‘I had to step away’: IHOPKC board member resigns over stalled sex abuse investigation

After six months of serving on the International House of Prayer-Kansas City board of directors, Shane Holden decided last week that his work with the beleaguered ministry was done.

Frustrated by the organization’s failure to reach an agreement with former leaders on a third-party investigation into sex abuse allegations against founder Mike Bickle and last week’s perplexing announcement that IHOPKC was shutting down, then restructuring and downsizing, Holden turned in his resignation.

He announced his action Tuesday afternoon in a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter.

“Because of this continued impasse & due to IHOPs present trajectory, I resigned from the Board April 17th,” Holden wrote.

In an exclusive interview with The Star on Thursday, Holden — senior pastor of First Free Church, a congregation of several thousand in Onalaska, Wisconsin — said it was painful to be speaking publicly about his concerns but believed it was the right thing to do.

“I’m not looking for a platform, and I certainly don’t want to use this crisis in any way,” he said. “This whole thing is uncomfortable for me, of having to go public with my resignation. And I did that because I felt like it was integrity. IHOP has been pretty secretive about lots of things. And I just wanted to have integrity in walking away.”

IHOPKC’s attorney, Audrey Manito, the organization’s spokesperson, did not respond to a request for comment.

Holden said Stuart Greaves, IHOPKC’s then-executive director, asked him in November to become a board member. He said Greaves wanted him to serve as a mediator between IHOPKC’s leadership and the Advocate Group, a coalition of former leaders who support Bickle’s alleged victims.

The Advocate Group was pushing for an independent investigation into the sex abuse scandal, but couldn’t reach an agreement with IHOPKC leaders on who should conduct it.

“I’ve been like a friend from a distance to IHOP for years and years, and so there’s friendships and respect there,” Holden said. “But I also have friends and relationships with the Advocate Group. And so I was just in this unique position. And you know, it was kind of like, ‘Hey, you know, we trust you, both sides trust you. Would you maybe kind of step in, bring some mediation?’

“Because at that point, at the beginning, there was just a breakdown of trust, and so I was just kind of helping them go back and forth with conversations and building a bridge between the two groups.”

Holden said he agreed to join the IHOPKC board “sincerely just because of obedience.”

“I felt like Jesus just asked me, ‘Shane, my body hurts; I want you to help,’” he said. “And so my whole heart in it the whole time has been trying to be a peacemaker. Trying to be a bridge between the two sides.

“And so in walking away, my heart is still the same. I’m not looking to hurt IHOP. I spent six months trying to love them and serve them and help them do the right thing.”

‘Systemic changes’ needed

Holden, a longtime pastor and church planter, said Greaves also wanted his help “making some of the systemic changes that IHOP needs to make to be healthy.” (Greaves resigned from his leadership position in December.)

Holden said he had a long history with IHOPKC, which was founded by Bickle in 1999.

“When I was 25 years old and planted my first church and stumbled into some of Mike’s teaching, it was just really helpful for me,” he said. “I thought Mike was one of the best Bible teachers I’d heard. So Mike and I, you know, we connected just briefly when I was young. It’s not like there was ever some friendship, but his teaching had an influence on me.”

Holden loved IHOPKC and the night-and-day prayer room, he said, and “was there a lot.” He added, however, “I never lived there and was never really a part of it.”

After becoming a board member, Holden told The Star, he made several trips to Kansas City — all on his own dime — and also participated in numerous Zoom meetings and phone conversations.

Holden resigned two days after IHOPKC leaders told staffers that the ministry planned to close and open a new, smaller organization. That revelation was based on a leaked recording of a staff meeting at IHOP University and an email sent to staffers announcing the action.

At that meeting, Isaac Bennett, senior pastor of IHOPKC’s Forerunner Church, said the organization had been hit hard by Bickle’s sex abuse scandal. He called it a “crisis” that “began on the day that allegations were brought against Mike.”

When the allegations surfaced, Bennett said on the recording, IHOPKC began losing donor support. He said IHOPKC accrued “some pretty significant financial challenges,” with expenses outpacing revenue by about $500,000 a month. Bennett also told the group that the scandal had put the 24/7 global prayer movement in legal jeopardy.

The ongoing push to investigate potential mishandling of abuse allegations and cover-up through the movement’s 24-year history, he said, “will produce, inevitably, a contingent of individuals who are wanting to get restitution.”

“They’re not gonna go knock on Mike’s door, because he doesn’t have any money,” Bennett said. “But IHOPKC has facilities. We’re the people to sue at the end of the day. So that presents a significant liability there.”

