Taking Back The Narrative: Public Response # 2 to Paul Johnson’s Article
In this particular article I will be addressing each individual accusation made by my brother Paul Johnson in the article he pieced together and authored on 04/30/24. I will also be addressing and revealing direct evidence that my brother Jeremiah has tried to manipulate and intimidate us when confronting him about his lack of integrity in ministry. Paul wrote his article in retaliation to my wife Jenn and I coming forward with information about the ministries of my brother Jeremiah Johnson, my father Joseph Johnson and now Paul Johnson. The goal of Paul’s writing is to discredit anything we are saying by using gossip, slander, and false accusations to assassinate our character and cause anyone who might be open to the Truth, simply not to listen to us.
While it is undoubtedly true that God has used my broken family to help touch and transform many lives by His Great Grace, this does not negate the fact that many people have been seriously hurt, wounded, or damaged by the things they have done and are continuing to do in this present moment in the Church. The many ways in which real spiritual abuse has taken place in the body of Christ over the last several decades at the hands of my family is not something we are willing to keep quiet about any longer and there is simply no amount of manipulation or intimidation that we will give into, in an attempt to force us back into silence. Though I have made promises to my brother Jeremiah and my Dad to never publicly out them for their sins, I feel compelled to break my promise and tell the Truth about things that have been going on for a very long time because they have refused to stop their behavior. I have come to realize that covering up the ungodly behavior of leaders in the Church whether they are in your own family or not, isn’t honorable. It’s sinful.
I want to invite anyone reading this to please stop and consider the following before moving forward:
At this present moment, neither of my brothers or my father have come forward and addressed any of the claims we have made or attempted to address the concerns we have brought forward over the last few months. Instead of responding in humility to the things we have said, they have ignored us altogether as they have a habit and history of doing. They have in similar fashion advised the other leaders they are aligned with in all of this to do the same thing in the hopes that this will all just go away quietly.
My brother Paul spent almost two full months attempting to dig up any dirt he could find on Jenn and I so that he could very thoroughly and methodically silence our voices. Many have mistakenly interpreted my family’s silence during this time as meekness when in reality they have been coming up with a plan in the background for months on how to discredit us.
This is not our opinion. This is what Paul was actually doing. We were made aware of this by several different people who shared with us that Paul had reached out to them or others connected to them looking for any information he could gather about us in order to create his article. It should be noted that because my brother Paul and his wife Taylor do not actually have any real relationship with us established that he was forced to try and obtain testimonies from people he doesn’t know which is where his article quickly begins to nose dive. It is abundantly clear after reading his article that he was so desperate to discredit us that he gathered to himself people who also were willing to either outright lie or embellish the truth alongside of him. You don’t have to take my word for it, simply keep reading and look at the evidence I present here for yourself.
It is my sincerest belief that what the enemy meant for evil, God will use for good in this situation. The enemy has once again overplayed his hand and placed all of his cards on the table too quickly. My earnest prayer in all of this is that the Lord will expose the agenda of the Evil One and bring about Freedom in Christ for my family and for all those involved in the controversial history of their ministries.
The evidence we will begin presenting in this article makes it clear that what my brother’s Paul & Jeremiah are desiring is not the Truth, or repentance, or reconciliation, but rather to destroy us and permanently separate themselves and others in the body of Christ from us. In Paul’s article he has labeled us as delusional and wolves in sheep’s clothing without any actual evidence of this. In his mind the article he wrote serves as the proof of his claims but for all those who have the patience to persevere through the fog and desire only to walk in the Light, the Spirit of the Lord will make it clear what is fact and what is fiction. The proof I am providing in this article and its subsequent counterparts will allow those who want the Truth, to see it for what it actually is. That is the stated and desired goal of this writing.
Paul states in the opening of his article that for over a decade he has been observing our lives but failed mentioning to his readers that we actually have had little to no relationship since our parents divorce over 15 years ago. The Truth is that we have not lived in the same city, zip code, or state as Paul and his family since 2016 and that time period was for less than 6 months. Paul and his family have never once in the last 10 years been to visit my family and I which also means they have never been inside our home.
My wife Jenn and I have made many attempts over the years to build relationship with them but have often been stiff armed or ignored for reasons known only to them. We could share what we discern those reasons to be but for the sake of staying away from speculation we will leave that out for now. Let the reader take note of the fact that Paul does not share any specific stories or testimonies about his relationship with me because there isn’t any history to share from. Paul has not closely observed anything about us because he has admitted to me within the last 12 months that he has no desire to have a relationship with us. He stated in that same conversation that the nearly 7 year gap in age was part of that for him. I was sad to hear him say that, but nevertheless I chose to respect it.
