During their time at Daystar, former Vice President Jonathan Lamb and his wife, Suzy Lamb, say they were repeatedly spiritually abused and bullied by Jonathan’s mother, Daystar President Joni Lamb, and her allies.

Most blatantly, they say, Joni “ambushed” the couple by bringing in Christian heavy-hitter Jimmy Evans, founder of XO Marriage, for a meeting on July 11, 2023. Not only did Joni shame her son by telling him his wife had him “by the balls,” but Evans pressured Jonathan to submit to his mother, claiming she had godlike authority.

“Submission means she is the voice of God to you . . .” Evans told Jonathan and Suzy on a recording the couple gave to El Informe Roys (TRR).

“I’m sorry. Can you clarify?” Jonathan asked. “She’s the voice of God to me?”

“She’s the voice of God to you,” Evans said.

“So, I can’t hear from God? I have to hear from her?” Jonathan asked.

“Outside of Daystar,” Evans replied. “What she says is God in Daystar. This is the voice of God in Daystar.”

The contentious meeting came about two years after Jonathan caught a family member in a compromising situation with his daughter and accused him of molesting the girl. As reported previously by TRR, Jonathan and Suzy claimed that Joni and her late husband, Daystar Co-Founder Marcus Lamb, immediately defended the family member and declared him innocent.

This caused a major rift in the family. But a few weeks later, in late August 2021, Marcus told Jonathan and his brother-in-law, Jonathan “JW” Weiss, that an internal investigation had cleared the family member. (The couple found out much later about critical deficiencies in that investigation.) Then, in November 2021, Marcus died unexpectedly from complications related to COVID.

En June 10, 2023, Joni married Doug Weiss, a sex therapist and repeat guest on Daystar TV who’s no relation to JW Weiss. Doug Weiss had filed for divorce from his wife of 30 years on January 27, 2022, just two months after Marcus died.

And according to Jonathan and Suzy, the meeting with Evans in July 2023 was an attempt to bully the couple into publicly supporting Joni’s second marriage.

A family divided

According to Jonathan and Suzy, none of Joni’s kids or their spouses agreed with Joni’s marriage to Weiss. They all believed Weiss lacked biblical grounds for divorcing his wife, and that by marrying him, Joni was committing adultery.

Just two months before the wedding, a longtime friend of Daystar, Denise Boggs of Living Waters Ministry, wrote an impassioned letter to Joni’s family, urging them to intervene. Boggs not only knew Joni well but had also counseled Doug Weiss and Lisa Weiss just prior to their divorce.

Boggs wrote that she had voiced concerns about Weiss to Joni “but she refused to hear me.” Now, Boggs said Joni was “under a spirit of deception” due to Weiss’ influence.

“He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Boggs wrote. “(H)e is of no caliber for such a high platform.”

She added, “Joni didn’t endorse divorce until she came under his deception. Using the Daystar platform, the enemy has successfully mocked the marriage covenant using one of the strongest Christian TV (n)etwork’s (sic) in the nation.”

Jonathan told TRR that he gathered his family to confront Joni two days after receiving the letter. But Joni allowed “each person no more than 60 seconds to share their heart . . . says all she sees from us is fear and rushes out the door to go fly off to New York with Doug,” Jonathan said.

After Joni and Doug Weiss were married, Jonathan and Suzy remained uneasy about the marriage. But on July 5, 2023, they were asked to read a viewer comment on air, praising Joni’s recent marriage to Weiss. The couple refused to do so because they felt it would give tacit approval to the marriage. Their refusal apparently deeply offended Joni.

This prompted the meeting with Evans—in which Evans and Joni equated Joni’s wishes with God’s, and Jonathan and Suzy’s opposition with Satan.

In his 2017 book Broken Trust, consultant and pastoral coach F. Remy Diederich writes, “Spiritual abuse happens when people use God, or their supposed relationship with God, to control behavior for their benefit.”

Jonathan and Suzy said this is precisely what Evans and Joni were doing.  

‘We’re God’s representatives’

On the recording of the meeting, Evans asks Jonathan, “If God came to you right now—and He is—saying you made a mistake, would you correct it? And that’s exactly what’s happening.”

“Of course, without question,” Jonathan replies.

“But you’re not!” Evans says.

“No, but God didn’t appear. He didn’t speak (inaudible),” Jonathan says.

