ASSEMBLIES OF GOD CHURCH ABUSE

When Trust Becomes a Source of Harm

Parents send their children to church with a sense of peace. They drop them off at Sunday school, youth group, and summer camps trusting that pastors, youth ministers, and church volunteers will keep them safe. That trust is one of the most natural things in the world. It should never have to be questioned.

But sometimes the people we trust the most are the ones who cause the most harm. When abuse happens inside a church, especially one as large and established as the Assemblies of God, the damage goes far beyond the physical. Survivors often describe a shattering of faith, identity, and safety that can last for decades. The betrayal is not just personal. It is institutional.

If you or someone you love experienced sexual abuse in an Assemblies of God church, you are not alone. You may also have the right to hold those responsible legally accountable.

At Gillispie Law Firm, we represent survivors of church sexual abuse and their families across Arkansas. We handle these cases with confidentiality, compassion, and a commitment to real accountability. Consultations are free, private, and carry no obligation. You can reach us anytime to speak with a member of our legal team.

Assemblies of God sex abuse lawsuits often involve more than one responsible party. These cases frequently raise questions about church leadership decisions, failures to report, and whether oversight at the district or denominational level played a role in allowing the abuse to continue.

What Is the Assemblies of God Church?

The Assemblies of God is the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States. Founded in Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1914, it has grown to nearly 13,000 churches across the country and millions of members worldwide. Most people know it for its Pentecostal faith traditions, including speaking in tongues, faith healing, and an emphasis on personal spiritual experience.

The Assemblies of God presents itself publicly as a loose fellowship of independent churches. But that picture does not match how the denomination actually operates. The national General Council in Springfield, Missouri sets the standards, controls the credentialing of every minister, and governs what churches and pastors can and cannot do. Regional district councils supervise the churches in their territory and play a direct role in how ministers are approved, disciplined, and moved between congregations. That is not a hands-off relationship. It is a system of top-down control. When a credentialed minister abuses a child inside an Assemblies of God church, that system of control is exactly why the district and national bodies are in the room when survivors seek accountability.

When a survivor tries to hold a church accountable, the question of who is actually responsible is not always simple. Was it the local pastor who ignored the warning signs? The district council that failed to act on a complaint? The national denomination that never required background checks or reporting policies? In many cases the answer is all of the above. A lawyer who handles these cases knows how to look at all of it and figure out where the responsibility lies.

Sexual Abuse in Assemblies of God Churches and How Abuse Claims Arise

Sexual abuse happens in churches more often than most people want to believe. That is not because churches are uniquely evil places. It is because they are places where adults hold deep trust over children, where questioning a leader can feel like questioning God, and where a predator can find exactly the kind of access and cover he is looking for.

The people who commit this abuse are usually not strangers. They are youth pastors, volunteer leaders, Sunday school teachers, and ministers who have spent weeks or months building a relationship with the child and earning the trust of the parents. They do not start with abuse. They start with kindness. They give the child special attention, spend one-on-one time with them, and slowly push boundaries until the child does not know how to say no or does not believe anyone will listen if they do.

This is what makes abuse by a pastor or church leader so hard for families to process. This may be the man who baptized your child. The person your family turned to in a crisis. Someone the whole congregation admired. When the abuse comes to light, many survivors say the hardest part was not being believed, because no one could imagine that person doing something like that.

Many Assemblies of God church abuse cases arise specifically out of youth ministry programs, church schools, and other settings where adults are given regular, unsupervised access to children. These ministry roles carry real trust, and when that trust is violated, the harm can be severe.

Assemblies of God abuse claims often go unreported for years, sometimes even decades, because survivors fear they won’t be believed or worry about damaging their family’s church community.

And too often, when abuse is reported inside a church, the institution protects itself first. A minister gets quietly moved to another role. A family gets pulled aside and asked to handle it privately. Victims are told to forgive and not cause division. What never happens is a phone call to the police. That silence is not just a moral failure. Under Arkansas law, it can also be a legal one. Gillispie Law Firm handles sexual abuse in religious institutions of all kinds across Arkansas.