In order to clearly demonstrate that what I just said is the truth I have provided screenshots below of a text message conversation between me, my brother Paul, and my brother Jeremiah in May of 2022. These texts are just one month before the super ugly texts which I sent to them calling them names, cussing at them, and expressing my hatred towards what they were doing at the moment of our father’s very sudden and imminent terminal cancer announcement. In his article, Paul is attempting to use that moment as a snapshot into who he says I am today. He wants people to believe that those texts in my anger are a reflection of my consistent character which is simply not true. I do not believe that my anger and my pain in that moment were an excuse for my sin in any way but I believe Paul’s blatant dishonesty about the situation needs to be revealed and addressed so that people can come to their own conclusion instead of being further manipulated into drawing the narrow conclusion that my brothers Jeremiah & Paul want people to believe.
Paul’s version of the story intentionally leaves out the fact that I sincerely repented to them both in text and in person. Additionally, In the months leading up to this blow up, I had been actively working (as I have at other times in the past) to build any real semblance of a real relationship with my brothers. I have always been the pursuer of relationship with them because of my sincere love for people. As you will see in the text, Paul confesses the exact opposite of his claim in his article to have “carefully observed my life and ministry for over a decade” by stating he has no personal issues with me because there is a lack of relationship. He makes this clear again in another text I will post as proof later in the article.
Jeremiah’s response to my questions is met with his typical victim narrative towards me where he pretends as if I am the only one who has done anything wrong in our relationship. When I address the fact that he has ignored my wife Jenn and I’s appeals to him (which he has done historically), he simply doesn’t respond back. Paul then volunteers to be some type of mediator in a meeting that Jeremiah still has never been willing to come to. The very next set of text messages (shown below) between my brothers and I is immediately before I let them have it in the texts that Paul posted in his article. As you can see, I was incredibly upset that my brothers were unwilling to wait one night before posting about our father’s terminal cancer on social media. I had called them and appealed to them to wait so that I could contact friends and family who I thought would be shocked and caught off guard if they found out about the news this way. My brothers refused to listen to my appeals and justified their cold heartedness by saying my dad, who was laying on his literal death bed on serious pain meds gave them permission to go ahead.
Consequently, as shown in the texts below, many people including our own mother who was married to my father for over 20 years found out on social media and this sent me over the edge. I snapped on my brothers and for that I was and still am legitimately sorry. After coming at my brothers via text, my brother Paul very smugly suggested that I don’t show up to my dad’s last days on earth which made me even more angry. Again, there is no justification for me to talk like that as a follower of Jesus, but to paint a picture of me to the body of Christ as someone who lives this way consistently is just incredibly dishonest and misleading for the multitudes of people who have never met us or don’t really know us. This is the narrative Paul offered to each person he contacted in his article in order to lure people into giving testimonies meant to damage my credibility.
As you can now begin to see, my brother Paul’s article purposefully leaves out any and all context in each given situation that would condemn or incriminate himself or Jeremiah in any way. My brothers have never been transparent with the public about their lives or the mistakes they have made. They are a slave to the public reputations they have made for themselves in ministry and they will do anything to preserve them. Paul’s version of what happened the day I attacked them in text messages is considerably different than the story you see played out in the screenshots I provided. It should also be noted that Paul deleted and omitted his text response to my abrasiveness in his article but instead edited and clipped together the rough things I said instead. He lied about this entire encounter which can be validated factually simply by reading the conversation above. Our own mother, among others in our family found out my father had cancer on social media. My brother (whose ministry influence is massive online) couldn't wait to get the news out on social media because of the buzz it would create. He did this at the expense of many who should have been told privately but were not because Jeremiah and Paul are not loved or respected by most in our immediate extended family.
Since the release of Paul’s article, Jenn and I have made attempts to reach out privately and graciously to those who made statements in it. Our genuine heart for repentance and reconciliation is something we take seriously before the Lord despite all our flaws and imperfections. One of those people was is a leader in the body of Christ named Greg Crawford. Seeing Greg’s testimony in Paul’s article was quite shocking for Jenn and I because we have only ever visited Greg’s ministry in Iowa and ministered there twice. Although we did strongly consider being a part of it for a short time, we have never lived in the same city as Greg or done life with him.
