The founder of New Zealand’s largest church, who resigned three years ago amid allegations of mistreatment of interns and church members, is rebuilding an international ministry with the goal of having 10 times the impact. And this pastor, John Cameron, has the help of powerful megachurch pastors around the world.
But questions remain about whether Cameron, a New Zealander who founded Arise Church, has changed for the better, said David Farrier. Farrier is a New Zealand documentary filmmaker and journalist who spent a year covering Cameron’s previous scandal on his newsletter Webworm.
Many interns told Farrier that Arise Church required them to work long hours with little pay to the point of exhaustion to help build the Camerons’ megachurch empire.
“There’s incredible concern that John Cameron will just go and do exactly as he’s done before wherever he is,” Farrier told The Roys Report (TRR).
Cameron, a New Zealander now living in Australia, and his wife, Gillian, state at their website they brought 50,000 people to Christ in the past decade. Arise Church, the Pentecostal church they started in 2002 in New Zealand’s capital of Wellington, now has 11 locations in the South Pacific island nation.
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Farrier has compared Arise to the more well-known but also embattled Hillsong Church, founded by another New Zealander—Brian Houston. Hillsong has been the subject of multiple documentaries exposing its sex abuse scandals and pastors’ lavish spending.
Meanwhile, more than 500 current and former Arise Church members, staff, and interns alleged bullying and racism at Arise; governance problems; sexual harassment; and church leaders’ lavish spending.
Almost three years ago, Farrier published a leaked copy of these allegations in a bombshell independent review by Pathfinding, an independent consulting group for nonprofits, which Cameron had blocked from publishing. The report found “systemic failures” and made 92 recommendations. One of them was that the entire board should resign, of which John Cameron had been the chair.
“(T)here have been significant and systemic failures in governance stretching back over many years including a lack of meaningful oversight and proper independence, little transparency in decision making, no recognized feedback channels for people to raise concerns, insufficient financial accountability, and an absence of policies in key areas,” the report stated.
In May 2022, the Camerons resigned and apologized for unspecified “wrong cultures and wrong actions,” before the August 2022 leak of the report. However, three weeks later, Arise Church released a statement thanking and honoring the Camerons for their “incredible ministry and leadership.” That statement didn’t include an acknowledgement of the allegations.
Victims question whether Cameron is truly sorry, Farrier said. Six months ago, John Cameron seemed to place blame on people who are “hurt” by an “imperfect experience” at church for bringing down the church. Cameron stated this in an interview with Jeremy Johnson, pastor of Fearless Church, a multisite church in southern California.
“To our own peril, I think we’re going to rue the day that we let the notion that people have been hurt by church be a valid reason for us to then pull the church down,” Cameron said.
Meanwhile, the Camerons have been growing a new ministry, complete with slick marketing photos available for download. They’re now “in demand” to coach pastors and preach at churches around the world with the stated goal of helping 500,000 people find Christ, their website states.
“Most of us get into it because we love God and we love people, and then suddenly we find we’ve got to build an organization,” John Cameron said in a recent interview with Miami “celebrity pastor” Rich Wilkerson Jr. “So, what I love is being able to sit down with pastors. . . and being able to provide solutions to people.”
Prominent megachurch pastors like Wilkerson, who married Kayne West and Kim Kardashian, have been the key to the Camerons’ successful reentry into ministry, said Farrier. But the people the Camerons left behind are hurting.
“At no point have any of these churches even begun to see that John has done anything wrong,” Farrier said. “They do what they always do, which is just carry on doing what they’ve always done, ignoring the reporting and knowing there’s enough amongst their congregation that will see them as having done nothing wrong. So, why would they ever think about stopping?”
Back to preaching
Within a few months of the leak of the independent report, prominent churches began inviting Cameron to speak. In April 2023, Cameron spoke at Awaken Church, a megachurch based in San Diego with locations in Seattle, Idaho, and Florida.
In March 2024, Freedom Centre, a multisite church in New Zealand, invited Cameron to speak. This church has also invited him to speak this week to leaders. Cameron also preached at Champions Church UK, based in Dudley, near Birmingham, England, in September 2024.
TRR has previously reported on lucrative honorariums that pastors have received for speaking for about 30 minutes in a service of a different church. Cameron was named in a whistleblower report describing a reciprocal honorarium scheme that Brian Houston allegedly concocted.
The report states that Cameron once earned $12,000 for speaking at Hillsong, and Houston earned $27,000 for an honorarium for speaking at an Arise conference.
“The system is built up where a lot of these leaders are on paid speaking circuits, speaking at each other’s churches,” Farrier said.
Also, Gillian Cameron, who helped her husband co-found Arise Church, released a book on leadership in April that was endorsed by one of the United States’ most prominent pastors. Pastor Craig Groeschel of Life.Church, a prominent megachurch based in Oklahoma and creator of the YouVersion Bible App, said it was a “must-read.”