Recent Arkansas Lawsuit: Refuge Church of the Assemblies of God

On February 4, 2026, Gillispie Law Firm filed a civil sex abuse lawsuit in Pulaski County Circuit Court on behalf of two sisters who allege they were sexually abused as children by a former youth minister at what is now known as Refuge Church of the Assemblies of God. The church is located in Jonesboro, Arkansas and was formerly known as Jonesboro First Assembly of God. The Refuge Church Assemblies of God sex abuse lawsuit is among the first in Arkansas to directly name both the Arkansas District Council and the national General Council of the Assemblies of God as defendants, alleging failures of oversight at multiple levels of the denomination’s leadership structure.

The lawsuit names Refuge Church, former senior pastor Charles Michael “Mike” Glover, the Arkansas District Council of the Assemblies of God, and the General Council of the Assemblies of God as defendants. The former youth minister is not named as a defendant in the civil action. He pleaded guilty to two counts of rape in April 2016 and has been serving a life sentence since that time. The civil complaint focuses not on the minister’s criminal conduct, which has already been adjudicated, but on what church leadership knew and what they failed to do when the abuse was reported to them.

What the Complaint Alleges

According to the complaint, the two sisters reported the abuse to church leadership in the mid-2000s, with their mother present. The plaintiffs claim that church officials had direct access to the girls’ statements and were aware of physical evidence at the time. Despite this, the lawsuit alleges that leadership chose not to contact law enforcement or report the abuse to the Arkansas Child Abuse Hotline, as required under Arkansas mandatory reporting laws.

Rather than removing the minister from contact with children, the complaint alleges that church leadership imposed only a brief internal suspension before allowing him to resume his role overseeing a homeschool program operated on the church campus. According to the lawsuit, the abuse allegedly continued during this period, even after the initial reports had already been made to church officials.

The complaint further alleges that hidden cameras had been placed in bathrooms used by young girls on the church property. According to the plaintiffs, those cameras were not removed and the recorded footage was not confiscated after leadership became aware of the situation. The lawsuit claims this inaction allowed additional abuse to occur and additional child sexual abuse material to be created without any intervention by church officials.

Broader Denominational Accountability

The lawsuit does not stop at the doors of the local church. By naming both the Arkansas District Council and the national General Council of the Assemblies of God, the complaint argues that the failures here went beyond one congregation. The plaintiffs allege that higher levels of the denomination had a responsibility to ensure that churches under their oversight were following the law and protecting children, and that they did not do that.

Attorney Josh Gillispie, who represents the two sisters, stated at the time of filing: “When children report sexual abuse, the law is clear about what must happen next. This case is not just about what was done to these two sisters, but about what church leaders failed to do after the abuse was brought to their attention.”

What happened to these two sisters is not an isolated story. Across the country, survivors of church abuse have found that going after only the individual abuser is not enough. The person who committed the abuse may already be in prison. What the civil lawsuit can do is hold accountable the people and organizations that knew, looked away, and let it keep happening.

Everything described above reflects the allegations made in the complaint filed by Gillispie Law Firm. These are the plaintiffs’ claims. They have not been proven in court, and the defendants deny liability. 

Who Can Be Held Responsible in an Assemblies of God Sex Abuse Lawsuit?

Most people assume the only person who can be sued is the one who committed the abuse. But in church abuse cases, that is rarely the whole picture.

In an Assemblies of God case, that could include:

• The local church where the abuse happened
• The pastor or elders who received complaints and stayed silent
• The Arkansas District Council of the Assemblies of God
• The national General Council of the Assemblies of God
• Any staff or volunteers who knew something was wrong and said nothing

A church leader who heard a complaint and quietly moved the minister to a different role made a choice. A district council that never required background checks or reporting policies made a choice. Those choices have consequences, and a civil lawsuit is one way to hold people accountable for them. This same legal framework applies in cases involving other denominations, including Catholic clergy abuse.