Simply rebranding IHOPKC, he said, wouldn’t be enough. Separating from Bickle, who for nearly 20 years was the ministry’s CEO, operations director and senior pastor, is the best way, he said. Further, in an email to staffers, the leadership of the Prophecy and Healing Department said, “IHOPKC will be closing for good in a staggered fashion.”

On April 17, however, Manito told The Star in an email that IHOPKC was not shutting down, but reorganizing.

Adding to the confusion was a statement, also dated April 17, from IHOPKC executive director Joseph Taylor that said “we have come to the conclusion that we will wind down many of the ministry and training expressions of IHOPKC.” Those included IHOP University, Forerunner Church, the Children’s Equipping Center and the organization’s internships, Taylor said.

“Our ongoing focus as a ministry will remain on the 24/7 prayer room and intercession for Israel,” Taylor said.

He said that “the financial and personnel losses have not been without consequence, yet they are only a part of the deeper issues we must address in order to continue night and day prayer for future generations.”

“The governance and structure of a Mission Base with a church, ministry school, ministries, and hundreds of staff have been strained for several years and need reform,” he said. “We believe now is the opportune time to address those challenges through a transition and reorganization process.”

Many, including former followers, said IHOPKC’s move to reorganize and restructure smacked of a ploy to protect itself, not to help or comfort those hurt by the organization.

Holden wasn’t happy with the way the issue was handled. When asked Thursday if IHOPKC was indeed closing, he said, “To be completely honest with you, at this point, I don’t know.”

‘A thousand moving pieces’

Holden said he believed the announcement on reorganization was premature.

“There’s a thousand moving pieces,” he said. “And so I think, this is my opinion, they maybe got out a little over the skis in some of the things that were said last week.”

Of the leaked recording, he said: “I was shocked. The whole world heard that. And some of those words that were said that the whole world heard, it made it seem like one of the reasons that IHOP was shutting down was to protect assets.

“And do I think that’s the ultimate motive of the board in shutting down? That’s honestly not mine to speak to; I just know it sounded that way. … If we didn’t mean that, we need to say that we did not mean that. Things were just very cloudy. And just in integrity, I just had to step away from this.”

Holden said he understands the complexity of trying to “reboot” an organization such as IHOPKC.

“To give them a little grace, you’re talking about an organization that had a footprint of 1.5 million people and thousands and thousands of people attached to it in different ways and so many people making a living from it and so many divisions — I mean, it is a machine,” he said. “And so when you start to actually think about how do we redo it, you’re gonna run into so many different options.

“I think they’re doing their best, but I don’t know that you fully know how to bring something like this in for a landing. You’ve just kind of got to do it. And I think it’s going to change and flex as you’re doing it.”

Holden said while IHOPKC leaders pledge to keep the round-the clock prayer room up and running, as it has been for nearly a quarter of a century, that’s going to be difficult — especially if there is no third-party investigation.

“To do 24/7 takes a lot of people,” he said. “And you have to have the trust of the larger body of Christ. You need guys like me, pastors of large churches, encouraging their young people to go there.

“There’s a trust issue at IHOP right now. … They do not have the trust of the larger body of Christ. Whereas if you would just do this investigation, open this thing up, be transparent, you could gain that trust back and I think that would make it much more conducive for 24/7 prayer to continue.”

Another transparency concern that’s often been raised during the scandal is that IHOPKC won’t reveal the names of its board members. Holden declined to provide them as well, but noted that he didn’t keep his identity a secret.

“The reason I let my name be public is because it just kind of seems like it comes with the territory,” he said. “If you’re going to step into something like this, you’ve got to deal with it. But that was their posture. They wanted to protect people.

“But perception is a big deal. The way the world looked at that was, ‘You’re hiding it. You’re not being transparent, you’re being secretive.’”

Impasse over third-party investigation

The controversy over a third-party investigation has been ongoing since the allegations against Bickle surfaced last fall.

IHOPKC originally hired the Stinson LLP law firm to investigate, but quickly reversed that decision after critics questioned whether it could be impartial. Then it hired Manito, who has close ties to IHOPKC, to conduct interviews with those alleging abuse.

When that action was heavily criticized, IHOPKC in December hired Rosalee McNamara of the Lathrop GPM firm to conduct the outside investigation. But Bickle’s alleged victims and the Advocate Group declined to talk to McNamara, saying she couldn’t be impartial because her firm has represented defendants in sex abuse cases, including those involving clergy.