After reaching out to Greg he immediately responded to our invitation to speak with him and the Lord moved powerfully in our time together. Greg agreed before we talked to allow our friend Josh Harris who lives in Indiana to be a 3rd party witness to the conversation so he was on the line the entire time for that first 2 hour meeting. We had not spoken to Greg since 2017 simply because life separated our paths and our last conversation was one of reconciliation, unity, and the Gospel. This is also another reason why it made no sense to see Greg’s name published in the article Paul wrote. In many ways it went against the character of the man that Jenn and I had only known to be Godly and fatherly in the faith.
During our 2 hour conversation with Greg several weeks ago he fully repented to Jenn and I for getting involved in Paul and Jeremiah’s attempts to silence us publicly. Greg does plan to make his own statement about all of this at some point in the days ahead but has alot of other things happening in his life and ministry so he released us to make our own statement without handcuffs or requirements. In fact, he encouraged us to tell the Truth even if it made him look bad.
During our 2nd conversation which was about an hour long Greg shared and reiterated to us that he had been “manipulated and coerced” into giving his statement to Paul. He stated that Paul intentionally omitted many details of the situations he shared with Greg in order to make Greg believe that we were currently living in sin and doing awful things to people in the Body of Christ. He left out context throughout their conversation and even asked Greg if he knew of anyone else he could talk to, to which Greg said “No.”
Greg also stated that Paul told him that his statement would be used in a private context to confront us. Greg consented to giving Paul a statement without understanding that Paul intended to publish it in the manner which he did. Paul never shared the article he wrote on his own social media but instead had Jeremiah share it so that it would look like Paul kept his word to Greg not to publish it directly to the public. This is manipulation at the highest level. Paul also included Greg’s name and ministry in the list found at the bottom of the article among those whom Paul says had read through and approved of it before he published it. Greg did read the other statements but did not consent to being one of the leaders whose name would be used to co-sign on publishing of the document.
Greg admitted in our conversation with him that there were many details which he could not remember and felt initially like he shouldn’t give a statement but after some convincing from Paul he agreed. After we shared with Greg the evidence that refuted his recalling of that season, Greg genuinely repented to us and agreed that he should have contacted us directly and privately to hear our side of the story before allowing Paul to manipulate him into participating in this mess.
As of at 8:30AM CST on Friday May 3rd, Paul has silently removed Greg’s accusations against us as well as removed his name from among those who have approved of Paul’s attempts to assassinate us. This was done first thing that morning very discreetly because any announcement of this would only further open the door of doubt for those who are struggling to discern the truth in this moment. It genuinely pains me to say this Saints, but Paul has demonstrated such a gross lack of integrity and desire for the Truth in all of this that it leaves even us in awe. Paul published an article on a national level about us with full length false accusations and then deletes one of his “corroborating testimonies” without letting the public know about the major change to the document. This lacks integrity and continues on with the pattern of Paul intentionally misleading people he is trying to guide through this.
The evidence to prove that Paul has failed to validate or confirm any of the malicious gossip and slander he is publishing as fact is wildly telling of the agenda that my brothers have in all of this. His recklessness in his quest for blood highlights that his desire is not to protect the Church from some wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s simply to crush us under the weight of what he spent 2 months compiling against us in the hopes we will bow down again to that old familiar fear and shame they have sowed into us for so long now. Like Jezebel writing letter’s in Ahab’s name in order to have Naboth assassinated in 1st Kings 21, so my brother Paul has endeavored in this evil on behalf of Jeremiah in order to assassinate us. He has done this because in the event that the truth would come out, they would both begin to hemorrhage followers and finances on a serious level.
Below is a text message I sent to Paul on March 20, 2024 appealing to him again privately to stop what he is doing and detach himself from the wickedness of my brother Jeremiah. You will also see me mention Joe Sweet’s name in my text because Paul reached out to this pastor after I exposed Joe several months ago for intense levels of spiritual abuse which are still currently taking place. That story will come to a head soon enough in the public light on a stage much bigger than this one so keep your eyes and ears open for the exposure that will soon validate the claims we have made. Here is the screenshot of my genuine appeal to my brother Paul.