Getting justice is not just about the person who hurt you. It is about making sure the people who protected him are held accountable too.

Legal Options in Arkansas for Assemblies of God Sex Abuse Survivors

A civil lawsuit is completely separate from the criminal case. You do not need a criminal conviction to move forward. You do not even need to have reported the abuse to police, though that is something a lawyer can help you think through. In a civil case, you are not trying to send someone to prison. You are seeking financial accountability for what was done to you and what the church failed to do to stop it.

In Arkansas, a civil lawsuit related to church sexual abuse can include several different types of claims depending on the facts. A church can be held responsible for failing to properly screen who it hired, for keeping someone on staff after red flags appeared, for not training employees on how to recognize and report abuse, or for actively hiding what happened. When a church leader knew about abuse and reported it to no one, that alone can form the basis of a legal claim. Assemblies of God sex abuse survivors in Arkansas have used these same legal theories to pursue accountability from churches, district bodies, and the denomination itself.

Types of claims that may apply in your case:

• The church failed to protect children from someone they put in a position of trust.
• Leadership hired or kept someone on staff despite warning signs.
• Church officials knew about the abuse and did not report it as required by Arkansas law.
• The church or denomination actively concealed what happened.
• The abuser was given continued access to children after complaints were made.

How Long Do You Have to File in Arkansas?

One of the first questions survivors ask is whether it is too late to do anything. For many people in Arkansas, the answer is no. In 2021, Arkansas passed a law that eliminated the filing deadline entirely for survivors who were under 21 years old on July 28, 2021, or who were born on or after July 28, 2000. If that applies to you, there is no clock running out on your right to file.

For survivors who were older than 21 on that date, the situation is less clear. Arkansas also created a temporary window that would have allowed older survivors to file claims that had previously expired. That window was challenged in court, and in early 2025 an Arkansas appeals court ruled it was unconstitutional. The Arkansas Supreme Court is now reviewing that decision. If you might fall into this group, speaking with a lawyer now matters. The outcome of that case could affect your options.

There is also a separate path for survivors who did not fully understand, until much later in life, that what happened to them was abuse or that it caused the problems they have struggled with. Under Arkansas law, those survivors may have three years from the point when they made that connection to file a claim. This has allowed some survivors in their 40s and 50s to still pursue a case, even when the abuse happened decades ago.

The question of whether you can still file is one only an attorney can answer based on your specific facts. A confidential consultation costs nothing and carries no obligation.

If a case is successful, survivors can recover money for therapy and medical costs, lost income, and the pain and suffering the abuse caused. In cases where a church or denomination acted with particular disregard for the safety of children, Arkansas law also allows for additional damages meant to hold that institution accountable beyond simple compensation.

Recognizing Signs of Sexual Abuse in an Assemblies of God Church

Abuse in religious institutions is often hidden, and children may not report it. Many simply do not have the words to describe what happened. Parents, family members, and trusted adults play a critical role in noticing warning signs and asking gentle questions.

Possible Indicators of Abuse

• Unexplained fear of a specific church leader, volunteer, or ministry space.
• Reluctance or flat refusal to attend church after previously enjoying it.
• Withdrawal from family, friends, or activities they once loved.
• Behavioral changes such as aggression, anxiety, sleep disturbances, or regression.
• Secretive communication with an adult in a leadership role.
• Unexplained gifts, money, or special attention from a church adult.
• Age-inappropriate sexual knowledge or behavior.

Because the abuser has spent so much time building trust, parents often dismiss early warning signs or feel guilty for even having a concern. If something feels off, trust that feeling. You do not have to be certain something happened to pick up the phone and talk to someone. A conversation with a lawyer does not lock you into anything. It just helps you understand where things stand.

