Less than a year after disgraced pastor Tim Armstrong was ousted from his Ohio megachurch for alleged bullying and “harsh” leadership, a Florida megachurch hired him. Now Armstrong has launched a campus of that church—with a glossy video celebrating his comeback.
On September 10, Bell Shoals Church launched its fourth campus in Riverview, a suburb of Tampa, with campus pastor Armstrong preaching on “The Hope is Real.” One week prior, the west-central Florida megachurch released a promotional video titled, “The Story of the Riverview Campus Launch,” which begins with Armstrong reframing his story alongside Bell Shoals Church Lead Pastor Corey Abney.
“We came here very broken,” said Armstrong in the video. “We came here at the invitation of Corey to come and heal from some ministry stuff that had happened that we walked through.”
Armstrong was forced to resign in August 2021 as senior pastor of The Chapel, a multi-site megachurch where he had been lead pastor for seven years. An independent probe commissioned by The Chapel found Armstrong had a harsh leadership style and “pattern of sin.”
At the time, Armstrong did not apologize or admit any wrongdoing, nor has he done so in the past two years.
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But, within seven months of his forced resignation, Armstrong preached at Bell Shoals Church as a staff pastor and “multi-site strategist” for the 6,000-member congregation.
In the Bell Shoals Church-produced video, Armstrong continued: “I had no thought that I was probably ever going to be used in ministry again . . . It was really Pastor Corey (Abney) who was like, ‘No, man, we gotta get you back in the game.’ For me, I was just very thankful that somebody was going to walk this journey with us.”
Last year, in a Sept. 11 sermon, Abney introduced Armstrong as the pastor of the forthcoming Riverview campus relaunch. The Florida megachurch’s lead pastor also said Armstrong will “give leadership to our multi-site vision and execution for all of Bell Shoals.”
In the promotional video for the new campus, Armstrong vaguely refers to past “faults” and “failures.”
“In many ways I totally relate with the broken person who feels like they can’t do anything for the Lord anymore,” said Armstrong. “I think the brave Christ follower is the one who says, ‘I don’t know how you’re going to use me, Lord, but I’m here.'”
Sarah Klingler, who grew up attending The Chapel and left a few years into Armstrong’s tenure, questioned his rhetoric considering the bullying and spiritual abuse she said she observed.
“Was it brave to leave without acknowledging the damage done to the church body?” Klingler asked in a statement to The Roys Report (TRR). “Was it brave to never apologize to victims and leave them to pick up the broken pieces of their lives?”
She added: “Brave is telling the truth. Brave is repenting in specific ways for how you abused your power and spiritual authority. Brave is stepping out of ministry and serving Jesus outside of the spotlight.”
TRR reached out to Armstrong, Abney, and Bell Shoals Church for comment, but did not receive a response.
Top-down leadership style guts Ohio church
According to reporting by investigative site The Wartburg Watch, during his seven-year tenure at The Chapel, Armstrong fired 78 staff members.
Several former staff spoke previously to TRR about their experiences with Armstrong.
“They had a king in place,” said Mike Landis, who directed The Chapel’s youth camp, Camp Carl, from 2003 until early 2016. “Tim was a jerk, and they didn’t have a system in which to deal with him, and it almost brought the ship down.”
Similarly, Vicki Caswell, a former communications employee at The Chapel, told TRR, “I wish (the trustees) would show a little more lamenting over this.”
Klingler, whose family remained members through about three years of Armstrong’s tenure, said she “saw a whirlwind of negative changes happen” that transformed the church into a top-down, corporate-style entity. “Unilateral decisions were made by Armstrong which impacted the overall spirit of the church, to the point I barely recognized it,” she told TRR.
Several fired staff members had to subsequently move out-of-state to find work, according to Klingler. “When they lost their jobs, they also lost their church and community,” she said. “All of them experienced spiritual abuse because of this man.”
The Chapel has since re-hired Mike Castelli, a campus pastor whom Armstrong had fired. Last September, members of the Ohio multi-site megachurch voted to separate its seven campuses into independent churches.
Todd Wilhelm, who writes for The Wartburg Watch, told TRR he spoke to 10 former members of The Chapel for an 11-part series on the Ohio megachurch’s crisis.
In a tweet, Wilhelm summed up his views on the megachurch pastor’s latest chapter.
“Tim Armstrong was plotting his next job as soon as he realized he was finished at the church where he did all the damage,” said Wilhelm. “There was no healing, no repentance, no anything. Just call his old buddy and work out a pastoral position for his next conquest.”
For several years, Armstrong and Abney served together as members of Cedarville University’s board of trustees. Abney remains a member, while Armstrong’s term expired in June 2023.
However, both were serving on the board when an independent investigation found that Cedarville University President Thomas White obscured the nature of a professor’s sexual misconduct and withheld this information from the board. The finding prompted two Cedarville trustees to resign, but Armstrong and Abney remained.
As previously reported by TRR, financial documents show Armstrong received more than $75,000 in compensation from fiscal years 2017-2020 as a Cedarville board member.
TRR reached out to a Cedarville spokesperson for comment but did not hear back.
No public statement of repentance
Multiple sources stated their concern that Armstrong never repented of his years-long pattern of behavior at The Chapel—a concern the church’s own board of trustees later affirmed.
In his July 29, 2021, statement of resignation to the church, Armstrong wrote that he was “deeply grieved” and recognized the church had been “facing difficult trials,” but did not admit fault.
