The ex-wife of Atlanta megachurch Pastor Sam Collier is accusing him of hiring a transgender prostitute in 2023, who then tried to extort money from him. The revelation is part of the prominent couple’s ongoing, public feud.

According to Sam’s ex-wife Toni Collier, this wasn’t the first time Sam, lead pastor of the Christian Cultural Center Atlanta, had hired prostitutes. But this time, a prostitute had video of him as evidence, Toni said in October on the podcast, “Girls Gone Bible.”

El Informe Roys (TRR) contacted Toni for more information about the alleged extortion and the video but did not receive a response. We also reached out to Sam, but he didn’t respond either.

Sin embargo, TRR obtained a reporte policial, confirming that in 2023, Sam told police that a transgender man was harassing him. According to the report, Sam claimed the man was “making up lies and false stories,” which the man threatened to spread if not paid money.

Como TRR previamente reportado, Toni claimed in social media posts in December 2023 that Sam committed “repeated acts of infidelity” during their marriage.

At the time, Sam fired back, calling Toni a “liar and abuser” in a post he deleted shortly after publishing. In an interview with the Christian Post days later, Sam denied any infidelity.

However, three months ago, Sam admitted to Christian hip-hop artist-turned-YouTube influencer Ruslan KD that he “100-percent made mistakes.”

According to Toni, Sam began visiting prostitutes while working for North Point Ministries, an Atlanta-based network of churches led by Andy Stanley. However, North Point told TRR that Sam has never been an employee of theirs but worked only as an occassional host on a contractor basis.

During their seven-year marriage, Sam also pastored Hillsong Atlanta, which split in 2022 from Hillsong and became the Story Church. Sam was the first African-American pastor for Hillsong, a church that disgraced pastor, Brian Houston, founded in Australia before opening several American branches.

Toni’s tell-all interviews

Toni Collier, founder of the women’s organization, Broken Crayons Still Color, has been revealing more about her marriage as she’s been promoting her new book, “Don’t Try This Alone.” The book discusses the importance of community when healing from trauma.

In October, “Girls Gone Bible” podcasters and actresses Angela Halili and Arielle Reitsma, interviewed Toni for an episode entitled, “Cheating, Divorce, & Complete Redemption w/ Toni Collier.”

Toni said on the podcast that she was married to someone before Sam, but divorced her first husband because he abused her. She met Sam almost immediately after the divorce. Three months later, in 2016, they married.

Toni said Sam convinced her saying, “You’ve got a lot of trauma. You’ve got two choices here. I can either journey with you on this. I can make a commitment to you, get married so that you know I’m for real and I’m here. Or you can go on a healing journey for a year, but I can’t promise that I’ll be here.”

Sam, who was working at North Point Community Ministries (NPM)  in Atlanta at the time, became a “savior” to Toni, she said this week in a podcast with Grammy award-winning musician Lecrae. In an episode entitled, “The Divorce Story a Pastor’s Wife Never Planned to Tell,” Toni said she became very submissive early in her marriage.

“Oh my gosh, he loves me,” Toni said, describing her feelings at the time. “No other man’s going to choose me and my daughter. I need to do what he says. … I just need to yield. I need to be quiet.”

Sam, who has also been recently making the rounds on several Christian podcasts, told Ruslan KD in September that Pastor Andy Stanley had a rule of a two-year waiting period for new marriages after divorce. But Sam told Ruslan the couple broke it because they were “blinded” by love.

Sam’s infidelity began in their second year of marriage, when he was still working at Andy Stanley’s NPM, Toni said. Toni said she found out then that Sam had a porn addiction, was flirting with his assistant, and was “hiring women for sexual favors.”

Toni didn’t disclose what, if anything, NPM knew about Sam’s misconduct. She said on “Girls Gone Bible” that she was “isolated” at the time and was afraid to tell anyone about Sam’s issues because she didn’t want to get divorced a second time.  She also thought she owed Sam for helping her launch her own ministry.

TRR reached out to NPM about Sam Collier and his marriage with Toni. HR Director Brenda Albright told TRR that Sam wasn’t an official employee but an occasional contracted host for Stanley’s church, North Point Community Church (NPCC). Albright said neither NPCC nor NPM has an employee file for Sam. She added that at least two people have told Sam to stop claiming he was an NPCC employee.

However, NPCC contractors are held to a high standard, Albright said. “There’s no scenario where someone knew something about someone’s personal life, and they still let them host,” she said.

Toni told Lecrae that when Hillsong leaders interviewed Sam and her for the pastorate, they asked if there was anything Hillsong should know about the couple’s marriage, but she stayed quiet.

Toni said that when the Colliers left Hillsong and started Story Church, Sam didn’t set up a board for accountability.

In 2023, when she was filming with TBN in Nashville, Sam called and told her about the transgender prostitute, she said.

“Long story short, he hired someone,” Toni said. “It was a transgender prostitute. … I guess they got a video of him and so they were using this video to extort him.”

Toni told Lecrae that she then decided to get a divorce, and her parents helped pay for an attorney. She added that someone asked her to sign an NDA, but didn’t specify who.

She said she formed a board to help her navigate what could be a public divorce. The board included Christian author Jennie Allen and prominent HR guru Mark DeMoss, who advised her to make a statement. But Sam threatened to “tell people that I abused him” and said “he would ruin me,” Toni claimed.

She said she was afraid, but concluded, “What’s right is for me to tell the truth.”

“Big mistakes” but still “called” to pastor

For his podcast episode entitled, “The Inside Story of a Pastor Scandal—From the Pastor Himself,” Ruslan KD asked Sam if he was “sinful” in his marriage to Toni. Sam gave a vague answer.

“I chose coping mechanisms that were not God-honoring and even sinful and lustful,” Sam said.

Ruslan then asked if Sam cheated on Toni while also being a megachurch pastor.

Sam kept his answer nonspecific.

“I definitely made big mistakes, and I’ve got to leave it right there,” Sam said.

Sam also denied that he ever hit or abused Toni but said their marriage was hard enough that it could have eventually happened had they stayed married.

“The level of difficulty could have led there, for sure,” he said.

But Sam told Ruslan he believes the Bible allows him to be restored to being a pastor.

“The conviction that I have is around repentance,” Sam said.

Sam said some ministry friends have told him he’s no longer qualified to pastor, but other friends have said he should continue pastoring.

“We all interpret Scripture in a different way,” Sam said.

He said he didn’t want to keep pastoring but believes God called him to do so.

In September, Sam was “re-ordained” and “restored back into ministry” by Christian Cultural Center (CCC) Global Pastor A.R. Bernard and his son, CCC Senior Pastor Jamaal Bernard. Sam is lead pastor at an Atlanta branch of the Bernards’ New York-based CCC.

TRR made multiple attempts to reach the Bernards about whether they re-ordained Sam while knowing about Sam’s infidelity and alleged hiring of prostitutes. TRR also attempted to ask the Bernards and CCC Atlanta’s elders about whether CCC Atlanta is putting Sam through any disciplinary process due to Toni’s recent allegations. The elders didn’t respond.

Meanwhile, Toni tearfully lamented to Lecrae that she hasn’t witnessed true repentance from Sam or an attempt to reconcile.

“All you can do is just hope that it’ll come,” she said.

Update 12/3/25: A sentence was added to specifically clarify that Collier never worked as an employee at North Point.

Rebecca Hopkins es una periodista radicada en Colorado.