Life Church launches board member’s medical clinic, renames coffeeshop amid sex scandal
Ind. Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith touts business expansion of his embattled church, church accountant quits
The leaders of Indiana’s embattled Life Church, including the state’s Christian nationalist lieutenant governor and pastor Nathan Peternel, are blazing ahead with long touted business expansions despite a sex scandal, launching a medical clinic and rebranding their coffeehouse — without the church’s name attached.
Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith proudly touted the opening of the Perpetual Health Regenerative Medicine Clinic this past Saturday, standing by the husband and wife owners who also serve on the board of Life Church. The clinic’s launch, which was shepherded through the local permitting process by local powerbroker and Life Church leader Ray Adler, followed just weeks after lead pastor Peternel returned from a four-month suspension stemming from sex videos he and his wife made.
The same day Peternel returned, the church’s longtime accountant and board member Bill Parker quit the board, according to two people familiar with his departure.
The powerful Indiana church has struggled to regain its footing following a wave of scandals that tipped off last September, when police discovered Peternel’s son, Jonathan, with videos of children being drugged, raped and tortured and videos of his parents having sex.
Jonathan Peternel is serving a six-year prison sentence and is now registered as a lifetime sex offender and Nathan Peternel himself had his pastor’s license suspended for four months while completing a “restorative process” following an internal investigation into his conduct by Assemblies of God leaders.
The church’s coffeeshop went through a “re-branding” amid the scandal, re-launching a few months ago as “The Anchor Cafe”.
Despite being operating from church space and being run by church leaders, neither the Perpetual Health Regenerative Medicine Clinic nor The Anchor Cafe mention they are a part of Life Church on their websites.
Beckwith and Peternel declined requests for comment. Life Church does not answer requests for comment.
The new Perpetual Health clinic is run by church board member Dr. Vinod Pallekonda and his wife, Sue, and will also house The Melusi Center for Hope and Healing, a practice by another church member, Dr. Terri Litty, according to people familiar with Life Church’s operations.
“If you’re looking to take a more pro-active approach to your health and wellness, I encourage you to check out Perpetual Health Regenerative Medicine Clinic in Noblesville,” Lt. Gov. Beckwith says in a Facebook post announcing the opening.
Pallekonda is a licensed physician and one of the board members who supported keeping Nathan Peternel at the church. His website promises to conduct red light therapy, stem cell processing and shockwave therapy in consultations. The new clinic will work from a single-family home the church purchased years ago, which used to operate as a women’s drug and alcohol rehabilitation center.
Dr. Vinod Pallekonda did not respond to calls and a text message seeking comment.
Along with the coffeeshop, the clinic marks a long-planned expansion of the small yet powerful church, based on visions that Nathan Peternel told congregants he received from God. Plans to buy property and expand the church stalled for years until Nathan Peternel hired Beckwith and recruited longtime powerbroker Ray Adler into the church.
Adler cut his teeth as the official counsel for the City of Noblesville and then the Hamilton County Council in the 1980s and since has grown his private practice into a local juggernaut covering everything from providing Beckwith his official state counsel through a no-bid contract to shepherding church projects through permitting before the local governments he used to work for.
The complete “Jesus, Sex and Politics” investigation is now available HERE.
Through its rapid ascent from 2020 to 2025, Life Church grew into a political operation which helped put Beckwith and other church members in the lieutenant governor’s office.
At the end of last year, the church was raking in $4 million a year through increased donations and an aggressive fundraising drive which relied in part on a program created by Texas pastor Robert Morris, who was released from prison in March after serving six months for child sex abuse, according to internal church documents and interviews with former congregants.
But the arrest of Jonathan Peternel last October touched off a wave of revelations from inside the cloistered church, including former youth group members describing how Nathan Peternel used to coerce them in to telling them about their sexual relationships, something one former member said was clearly “grooming”.
Nathan Peternel has refused to talk about the allegations of sexual assault in public, but along with Beckwith has made vague references to the devil and “enemies” outside the church that they have accused of lying.
Despite the protests by Nathan Peternel and Beckwith that they are under assault, dozens of families have fled the church and five of its top pastors have resigned, including the former head of youth groups and child ministry and Nathan Peternel’s sister and brother-in-law.
The Assemblies of God writlarge is the rare denomination which has seen steady growth in membership in recent years, but has struggled with revelations of decades of child sex abuse allegations pouring forth recently — driven by an extensive NBC News investigation “Pastors and Prey”. Longtime pastor Joseph Campbell was arrested in January and is facing sentencing after almost a dozen witnesses testified that he abused and groomed them, NBC reported.
And a convicted sex offender who was deeply entrenched in the Assemblies of God’s Chi Alpha college ministry, Daniel Savala, was sentenced in May to 30 years in prison for continuous human trafficking, after repeatedly abusing minors between 2021 and 2023.
The Assemblies of God has said in a series of official statements that “abuse against minors is especially reprehensible and unconscionable” and pushed against NBC’s reporting.
National and state Assemblies of God leaders have refused to comment on the Life Church scandal publicly. But the results of an internal investigation were read to Life Church congregants in April, revealing that denomination leaders found Peternel’s behavior — including making homemade sex videos — to be problematic and meriting a suspension and forced rehabilitation.
🚨🚨 Friends, I’m crowdsourcing this investigative series.
My reporting is having an impact, but I need your support. Since I started on this way back in October, multiple top pastors have resigned from the church, other national news outlets have begun paying attention and more stories of alleged abuse are coming into the light.
My deepest thanks to all who have helped so far.
Please contribute at PayPal or Venmo or via my GoFundMe page or with a paid subscription here on Substack.🚨🚨
If you would like to get in touch to discuss what is happening in Life Church or have a news tip, please email: tom@24sight.news.