Matt Chandler’s father confessed to sexually abusing a child then years later was given free reign of a church property

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on July 11, 2024.

“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 and Jay Harris 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.

Continue reading at Baptist News Global.