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(CP) International House of Prayer Kansas City is reportedly winding down the operations of its motion and missions group primarily based in Missouri because of the monetary impression of the sexual abuse scandal related to founder Mike Bickle, with whom the group completely reduce ties final December.
Citing a leaked recording from leaders at an inside IHOP University employees assembly in addition to an e mail from IHOP University President Matt Candler, the leaders revealed that the ministry was shedding some $500,000 per 30 days because of donors being too related to Bickle, the Roys Report stated.
“IHOPKC as a corporation is starting to wind down … ” Candler stated throughout the assembly. “We’re going to be sustaining our prayer room and finally starting a brand new group.”
The 24/7 prayer ministry didn’t instantly reply to requests for affirmation of the report from The Christian Post on Tuesday, however Isaac Bennett, who leads IHOPKC’s Forerunner Church, famous that lawsuits from the victims in Bickle’s sexual abuse scandal introduced the ministry with “important liabilities”.
Boz Tchividjian, Billy Graham’s grandson, an lawyer and longtime advocate of sexual abuse survivors who’s representing one among Bickle’s alleged victims, stated if IHOPKC leaders consider the ministry can simply shutter to flee legal responsibility, they’re residing in “fantasyland.”
“The notion that they’ll simply shut it down and begin a brand new group and all of that prior potential legal responsibility is wiped away is fantasyland,” he instructed the information outlet. “To abruptly take all of the property, put it in title of [a] new group to restrict legal responsibility that will what I consider be known as a fraudulent switch. A court docket wouldn’t enable that.”
In February, after a 3rd girl alleged she was groomed and sexually abused by Bickle within the Nineteen Eighties when she was 14, Tchividjian, stated the ministry ought to shut completely.
“It’s time. It’s time to completely shut the doorways at IHOPKC,” Tchividjian stated in a statement via the X account of his law firm, BozLaw P.A.
“It’s time to take no matter monies are left & put them right into a fund for these whose lives have been wrecked by a spot that claims to like Jesus a lot it prays to him 24/7. The praying hasn’t labored. It’s simply made IHOPKC extra pious in defending the indefensible. It’s time.”
Using her maiden title, the third girl, Tammy Woods, who’s now a 57-year-old mom and grandmother, instructed The Kansas City Star that Bickle abused her in St. Louis the place he pastored a church earlier than shifting to Kansas City and beginning IHOPKC in 1999.
Woods stated Bickle abused her in his automobile, at her house, within the church and his workplace. She stated the abuse, which started when she began babysitting his two sons, concerned sexual contact however not intercourse. She revealed that the IHOPKC founder additionally instructed her a number of instances that his spouse, Diane, would die younger and steered that she could possibly be the mom to his sons.
Woods’ revelation got here within the wake of an impartial report launched to the general public on Jan. 31 and ready by lawyer Rosalee McNamara, the place Bickle confessed to participating in “consensual sexual contact” with a lady related to the 24/7 prayer ministry along with a beforehand confessed relationship with a major Jane Doe who alleged she was his saved girl for a number of years.
While Bickle by no means touched the second Jane Doe in McNamara’s report, Woods stated he did contact her and that he could be remorseful every time he abused her.
“I’ve witnessed him genuinely weep and repent, like ask the Lord’s forgiveness, ask my forgiveness,” she stated. “I noticed at 14, a person in anguish over failure, and he would all the time be like, ‘I can not, we will not do that once more. And please forgive me.’ I believed all of that to be real … nevertheless it did not cease. We’d do good for some time after which crash.”
A day after the Star’s story was revealed, IHOPKC condemned Bickle’s actions as “sick” and apologized for the style by which they dealt with the investigation into allegations of abuse towards him, which has lengthy been criticized by Tchividjian and a bunch of former leaders at IHOPKC often called the advocate group.
Bennett stated within the leaked recording that whereas IHOPKC has been alternative ways to navigate the sexual abuse scandal, they’ve discovered no means across the legal responsibility the group has been uncovered to on account of the allegations of the ministry’s mishandling of the abuse allegations.
“In circumstances the place there’s clergy abuse, the place there’s allegations which can be excellent — when there’s now curiosity in having an investigation that goes again via all of our 24-year historical past to search out circumstances the place there’s been mishandling of abuse, or the place there’s been cover-up, or no matter else it’s folks consider has been gone on — these issues will produce inevitably a contingent of people who’re desirous to get restitution,” Bennett stated. “And they don’t seem to be going to go knock on Mike’s door as a result of, properly, he in all probability will not reply. But they don’t seem to be going to knock on Mike’s door as a result of he does not have any cash. But IHOPKC has amenities.”
To maintain IHOPKC at its present operational degree, IHOPKC must let go of 90% of its paid employees, Bennett stated. So, as an alternative of 500 employees, IHOPKC must run the group with simply 50, Bennett stated.
“We are at an deadlock,” Bennett stated. “There’s no different means ahead. So, the Lord is kindly inviting us into a brand new period.”
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