as the AG’s board of directors.
Governance information begins at around 1:12:00 and goes til about 1:15:00.
Since you have repeated experience with revelatory dreams, I would love to talk sometime about some materials I’ve read on the topic, but have questions/concerns about.
Wow. I love that you knew to pray. God wants the junk out.