What to Do If You Think Abuse Happened

If your child told you something happened, or if you are an adult who has been carrying this for years, the most important thing to know is that you do not have to figure this out alone. Here are some steps that can help, though a lawyer can walk you through what makes the most sense for your specific situation.

Where to start:

• Get support first. Therapy or counseling for the survivor should be the first priority, not the lawsuit.
• Write down everything you remember. Names, dates, places, what was said. Doit soon, while the details are clear.
• Consider reporting to law enforcement. A criminal case and a civil case can move forward at the same time.
• Do not go directly to the church or confront anyone before talking to a lawyer. That conversation can complicate things.
• Call Gillispie Law Firm for a free, private consultation. You are not committing to anything by making that call.

Many families hold back because they are afraid of what coming forward will cost them. Their community. Their church. Relationships that matter to them. Those fears are real and completely understandable. A good lawyer will not push you toward anything. The first conversation is just about making sure you know what your options are.

Why Survivors Choose Gillispie Law Firm

There are a lot of law firms in Arkansas. Not many of them focus on cases like this. Child sexual abuse cases require a different kind of attention. You need a lawyer who has handled institutional abuse before, who understands how churches and denominations operate, and who knows how to build a case when an organization has done everything it can to hide what happened. But you also need someone who will treat you like a person, not a file.

• Confidential consultations: everything discussed with our firm is protected by attorney-client privilege.
• Trauma-informed representation: we understand the emotional weight of coming forward.
• Experience with institutional abuse: we know how to investigate churches, denominations, and district bodies.
• Contingency fee structure: you pay nothing unless we recover compensation for you.
• Arkansas-based: we understand the courts, the laws, and the communities where these cases arise.

You do not have to face this alone. Speaking with an attorney does not mean you have committed to filing a lawsuit. It means you are taking one step to understand your rights.

Every survivor deserves to know what justice looks like and whether it is within reach. Our firm has represented families in some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable, and we bring that experience to every consultation we take.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you sue an Assemblies of God church for sexual abuse?

Yes. In Arkansas, survivors can file a civil lawsuit against the church, its leadership, and in some cases the district council or the national denomination. A civil case is separate from any criminal case, and you can move forward even if no one was ever charged or convicted. What matters is what the church knew, what it did, and what it failed to do.

Has the Assemblies of God been sued for sexual abuse?

Yes. Assemblies of God churches have faced abuse lawsuits across the country for decades. In Arkansas, Gillispie Law Firm filed a case in February 2026 against Refuge Church in Jonesboro, the Arkansas District Council, and the national General Council, on behalf of two sisters who allege they were abused as children by a youth minister who later pleaded guilty to rape and received a life sentence. That case is active. Similar patterns of institutional failure have also been documented in other denominations, including in Southern Baptist church abuse cases.

Who is responsible for abuse in Assemblies of God churches?

More people than you might think. The person who committed the abuse is one answer. Arkansas law requires certain people who work with children to report suspected abuse. When they do not, and children are harmed as a result, that failure can be the basis for a civil lawsuit.

What legal options do Assemblies of God abuse survivors have?

Survivors in Arkansas can file a civil lawsuit against the person who abused them and against the church or institution that allowed it to happen. Depending on your age and when the abuse occurred, you may still have time to file even if it happened years ago. If a case is successful, you can recover money for therapy costs, lost income, and the emotional harm the abuse caused.

What are the signs of abuse in Assemblies of God churches?

Watch for changes you cannot explain. A child who suddenly does not want to go to church. Fear or discomfort around a specific adult. Pulling away from family or things they used to enjoy. Anxiety, trouble sleeping, or behavior that feels out of character. An adult who gives your child unusual amounts of attention, gifts, or private communication is also a warning sign. If something feels wrong, take it seriously. You do not have to have proof before you ask questions.

Disclaimer
The information on this page is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Reading this content does not create an attorney-client relationship. Case results and outcomes depend on individual facts and circumstances. Allegations described from recent lawsuits are claims and have not been adjudicated.