A Syracuse church, whose former senior pastor recently exposed himself to a female volunteer, has rebranded under a different name.
In July, The Roys Report (TRR) reported that in 2023, former volunteer Emma Misco walked in on former Thrive City Church Pastor Ben Tubbs masturbating in his office. Allegations followed that church overseers and its new pastor Josh Jansen weren’t transparent about what had happened.
A month after TRR’s reporting, the church advertised a Sept. 7 relaunch as The Room Syracuse.
“We have been building community for over three years, and we cannot wait to launch into a new season together,” the church’s Instagram page stated in August. “A place where we make room for people to meet God. Nothing can be better.”
The name is unusual in what the late University of Chicago scholar Martin E. Marty once called “the fade-away church movement” whereby houses of worship are given non-descript secular monikers. Since the 1990s, churches have been known to call themselves The Living Room or The Upper Room, but rarely simply “The Room.”
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Thrive City Church, with Tubbs as its founder, originally launched five years ago with the help of the Association of Related Churches (ARC). ARC is one the largest church growth networks in North America with some 1,160 churches planted. However, a number of ARC churches have been embroiled in scandals.
Tubbs also allowed two registered sex offenders to work at the church but didn’t tell his overseers or congregations, TRR previously reported. When the overseers discovered this, they fired him.
Misco previously told TRR that both Jansen and ARC didn’t do enough to address a lack of solid safeguarding practices. She previously said she spoke out to warn people about the church.
Other allegations against ARC churches include bullying by a pastor of one of America’s fastest-growing churches and multiple allegations of infidelity against an ARC lead team member. Also, numerous ARC pastors have resigned amid allegations of sexual assault, harassment or adulterous affairs. And former ARC Pastor Andy Wood—Rick Warren’s success at Saddleback Church—has been accused of bullying.
ARC itself acknowledges that while it provides support and funds to launch these churches, it stops short of providing accountability when celebrity pastors go bad.
ARC states that churches listed on its site “are legally autonomous, independently led, separately operated, and solely accountable to their leadership, independent of the ARC organization.”
Thrive City Church is still listed as an ARC church on ARC’s website, but The Room Syracuse is not.
Shortly after Tubbs’ masturbation incident, Tubbs demoted Misco from her volunteer leader role to building maintenance. Discouraged, she left Thrive City in 2024.
She told TRR this week that after TRR’s reporting, no leaders from The Room or from ARC have reached out to her. She declined to comment about the church’s rebranding.
Jansen previously refused to tell TRR any names of the church’s board members or overseers and didn’t explain what kind of safeguarding protocol changes he’d made. For TRR’s reporting in July, he said that he was focusing on the community that “wants to be here.”
This week, Jansen also didn’t respond to TRR’s request for safeguarding policies or a list of board members, elders or overseers for The Room since its relaunch.
Jansen also didn’t give a reason for the rebranding in the published version of the sermon on Sept. 7, neither did he in the previous week’s published sermon.
The Room’s new website doesn’t list any staff members, board members, elders, or overseers. Its Instagram page and Facebook page show Jansen preaching in current photos. The only place the church’s new site connects to Thrive City Church is on its giving page. In small print at the bottom, it states that its legal organization name is Thrive City Church Inc.
Neither Thrive City Church nor The Room Syracuse showed up in TRR’s search on New York’s Department of State corporation registry. However, Thrive City Church is listed as a non-profit organization with the IRS, gaining that status in 2020.
Thrive City also has had a business certificate with Onondaga County, where Syracuse is located, since 2019, said Mary Falcone, a clerk with the county. However, she said The Room Syracuse lacks a business certificate.
Rebecca Hopkins is a journalist based in Colorado.
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3 Responses
“Then it changed its name.”
ChEKA changes its name to OGPU which changes its name to NKVD which changes its name to KGB which changes its name to FSB…
But if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like one, calling it a goose will really fool people (/sarc).
But maybe this time, the senior pastor will lock the door to his office before waxing the dolphin.
I just left an ARC church. I pray they don’t fall into these traps, but I see the possibilities because of lack of, and distance from, accountability mentors and an emphasis on young leadership over wisdom and maturity in Christ.