“In The Leader’s Table, Gillian Cameron masterfully reminds us that leadership isn’t about hierarchy, it’s about hospitality, invitation, and transformation,” Groeschel wrote in his endorsement.
Another megachurch pastor praised both John and Gillian in his book endorsement.
“They are two of the most prolific ministers of the gospel and builders of the church of Jesus Christ of our time,” wrote Jurgen Matthesius, pastor Awaken Church.
Megachurch pastors have also recently interviewed John Cameron on their YouTube channels. In December 2024, Rich Wilkerson, Jr., who is second cousin to David Wilkerson, author of Christian classic, “The Cross and the Switchblade,” interviewed Cameron.
Wilkerson Jr., also pastor of Miami’s multisite Vous Church, offered Cameron softball questions about Cameron’s comeback and compliments such as Cameron is “one of the best church builders I was ever ever around.”
Wilkerson blamed the criticism of Arise Church on it becoming a “target” of a “media frenzy” due to Arise Church’s God-given influence.
“I think the media begins to criticize,” Wilkerson said. “They find different people had different experiences. . . . There was nothing that you ever did that disqualifies you from being a minister.”
Cameron told Wilkerson the criticism, job loss, and being “wounded” by the body of Christ taught him to banish negative thinking and move forward.
“I’ve learned that self-pity is a wasted emotion,” Cameron told Wilkerson. “If I step off the pulpit and I doubt my performance, that thought’s gone in a moment. If I walk into a room and I feel rejected, that thought’s gone in a moment.”
Questions of accountability
The Camerons are inviting people to donate to a speaking and pastoral coaching ministry.
However, one of the findings of the independent review of Arise was that, under the Camerons’ leadership, the church’s governance structure didn’t provide proper accountability. Arise also wasn’t transparent about who the board members were, the report stated.
The Camerons’ current website lists no board members or a way to report complaints. TRR reached out to the Camerons to ask about their accountability, any counseling they got following the allegations, and whether they completed a restoration process.
The Camerons did not respond.
TRR also reached out to Freedom Centre, Craig Groeschel, Awaken Church, and Vous Church to ask if they inquired about the Camerons’ restoration or accountability structure before platforming the Camerons.
None responded.
“From what I can tell, there’s zero accountability,” Farrier said.
Rebecca Hopkins is a journalist based in Colorado.
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9 Responses
The Evangelical Crony Network in action. They promote each other, profit from each other and protect each other.
We have seen it on the Roys Report time and time again ad nauseam.
He misses the money.
Until people realize this and stop giving, he will be just another version of “Rinse & repeat.”
As a member of Arise Church who stayed, weathered the storm and navigated the post-Camerons Arise journey, I am not surprised about this, or bitter. There is a sigh of resignation that this is a familiar story repeating itself. They fled, like the Driscolls of Mars Hill, without truly owning the culture they created. Now their grift is simply somewhere else among sympathic followers. I do wonder if the Groeschels/Wilkersons really know what happened? The interviews and the focus on rejecting negativity is simply a way of excusing the behaviour. And that is most diappointing. Arise is a much healthier church, now. For that, I am grateful.
Welcome to the brood of vipers. There is never just one. They help each other make more Mammon and extend the fame of their unrepentant narcissism. They meet a need that we sinners have for worshipping men instead of Jesus Christ, so they continue. There is no stopping them. Only death or disablement will stop them. These are the same religious people who killed Jesus Christ out of jealousy. Jesus warned us about such as these more than once. He talked about them in his non-parable sheep and the goats sermon. We are ordered to judge every last ministry and minister, not by what they say, but by the fruit they produce. To not do that is just pure disobedience and sin.
Decades ago I saw the fate of those who are goats when I was shown a cell in hell reserved for them. It was the most real experience I have ever had in life and the most sobering. What we do here matters for eternity. It cannot be taken too seriously. I wrote down my experience and have recently created a video where I share it. You can find that by clicking on my name here. Believe me, a goat is not what you want to be, no matter how much you might profit from it here.
I met John Cameron a few times when I was an intern at a New Zealand church. He is a narcissist, delusional, with a huge ego, who only cares about his own adulation and wealth, which comes at the expense of others. He doesn’t really care who gets hurt in his rise to fame.
Isn’t this what entrepreneur types and some business types naturally do?
Group think, move, rebrand, reinvent and act in such a way that the past has no relation to the present nor the future 🤔
When they die and go before God sitting on his throne. God will ask them if they have been a good and faithful servant. They will answer by saying “ your sitting in my chair”.
“I’ve learned that self-pity is a wasted emotion,” Cameron told Wilkerson. “If I step off the pulpit and I doubt my performance, that thought’s gone in a moment. If I walk into a room and I feel rejected, that thought’s gone in a moment.”
I don’t know this man but preaching is a “performance” to him. Give him the spotlight, feed his sense of grandeur, and watch him devour those around him. His conscience is seared.
How does this lust for success and greatness even line up with scripture?
“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross….Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all.”
Philippians 2:5-8, 17 ESV
http://bible.com/59/php.2.5-17.ESV