“God has spoken to you,” Joni interrupts. “He spoke to you through me. He spoke to you through Jimmy.”

“You’re not God,” Jonathan says.

“But we’re God’s representatives,” Evans says.

“We’re God’s representatives,” Joni repeats.

Joni and Evans also appeal to their ministry experience as a basis of their authority over Jonathan and Suzy.

“You’ve got 80 years of experience sitting right here talking to you,” Evans says. “It’s a spirit, Jonathan. It’s a spirit that you won’t listen—not just to authority, but to experience.”

“Did you pastor for 41 years and work with marriages?” Joni adds. “I don’t think so. You have about a thumbnail of experience compared to us.”

Elsewhere in the meeting, Jonathan inquires who has authority over Joni.

“What accountability does she have if she’s off?” he asks.

“Well, she has a husband. She has a board,” Evans says.

“I’m on the board,” Jonathan replies.

At the time, the only people on Daystar’s board were Jonathan, Joni, and Tom Calender, a lawyer and Joni’s longtime friend, Jonathan told TRR.

“Yeah, but individually, you’re not her accountability. Individually, you’re her employee,” Evans insists. “. . . She’s the voice of God in Daystar.”

“There’s no other accountability at Daystar,” Jonathan complains.

Then, Evans appeals to Scripture, saying, “Romans 13 tells us to submit to authority, all authority, because it’s established by God . . .”

Jonathan again objects, “No, but I’m saying, who . . . is her accountability at Daystar?”

“But that’s not your concern,” Evans asserts. “Your concern is to do what she says. And if you can’t, you can’t be here.”

Then, Joni interjects: “Tell him what the Lord told you about stubbornness, what it leads to.”

“What the Bible says, this was related to Saul, . . . that rebellion is the sin of witchcraft,” Evans says. “And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. And so, it equates stubbornness with being an idol worshiper. And the reason it does is because stubbornness is the worship of your own opinion. And that’s what y’all are doing. You’re being stubborn. You’re, you’re making an idol out of your own opinion, related to Doug (Weiss).”

Elsewhere in the meeting, Joni similarly accuses Jonathan of making his opinion “an idol” and warns him of the consequences.

“God wouldn’t be pleased with this,” Joni says. “. . . And you’ve opened up yourself, both of you, to demonic activity in your family and with your kids by your rebellion against me.”

Jonathan and Suzy object, saying it’s not rebellion.

“It is rebellion,” Joni asserts. “You’ll bring a curse upon you and your kids.”

At one point in the meeting, Joni accuses Suzy of being led by her feelings and points to the sex abuse allegations from 2021 as an example of how unreliable Suzy’s feelings are.

“There was an issue with (family member), and I’m not going to tell you that, because I know they wouldn’t want me to share it,” Joni tells Evans. “But Susie was completely convinced, and Jonathan was completely convinced that (family member) was doing something that he absolutely was innocent of. And it was a terrible thing to happen in our family. But she drove that thing for a lot. It’s the same thing. It’s exactly the same.”

The conflict reaches a crescendo 15 minutes later with Joni and Suzy going head-to-head about Suzy refusing to read the viewer comment.

“If I’m not comfortable, then I have to stick with my convictions,” Suzy tells Joni.

“. . . It’s not your right to agree or disagree with it,” Joni tells Suzy. “If a viewer has a comment about me or you or anybody else, it’s a nice comment. That’s a good thing to read it. . . . It doesn’t have anything to do with you. You’re reading a viewer comment.”

“I’m representing it. It’s a lie,” Suzy says.

“You’re not representing anything!” Joni replies.

“I’m reading it!” Suzy says.

“It’s not a lie! It’s not a lie!” Joni objects.

“It’s a lie if I say something I don’t believe,” Suzy replies.

“. . . It has nothing to do with you. It is a viewer comment. It’s not a Suzy comment. It’s a viewer comment,” Joni says.

“I can’t go against my convictions in that. . .” Suzy says.

“Don’t come back then,” Joni replies. “You’re gone. You’re fired. If you can’t read a nice comment about Doug, I don’t want you here. You won’t do ‘The Green Room’ (Jonathan and Suzy’s show on Daystar). You won’t do anything.”

After Suzy is fired, Jimmy and Joni turn their attention to Jonathan, asking if he’d read the comment, if asked to do so again.

