An executive of the embattled International House of Prayer-Kansas City (IHOPKC) is launching a new children’s ministry.
Lenny LaGuardia was IHOPKC’s executive director of the Children’s Equipping Center, one of several ministries IHOPKC has cut as they’ve faced financial and potentially legal troubles. IHOPKC’s founder Mike Bickle is accused of both child sexual abuse y adult clergy sexual abuse.
LaGuardia condenado Bickle’s alleged child abuse in February in a since-deleted account on X, adding that IHOPKC has “always deployed and enforced strict policies and processes which ensure children are safe while in our programs.”
IHOPKC has posted its child protection policy online, in which allegations must be made to the children’s director, the pastor, and then to LaGuardia. But LaGuardia was also on the executive team that some former leaders believed didn’t handle adult clergy sexual abuse allegations against Bickle transparently.
IHOPKC sent out an email yesterday to the “IHOPKC family” stating that LaGuardia would be continuing the children’s ministry through M4 Initiatives.
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“We look forward to collaborating and partnering with M4 Initiatives to continue to reach the next generation,” IHOPKC’s email states.
LaGuardia and his wife, Tracy, publicó un video introducing M4 Initiatives and asking for funds. Tracy said they will continue to work with “houses of prayer.”
“This nonprofit will be the vehicle that will empower us to carry on equipping and impacting the smaller saints, their families, leaders, and community,” she said. “We will continue to partner with and train houses of prayer and other organizations throughout the earth.”
Lenny said that for 40 years, he and his wife have stayed faithful “through all the different seasons of ministry.”
“And even in this uncertain hour, we are not pulling back from equipping the smaller saints,” he said on his website.
Since the scandal, IHOPKC has been bleeding $500,000 a month due to plummeting donations, according to a leaked email and recording of an IHOPKC staff meeting in April. Isaac Bennett, former pastor of IHOPKC-associated Forerunner Church, said in the leaked recording that closing IHOPKC and relaunching under a new name could limit liability if alleged victims sued the organization.
The structure of M4 Initiatives
de acuerdo a su articulos de incorporación filed with the Missouri Secretary of State, LaGuardia listed the organization as a public benefit corporation in July 2023, months before the scandal related to IHOPKC erupted in public. The purpose of M4 is “religious education and training for children until the age of 18 through the avenues of camps, neighborhood outreach, conferences, and seminars.”
LaGuardia, listed as president of M4 Initiatives, was still leading IHOPKC’s children’s ministry when he filed the paperwork.
According to amended articulos de incorporación filed Aug. 30, 2023, M4 Initiatives’ directors and incorporators won’t be personally liable for the “debts, liabilities, or obligations of the Corporation.” That language appears standard for Missouri nonprofits, y protects directors from having to foot a nonprofit’s unpaid bills themselves in most cases. M4 Initiatives’ assets will go to IHOPKC upon dissolution, the articles states.
As of publication, M4 Initiatives hasn’t listed board members with the Missouri Secretary of State. M4 Initiatives has until Aug. 31 of the year after its initial filing to list the names of the president, secretary, and a minimum of three directors, said JoDonn Chaney, director of communications for the Missouri Secretary of State. That would be the end of this month. These names would then be publicly available, Chaney said.
M4 Initiatives’ Aug. 30, 2023, filing referenced its board as having met on Aug. 23, 2023, to make several amendments to the articles of incorporation.
LaGuardia didn’t immediately respond to The Roys Report’s (TRR) request for more information about M4 Initiatives’ accountability structure, board members, and safeguarding for children.
M4 Initiatives is also registered with the Internal Revenue Service with tax exempt status.
LaGuardia’s role with IHOPKC and its scandal
LaGuardia has led IHOPKC’s children’s ministry and been a senior vice president of Ministries and Justice Divisions for IHOPKC since 2000, according to his LinkedIn page.
En 2018, LaGuardia wrote for IHOPKC’s website about the importance of screening ministry team members and setting up protocols and procedures to protect children.
That same year, IHOPKC hired Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE) to investigate staff member Brad Tebbutt. News media had contacted IHOPKC with allegations that Tebbutt had molested a teen girl at a different church in the 1980s, starting when she was 14.
