Peternel returns to Life Church ‘broken’ after rehab for sex videos, conduct
Lead pastor of powerful Indiana church has lost pastors, families since son’s child sex abuse conviction, lieutenant governor still preaching there
The lead pastor of Indiana’s embattled Life Church returned from an official Pentecostal rehabilitation process last Sunday, four months after leaving the church amid unanswered questions about sex videos he made which were found on his son’s phone during a child sex abuse investigation.
Nathan Peternel told the remaining congregants at his Fishers, Indiana campus that he had gone through “fire”, changed by God, and thanked them for “Thank You” cards sent to him and his family which covered one refrigerator and a part of a second fridge at their home.
“The Bible talks about brokenness like a horse,” Peternel said Sunday. “If a horse can have the most beautiful flanks, he can have the best looking coat, he can have a beautiful mane. But until he’s broken, he’s useful for nothing. He can’t do anything until he submits to the rider.”
Peternel’s 24-year-old son, Jonathan Peternel, was sentenced to six years in prison in February after police found more than 200 videos of child sexual abuse material on his phone, as well as videos and pictures of his parents having sex. One week after his son’s conviction, leaders of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God directed Nathan Peternel into rehab himself for “unbecoming” behavior.
Peternel employs Indiana’s Christian nationalist lieutenant governor, Micah Beckwith, and his brothers as pastors at the influential church and in the past five years made inroads on the national stage as an official Turning Point USA Faith church touring with Charlie Kirk and working closely with national Assemblies of God leaders on anti-sex trafficking efforts worldwide.
(Beckwith himself has routinely elicited outrage, attacking a local high school marching band as “demonic” and declaring he “hates Muslims”. His office is also the subject of a criminal investigation related to a deepfake porn of a lawmaker’s wife and possible ghost employment.)
Peternel did not return a request for comment for this story. Beckwith has refused requests for comment and his state office, which employs three communications staffers, have said they don’t answer questions about his work at the church.
For his return to the church Sunday, a day after the country’s 250th birthday, Peternel played a clip from “A Great Awakening”, which argues that the U.S. was created as a “Christian nation”, and preached Joshua 23 with directions from God for the leaders of Israel not to engage with outsiders or face God’s wraith again.
Since Jonathan Peternel was arrested last October, Life Church has descended into scandal, with Peternel and Lt. Gov. Beckwith giving varying accounts of what has been happening at the small yet powerful church.
Former church members, including former members of his youth group “Stormfront”, have recounted Nathan Peternel pressuring them to discuss their sexual relationships with him. And Nathan Peternel himself has regularly preached about sexual relationships from the pulpit on Sundays before the entire congregation, over protests from congregants.
After police discovered Jonathan Peternel with videos of his parents having sex, Nathan Peternel gave varying answers to the church of who made the videos and how. Nathan Peternel eventually accused his son of getting high and hacking into a password protected account to steal the videos.
Multiple top pastors resigned from Life Church in the ensuing months, including Nathan Peternel’s sister and brother-in-law, as more details came out. And families continued leaving the church, spurred in part by the publication of police bodycam footage which showed Nathan Peternel had been lying to them for months.
The Assemblies of God, a fast-growing Pentecostal denomination, has been weathering decades’ worth of sex abuse scandals across the country recently, following an in-depth investigation from NBC News. Amidst the criminal cases stemming from the revelations, officials reviewing Nathan Peternel’s case opted not to deem whether homemade sex videos constituted a violation of the denomination’s ban on pornography, according to people familiar with the matter.
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Fucking SICK and utterly STUPID white congregation.