Repeatedly, Jonathan asks Joni to respect his wishes.

“All I want to hear is that you’ll submit to my authority,” Joni says. “That’s all. I don’t want to hear anything else. I don’t want to hear about your personal convictions.”

Jonathan says he will submit to Joni. But when Evans asks if that means Jonathan would read the comment if asked to read it today, there’s a long pause. Then Evans says, “See, now you’re in trouble with her.”

Suzy objects to being made “some bad guy.”

Then Joni says, “You are bad, Suzy. You’ve got him by the balls and you know it.”

“Babe, they’re really scary,” Suzy says to Jonathan. “They think horrible things. I’ve got you ‘by the balls’? Who talks like this?”

“. . . You gave him a look,” Joni says.

“I gave him a look of pity, like . . . you’re cornering him. This is so evil, what is happening,” Suzy replies.

“No, what is evil is you,” Joni says. “What’s evil is you and the spirit that’s driving you . . .”

At the end of the meeting, Suzy appears to leave the room, leaving Jonathan alone with his mom and Evans.

Joni encourages Jonathan to “draw the line in the sand” with Suzy. “You’re going to pay hell for it but stand your ground.”

Jonathan tells his mother that he and Suzy are “on the same page,” but she appears to not hear what he said.

“. . . You are about to catch hell, so you handle her,” Joni says. “You’re her covering. Handle her.”

Then, speaking to Evans, Joni says, “This is going to be his Alamo, so he’s going to handle it and handle her—or not. But I can tell him, this will probably decide your leadership role here at Daystar, how you handle that.”

Jonathan fired from Daystar

After the meeting, Jonathan wrote in an email to Joni that he felt “trapped in an impossible position. . . . Things are completely out of hand. I never thought in my life I would be put in this position. We urgently need to meet about this matter.”

Joni replied that “for now, payroll isn’t being affected” and said she would let Jonathan know when she’s “ready to meet on this issue.”

Over the next 18 months, Jonathan and Suzy say the intimidation and threats from Daystar intensified, culminating in Jonathan’s termination from Daystar on Nov. 16, 2024.

We will cover the details of what happened during those 18 months in our next story.

TRR reached out to Daystar with specific questions regarding this story. Daystar replied that Joni would be releasing an official statement.

En el statement released this afternoon, Joni accuses Jonathan of “fabricating a smear campaign” because he “was not named future President of Daystar following the death of his father.”

Joni also accuses Jonathan of attempting “to blackmail his way into becoming the future President of Daystar” and released a portion of an email from Jonathan.

We remain willing to put this episode behind us, however, we also require security, transparency, and certainty about our futures at Daystar. To achieve this goal, we would suggest that Joni, Daystar, and ourselves enter into a new contract that clearly spells out my future role as President of Daystar, restricts the ability of Joni (or any other officer or director) from taking actions adverse to our employment without good cause (to be clearly defined), and without prior approval of a majority of the board of directors. In exchange for the agreement contemplated above, we will agree not to use, disseminate or otherwise publish any and all audio recordings that could be harmful or embarrassing to Daystar, Joni or our family.

According to Jonathan and Suzy, the commitment not to publish audio recordings was not blackmail, but a response to 13 stipulations Daystar gave the couple if they wanted to be reinstated to their previous positions at Daystar.

One of the stipulations asked for the couple to “agree to destroy all recordings of meetings with Jimmy Evans and Joni, and any recording of Joni talking privately with Joni and Suzy over refusal to read on-air.”

Jonathan added that his reference to his “future role as President of Daystar” was not an attempt to usurp his mother’s position. Instead, he was referring to the succession plan his father had outlined that “if Joni passes, or retires,” then Jonathan would become President.

However, both Jonathan and Suzy noted that these negotiations happened before Nov. 18, 2023, when Denise Boggs revealed to them that the internal investigation had not cleared their family member of molesting their daughter. At that point, the couple say they no longer cared about their jobs but wanted justice.

Complete audio of meeting between Evans, Joni, Jonathan and Suzy:

Full email excerpted in Joni’s official statement:

Julie Roys es una reportera de investigación veterana y fundadora de The Roys Report. Anteriormente, también presentó un programa de entrevistas nacional en Moody Radio Network, llamado Up for Debate, y ha trabajado como reportera de televisión para una filial de CBS. Sus artículos han aparecido en numerosas publicaciones periódicas.