Months later, The Chapel’s board of trustees commented on his statement, writing: “We did give him an opportunity to repent in the writing that he offered to the congregation, and we copied and pasted what we provided without changing any of the words, and in terms of that repentance, it didn’t happen.”
Yet Abney described his friend Armstrong differently when introducing him last year at the Florida megachurch.
He said the Riverview campus launch “will require a campus pastor with vision, experience and wisdom.” Abney added: “In God’s kindness he has provided the person to lead us forward who possesses all of these qualities,” referring to Armstrong.
Klingler said that she believes Armstrong’s record as a pastor, and the past damage inflicted on many people, speaks for itself.
“These are not actions becoming of a pastor,” she said. “Recycling pastors like this only causes people in new locations to be put in harm’s way.”
Freelance journalist Josh Shepherd writes on faith, culture, and public policy for several media outlets. He and his family live in the Washington, D.C. area.
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16 Responses
So, pastoring is a game?
Obviously. These guys aren’t even pretending that they care about the harm they do or about anything except themselves and their performances for pay. I’m sorry for the customers, but they’re going to walk in the door under their own power and hand over their funds, uncoerced.
What is “The Hope is Real” even supposed to mean?
Satan’s servants never sleep. They just recycle themselves as one child of the Devil helps out another to keep them in the game of wolves in sheeps clothing. At least this shows how awful the new “church” is. The saying is true, “a sucker is born every minute.”
Look who else is situated in that local general area in Riverview south of Tampa, it’s Rodney Howard Brown and his The River mega church which is deeply entrenched in the New Apostolic Reformation, one of the most extreme forms of charismatic nonsense.
Where did your comment come from, Mr. Brayshaw? It sounds like you have an axe to grind. You are connecting Rodney Howard Brown’s work to an unrelated church and lumping them together, thereby implying that Mr. Brown’s ministry is also involved in spiritual abuse and malfeasance. You obviously have an issue with the NAR movement, and that’s ok, but don’t cast undeserved aspersions.
I’m not sure if you are objecting to Tim Armstrong being connected to Rodney Howard Browne or the other way around? But regarding spiritual abuse, maybe this might shine some light:
https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=article&aid=11038
Not true actually Pastor Rodney is closer to Mango/Seffner and he is a true man of God.
Thus begins a new episode of “As the Church Turns”.
I hope there’s at least one person who was thinking of attending this new debacle who reads Julie’s posts and can warn people off.
It’s a sad day when, instead of checking a church’s website for their service times and activities, you have to Google the pastor to see if he’s done damage elsewhere.
We are so far adrift I’m amazed God’s patience continues to hold.
We’ve been speaking out against this for 2+ years now as Corey Abney shut down our campus to sell it and profit. Our church has been in our community for 98 years! It’s awful. These men need a good face to face with Jesus.
“We came here very broken,” said Armstrong in the video. “We came here at the invitation of Corey to come and heal from some ministry stuff that had happened that we walked through.” This says it all. He only cares about himself. He was the ABUSER and he was broken? I still haven’t returned to a church following severe spiritual abuse from him AS A CONGREGANT and I used to want to be at church all the time. He has never done anything that remotely resembles repenting, apologizing or anything else to me. Except laugh at how he treated me and others.
” … to come and heal from some ministry stuff that had happened that we walked through.”
I wonder what his audience thinks of this. Does anyone say to himself, “I wonder what he means by “ministry stuff that had happened?” or do they simply accept his self-identification as a sufferer in need of sympathy, healing, and of course money.
Hey Connie,
Mr. Armstrong fits the definition of a sociopath. This from Healthline:
“The term sociopath refers to someone living with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) — as does the term psychopath.
The most recent edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (DSM-5), which mental health professionals use to diagnose mental health conditions, defines ASPD as a consistent disregard for rules and social norms and repeated violation of other people’s rights.
People with the condition might seem charming and charismatic at first, at least on the surface, but they generally find it difficult to understand other people’s feelings. They often:
break rules or laws
behave aggressively or impulsively
feel little guilt for harm they cause others
use manipulation, deceit, and controlling behavior.”
Does this sound like Mr. Amstrong to you? It sounds like he needs a psychiatric evaluation.
I have no idea as I am not a psychiatrist. I have often wondered if he is a Narcissist who believes what he did was not very bad and didn’t even merit repentance or apologies. He basically ran away because he knew he was guilty and couldn’t face the congregation. I feel he thinks “ministry” is way too important to be sidelined by his abusive behavior. He stole my testimony after him and staff forbid me to speak of it, because they said it would damage the congregation. So it was ok for him to preach on it, after sanitizing God did this in a woman’s life, but not for me to speak of it. I was ostracized, rejected, shamed, treated horribly, etc. and that was all normal and fine to him.
Thank you for reporting on this. The truth needs to come out.
It has come to our attention Tim Armstrong is now gone from Bell Shoals, which, if it’s true, is no surprise. The entire Bell Shoals Church (Pastor and staff) needs some serious investigating. It is a very sad sad thing to have a man in the pulpit preaching that scripture tells us “the dude in Acts 3 created the moonwalk….” He is such a sad example of a Pastor. He’s more of a business man taking advantage of church funds and people. Our family continues to pray for him even though He asked my husband not to. He said he didn’t want us to jeopardize our standing before God. Go figure that one out.
It’s not true… why do you spread lies? You think you are better for gossiping on the internet? God help you!