In the next set of screenshots below you will find an example from June of 2019 where I privately confronted my brother Jeremiah for stealing a prophetic encounter I had with the Lord and pawning it off as his own at a conference just days later. I shared my experience with Jeremiah privately who then proceeded to go on stage at Morning Star Church and tell the crowd there that 2 angels with brooms had delivered the message to his hotel room the night before. His entire re-telling of these events is a lie. He had done this earlier in the year and I had let it go as I have other similar things in the past, but something that was happening at that present moment was causing me to go back and address it. In Jeremiah’s response to me you will see that not only does he inadvertently admit what he did but he proceeds to tell me that “instead of feeling offended I should feel tremendously blessed.” He follows up with a series of manipulative, threatening, and intimidating text messages trying to put me back in my place and silence my confrontation with him. Anytime I have ever attempted to confront Jeremiah about any form of his spiritual abuse or lying he immediately resorts to bullying and bringing up grossly exaggerated versions of my past meant to shame me back into a place of submission to him. He also threatens to lie about me and make up things which he would say to other leaders if I persist in confronting him. He never acknowledges directly anything I was attempting to confront him about but instead does everything he can to make me feel like I owe him a debt and should just keep quiet.
Let the reader understand that Derek Kelly who is mentioned below is the leader of the HOTFM Winter Haven campus who is responsible for spiritually abusing and hurting a multitude of families. Many of them we know personally. Jeremiah and the elders at the HOTFM Lakeland campus allowed this to happen and looked the other way because of their extreme passivity. Derek was caught lying consistently about a number of things while we were there and anytime we addressed this we were gaslighted immediately by him and his wife. Instead of Jeremiah acknowledging what he knew to be the truth, he attacked my character and tried to use that again to keep me from bringing it up.
The 2nd HOTFM location known as the WH campus was not an organic church plant. Derek Kelly had been a part of the Lakeland campus serving as the young adults pastor with incredible amounts of ambition in his heart. Rather than making him an elder in Lakeland they allowed him to leave the church and go across town with about 40 people from the Lakeland campus who my brother Jeremiah jokingly referred to behind closed doors as “the rejects.” My brother Jeremiah recruited and encouraged specific families from Lakeland who he didn’t care for to go with Derek so that he could relieve himself from the duty of shepherding those who he viewed as weird or difficult. The 2 campuses of Heart of the Father Ministry in Florida are roughly 25 minutes away from each other. They both have the same name, logo, and likeness but now have zero active relationship between the 2 ministries because of a convoluted history of spiritual abuse and wounding. When my wife and I brought issues from the Winter Haven campus to the Elders at the Lakeland campus, we were told to handle it on our own because (just like their mentor Jeremiah) they are not comfortable with biblical conflict/resolution. They all talk a great game from the pulpit but lack the willingness and courage necessary to consistently address and work through issues at the local church level.
Below is the full conversation between Jeremiah and I in 2019 where I confronted him again about his character and he did everything in his power to make me go away . The elders at HOTFM as well as my father had full knowledge of this conversation and covered it up per their usual. They have covered for Jeremiah for over a decade. (Which we will address in detail soon.)
Now, I will transition back to directly addressing my relationship with my brother Paul and a confrontation that directly links us to the article which he published last month. In order to continue establishing proof that what I have said about my relationship with my brother Paul is not merely my own delusional opinion, I have attached screenshots as well as a transcription of a much longer text conversation between Paul and I on 02/14/24. This conversation between us is a direct link to other parts of Paul’s article that contain false testimonies from false witnesses concerning us. You will find audio and video clips linked later in the article which directly refute the story of Riley Shelton which Paul published.
The context of this conversation is in relationship to a situation in which my wife Jenn and I were involved with confronting a woman named Debbie McCurley who has used religion to intensely manipulate and control her own son Elijah for many years. For this reason Elijah elected to separate himself from relationship with his mother when she continually refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing in her twisted relationship with her son and refused to repent or change the way in which she related to him. In my text to Paul I had asked him to call me because it had been brought to my attention that in the midst of Elijah’s separation from his mother she had reached out online to Paul’s wife Taylor. The reason for this is because Elijah’s mother Debbie blames us directly for the separation from her son. She reached out to my brother and his wife in the hopes that she could somehow leverage that relationship to get to Elijah, who currently will not have a relationship with her until she is willing to tell the Truth and build a healthy relationship with him that has appropriate and Godly boundaries.
I cannot verify all of what Debbie said to my sister in law Taylor via text but what Debbie confessed to us directly is that Taylor and Paul’s response to her about us was causing her to believe a narrative about us that is false. This ended up being incredibly damaging to our efforts to help Debbie McCurley reconcile things later that day when we met in person. In Paul’s text to me (shown above in the screenshot) prior to the meeting, as well as on the phone that day, he made it clear that they had not spoken to Debbie much because according to Paul, “they are not in much relationship with Jennifer and I and they don’t know the situation so they can’t do anything to help.” Paul re-iterated this narrative to me in text and on our brief call. He led me to believe that they just encouraged her to pray and moved on. This would prove very quickly to be a lie that Paul did not expect to be caught in.