The GRACE report found that IHOPKC had accepted Tebbutt as an intern in 2012 despite his admission on his application that that he had engaged in “inappropriate touch” with a 16-year-old in his previous youth ministry. It also reported that IHOPKC failed to “prioritize the wounded,” such as by allowing Tebbutt to stay in a position of responsibility after IHOPKC leaders knew a woman from his former church accused him of misconduct.
IHOPKC didn’t make the GRACE report public. In the last few months, others have come forward alleging that IHOPKC continued to mishandle allegations of abuse by various staff members.
Last October, LaGuardia was present as an IHOPKC executive at a meeting with the husband of Jane Doe, a woman who alleged Bickle used prophecy to sexually abuse her beginning when she was 19. Days later, former IHOPKC leaders who advocated for Doe made the allegations public over concerns that IHOPKC’s executive team wasn’t being transparent enough about the allegations.
IHOPKC hired an attorney to investigate allegations about Bickle, but advocates raised concerns about its independence, and the main Jane Doe didn’t participate.
Also last October, former IHOPKC staffer Gracia, who previously went by pseudonym “Veronica” con TRR, confronted former IHOPKC Executive Director Stuart Greaves after a service for the IHOPKC-related Forerunner Church. Gracia’s friend, Deborah Bryson, also a former IHOPKC staffer, recorded the conversation.
In the recording, a copy of which TRR obtained, Bryson said Gracia approached Greaves after the service because he’d invited people to share concerns with them. In the recording, Gracia told Greaves he’d mishandled Gracia’s report of alleged sexual assault by a different former IHOPKC staffer. In the recording,Greaves denied covering up her alleged assault. LaGuardia was also there for the confrontation and told them to delete the recording. Missouri is a one-party consent state for recordings, so recording is legal as long as at least one person being recorded consented to it.
“If you don’t delete that, I’m going to give your names—your name—to somebody and they’re going to contact you,” LaGuardia said. “It will cause trouble if she’s recording to trap somebody. It’s not going to be helpful for you.”
Bryson told TRR that LaGuardia’s words felt intimidating. Bryson said a church security guard then followed the two women out to their cars and took pictures of their license plates.
“We left sobbing and terrified,” Bryson said.
TRR tried to contact LaGuardia through M4 Initiatives for comment on this interaction, but he didn’t immediately respond.
LaGuardia also previously told TRR to “cease and desist” from reprinting “baseless allegations” by Gracia alleging that Greaves pressured her not to go to police with her rape allegation.TRR did not retract the story because email evidence LaGuardia provided didn’t disprove the woman’s claims.
The way LaGuardia handled Gracia’s situation, and IHOPKC’s history with victims has made Bryson concerned about this new ministry.
“It’s an injustice,” she said. “More people are in danger of being hurt.”
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“IHOPKC has posted its child protection policy online, in which allegations must be made to the children’s director, the pastor, and then to LaGuardia.”
The important missing ingredient here is who is making the report to the authorities? Any robust child abuse policy will have that in the first line of the document, along with the phone number, address, and phone number of Child Protective Services.
Clergy do not appear to be mandatory reporters in Missouri (correct me if I’ve misread things), but it’s always dangerous not to report credible evidence of child abuse or sexual assault. Authorities have, if they can be persuaded to use them, huge resources that private individuals do not, and quite frankly if they do not take action (which is 80% of the time according to a 2017 Star-Tribune study), they get some of the blame. Investigators also tend to develop better nonsense detectors than most of us do if they actually use their nose a bit.
Bad move by IHOP there.
https://www.childwelfare.gov/resources/clergy-mandatory-reporters-child-abuse-and-neglect-missouri/
They are required to report. It’s right at the top of the page.
Yikes. I had a situation where a policy I’d written was rewritten to be “may report”, and here in MN they are also mandatory reporters. Thankfully the editors listened when I pointed out that this could put our pastors in jail. Otherwise, the resignation letter I’d already written would have been sent.
Even without the prospect of jail, this policy will cost them, I’d guess, a lot of billable hours.
Thanks for the correction, Karen.
Admittedly Lenny does not look like someone I would trust my children to ….
Keep in mind that those who abuse children, sexually or otherwise, do not seem to follow any patterns in terms of looks, profession, and the like. You watch for troublesome behaviors, generally associated with “bending” the rules that ought to protect kids.