McNamara responded that “while I have investigated other clergy abuse allegations, I have never been involved in the defense of such cases.”

At the end of January, IHOPKC released the results of McNamara’s investigation, which found Bickle “more likely than not” engaged in inappropriate behavior that included sexual contact and clergy misconduct. That behavior was “an abuse of power for a person in a position of trust and leadership,” a report of the findings said.

Though IHOPKC called it an independent investigation, critics — including the Advocate Group — complained that it was far from impartial. They said the alleged victims did not participate in the investigation because they didn’t feel safe doing so.

Holden said he believed the McNamara investigation was truly independent.

“IHOP had no control over that,” he said. “And when she released what she released, everybody saw it at the same time. It’s just that because there wasn’t agreement between the two sides, she just didn’t have access to the main victims.”

Holden has tried for months to broker an agreement between IHOPKC and the Advocate Group to get a new investigation going. But he said IHOPKC’s perspective is that “‘we have done an independent third-party investigation, and on top of that, we have permanently separated from Mike Bickle. Let’s move on, you know, let’s just get on with what we need to do next.’

“And then the other side, the perspective is, ‘We haven’t really walked this thing out together. Let’s do this together.’ A lot of it just came down to the breach of trust that was there between the two sides from the beginning.”

Holden said the Advocate Group has tried to be sensitive to the victims’ feelings, “to just make sure that with whatever investigation, the victims would feel safe.”

“And sometimes that seems like it gets lost in the midst of the battles back and forth,” he said. “But they have tried to hold on to that.”

From the beginning, Holden said, he strongly believed a mutually agreed-upon third party investigation was crucial to help restore trust in the organization.

“To me, it was painfully obvious that that was the path forward,” he said. “And I said that if we ever get to the point where it looks like that’s going to be impossible, that’s when I’ll have to bow out.”

‘No evil intent from either side’

Holden said he’s impressed with the attorney the Advocate Group is proposing to conduct the new investigation.

“I did get to be a part of a conversation with her, and she was brilliant,” he said. “I don’t think anybody who was objective who had a conversation with her and heard her heart and her process would think anything other than she’s the right person for this.”

Moreover, he said, “The Advocate Group is basically going to crowd source it, so it wasn’t even necessarily going to cost us anything.” But even so, he said, “it got to the point for me where it just didn’t appear that it was gonna happen.”

“I understand the perspective that the board has, but for us not to do this was just too far,” he said. “It just seemed like a simple way for us to put our hands in the hands of the AG and just show the larger body of Christ a step towards unity. This just didn’t seem like a big ask to me. A very low risk for the potential of healing and unity.”

Holden said he believed that Taylor, IHOPKC’s new executive director, “has wanted to find a way forward in unity with the AG.” But others, he said, didn’t agree.

“From their perspective, we have permanently separated from Mike — he’s gone, he is over and he’s not going to be a part of this,” he said. “We have done an investigation, and we’re done with Mike. And we’re shutting this thing down and we’re going to reboot it and make sure we create a culture that’s healthy. So what’s the purpose of this? … We want to focus on what’s next, we want to focus on the future and learn from all of this.”

Holden said there were no “nefarious actions” committed by either side.

“What I saw on both sides were sincere people in a very difficult situation, who ultimately wanted the same thing and just radically disagreed about how to get there,” he said. “I didn’t see people trying to cover up sin on the IHOP side, and I didn’t see people on the advocate side trying to destroy IHOP. I know that’s a lot of the narrative that’s been out there. There was great confusion and great pain, great mistrust. But there was no evil intent from either side from the beginning.”

Now, he said, “This is a very fluid and dynamic situation. It does appear that the AG is going to move ahead on their own.”

Last week, the Advocate Group said that in the coming days it planned to announce “an independent investigation into wrongdoing committed at IHOPKC.”

“We remain hopeful,” it said, “that IHOPKC leadership will be open to this investigation.”

But on Wednesday, the day after Holden announced his resignation, Dwayne Roberts, a former IHOPKC leader and member of the Advocate Group, posted a response on X:

“This is a pivotal announcement for me personally, on a near daily basis I have talked hours with Shane trying to get a third party investigation into MB and ihopkc. With Shane having resigned from the board that now signals to me that ihopkc is unwilling and perhaps has even been lying to me about participating with us in an investigation.

“This is a sad day because there are victims that we want to be heard and their stories to be recorded so that repentance and restitution can be made towards these victims. God help us as the church, we value our ministries over people, open our eyes!”