Based on the belief that my brother Paul was telling the Truth about his wife Taylor’s interaction with Debbie McCurley, we moved confidently into a meeting with Debbie and her husband Ricky, as well as Riley & Debbie Shelton (pastors of The Way Church) and our friends Stuart & KayCee Graham (formerly associate pastors of The Way Church). This meeting was held at their church building in Hartwell, GA and lasted a little over 3 hours. The full length of this meeting was recorded in mutual agreement by everyone involved. In the following audio clip from this meeting you will hear me confronting Debbie McCurley when she brings up my sister in-laws text to her in which Taylor slanders us badly. At this point, because I had already spoken to my brother Paul I told Debbie I believed she was lying unless she could prove otherwise, in which case I would apologize to her for calling her a liar. Debbie McCurley then proceeds to pull out her phone and read the message out loud in front us where Taylor did a whole lot more than say ‘she didn’t have much relationship with us and just to pray over the situation.’ I kept my word and immediately apologized to her for not believing her as we continued to move on through the meeting.
As you can see in the screenshot above, I texted Paul several minutes later and quietly communicated to him that I was now painfully aware of what they had done. In my text I also made it clear that I did not desire to be confrontational about this but that their slander and gossip about us to Debbie McCurley had caused her not to repent in that meeting. I was not rude or abrasive and believe I was quite gracious with all things considered. I was actually more grieved over the way it made Debbie stumble than I was with what my brother and his wife had done. Contrary to popular belief, I tend to forgive quickly and delight in showing mercy because of the way in which mercy and forgiveness has been shown to me so extravagantly throughout my life.
The following text is Paul’s response to me later that night. In his text he makes it clear that he essentially doesn’t owe me an explanation of anything and that he didn’t need to text me anything at all when I asked him about their interaction with Debbie McCurley originally. As shown in the text thread, rather than responding to my questions or concerns, he evades them completely and makes it clear that not only does he not owe me anything, but that he has no problem with what Taylor said about us to Debbie, despite the fact that up until this point they had never communicated their feelings to Jenn and I directly. Paul says in the text, “they have no dog in the show” and that he “only brought it up because he had briefly mentioned it to me in a conversation” we had just several days earlier at Paul’s home in Indiana where I had traveled for the funeral of our beloved Uncle Chris. He also makes it clear that in his opinion “they should have never gotten involved in the situation and that there were many agendas at work.”
Here is another vital segway into the next part of what Paul lied about in his article which we are addressing. Paul states that, “In February of 2024 I confronted Josiah in two separate conversations (one in person and one via phone) about his lack of Christlike character, volatile history, and the lack of any real accountability for his life and ministry.” Here again, not only does Paul lie about this but he leaves out any and all context which would expose his sin to those he is trying to manipulate. The in person meeting he is referencing here was a spontaneous conversation between him and I at his home on the night I mentioned above where I came over for dinner after the funeral the night before I flew back out of town. The tone of this conversation was anything but confrontational. Because of the genuine lack of relationship between us, Paul asked me many questions that night about my life and the history of it which he had only heard bits and pieces about from others. I was eager to answer his questions because I believed in that moment that he was trying to get to know me in a genuine way and I was excited about that. Unfortunately, what I realized later on is that he was simply collecting information about me that he could use against me at the opportune time.
The second conversation via phone which he references in the above paragraph (which was also mutually agreed on to be recorded by both of us) is actually in response to ME CONFRONTING HIM via text about lying to me. Please read that again. Paul did not set up some conversation with me where he intended to confront me out of the kindness and care of his heart for my life and family. Paul responded to MY request for a phone call or text back after I decided not leave our previous conversation alone and engage him assertively about his behavior. Listed below is a transcript of my text to him. You be the judge of what my heart and tone was in my approach to Paul that day. I wanted nothing but reconciliation but instead of humility and a willingness to reason together I was met with more gaslighting, false accusations, and nauseating amounts of pride and self-righteousness. For the continued sake of transparency on our end, that full 1 hour conversation between Paul, myself, and my wife Jenn can be found in the audio clip below.
We have watched first hand over the last year as God has radically transformed Elijah’s life and made him an incredible new creation in Christ. Elijah contributes much of this new found freedom in God to the healthy boundaries he has set up in the separation of himself from his earthly family who had tormented him with this witchcraft for most of his life. This woman is a part of The Way Church in Hartwell, GA which is pastored by Riley and Debbie Shelton. These details are important in understanding how to unweave the webs that have been spun in Paul’s article.