I’m guessing you knew this already, but….it bears repeating.
LaGuardia, just your ordinary bully who obviously never met the Real Jesus Christ. People like this do not understand that it is Jesus Himself who is falling on them and crushing them. There is zero tolerance for abuse in the final judgment.
Ralph, one can question if you’ve “met the Real Jesus Christ” since you were part of the group that vocally sided with covid health regulations, and shamed others who didn’t as if they were disobedient of Rom 13:1.
I posted here on TRR a link in 2021 to Dr Robert Young’s findings of the contents of the covid injections. He was one of the first to analyze, which was then followed by well over three dozen separate parties across the world who found similar contents: namely that of heavy metals and graphene nanotechnology. I don’t remember anyone here expression appreciation that I posted.
The latest is the University of Colorado has verified other’s finding that this same smart technology is in dental anesthetic. See Dr Ana Milhacea substack post 7/30/2024
My personal sphere of family and friend’s has been hugely impacted by death and destruction of health with those individuals who caved to the pressure from the government, medical profession, and church to get injected.
Since “there is zero tolerance for abuse in the final judgement” then what will God do with those who participated and were directly or indirectly complicit in perhaps the biggest fraud of all time?
What LaGuardia has done pales in comparison. Ignore it all you want, but this tsunami of destruction is getting worse everyday.
I have no idea what you are talking about. I am a Doctor John Campbell fan. The vaccines are a GMO and laws were broken in many countries. Also, evidence suggests that death rates in advanced countries actually went up after the vaccines were released and stayed elevated even until today. And the evidence suggests that absolutely nothing authorities tried worked. Not the masks, not social distancing, lockdowns likely only temporarily slowed the spread and at a great cost. You have me confused with someone else.
Jesus is a stone that makes men stumble and a rock that makes them fall. For all of us either we fall on Him and are broken in humility or He falls on us in the end and are crushed. For those who act like the Pharisees, how will they avoid hell any more than the original hypocrites?
I almost fell for your gaslighting by typing out a sincere apology. Getting older by the minute sucks sometimes. For a minute I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. But…poked around and found a couple of your posts in a short time.
Yours (first comment) is too long-winded to quote here:
https://julieroys.com/florida-pastor-covid-pandemic-lie-hospitalized/
You said here: “ So the conspiracy theorists go nuts even though all of the studies all over the world show that the vaccines have helped a lot. If they were dangerous there would be class actions lawsuits everywhere that have good data to back them up. Can you name any at all?”
https://julieroys.com/francis-collins-draws-fire-vaccine-advocacy-top-evangelicals/
I could search more for your specific comments and use of Rom 13:1 if you’d like.
Btw: fifth generation warfare is primarily about the use of psychological operations in mind controlling the masses to get them to willingly acquiesce to their own destruction.
Shooter on the rooftop/classroom with a short barreled Ar-15 = BAD. We need to ban these to save lives.
White coat shooter (doc) in the clinic with a short barreled/small gauge syringed needle = GOOD. We need to promote these to save lives.
Both are scripted. Think about it.
Wow King David, apparently Nathan just revealed to you certain facts , God must love you because he chastens those He loves ……
What a great time to repent
In fact, there’s a chance of it being our only time to be able to do so, sometimes the window of opportunity can shut forever and we die ignorant and deluded just like most of these other individuals being reported on this site.
It’s an amazing thing to actually realize that we will be held accountable for every word that we have spoken…….. especially after the point in time when we all should have known better…… and we all could have, Wisdom says so, see the book of James
These ihoppers are showing us exactly who they are. It’s not pretty. Always remember, Bickle had locks on the OUTSIDE of his office door.
Based solely on TRR’s continuing coverage of this situation, it appears that numerous leaders of IHOPKC continue to rename, rebrand, reorganize and otherwise repeat their ministry. Without substantive admission that the underlying culture is corrupt, such efforts amount to little more than applying wallpaper to conceal floor-to-ceiling cracks in a house whose foundation is broken. Time to demolish the structure and pour a new foundation of repentance and humility?
I’ve got the new name for your ministry, Lenny, “The Groom Room.”
Hey Lenny. I get it. You’re broke and trying to figure out how to feed your family. But please don’t do anything related to kids ever again. How about selling insurance or real estate instead? Many other disgraced guys go down that path.