NOBLESVILLE – A suburban megachurch pastored by Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith is cutting services and losing members in the wake of a child sex abuse scandal, even as the church and its political allies push forward with new business and expansion plans.

On this weekend’s edition of Abdul at Large, journalist Tom LoBianco – former Statehouse reporter for the Associated Press and now publisher of 24Sight News – outlined the turmoil at Life Church in Noblesville, where Beckwith serves as campus pastor, and the fallout surrounding lead pastor Nathan Peternell.

LoBianco says Peternell has completed what the Assemblies of God describes as a “restorative process” after the denomination suspended his ministerial license.

That came after Peternell’s son, Jonathan Peternell, was arrested when police found more than 200 videos of child sex abuse material on his phone. Investigators also discovered homemade sex videos of Nathan and his wife on Jonathan’s device.

“Ultimately, Jonathan Peternell was sentenced to six years in prison, four years served, and a two years release,” LoBianco said. “He is now in, I think it’s New Castle now.”

About a week after Jonathan’s sentencing, the Assemblies of God pulled Nathan’s license. Since then, LoBianco says, the church has been bleeding people — including leaders with the same last name as the man at the center of the controversy.

“Ever since then, it’s actually been quite chaotic in there, and a lot of people keep leaving,” he said.

According to LoBianco, the departures include:

  • Peternell’s sister, who had been a pastor at the church.
  • Peternell’s brother-in-law, who served as interim pastor while Nathan was away in what members were told was a restorative or “Pentecostal rehab” process.
  • The church’s accountant.

LoBianco says “dozens upon dozens” of families have walked out, and the Noblesville campus — where Lt. Gov. Beckwith preaches — has gone from three Sunday services down to one.

I put it to him this way on the air:

“If you had to go from three services to one service, and senior pastors are leaving, and some of the pastors, some of the people in charge, have the same last name as the guy who’s sort of at the center of all this controversy, you would think that maybe, maybe expansion isn’t necessarily the right thing we ought to do right now.”

But expansion is exactly what’s moving ahead, and Beckwith’s world is closely tied into it.

LoBianco reports that Beckwith’s brothers DJ and Daniel Beckwith are both employed as pastors at Life Church, and that the Beckwith family has been involved in the church’s coffee shop business. At least until recently, LoBianco says, Micah’s ability to preach under the Assemblies of God ran through Life Church’s internal structure.

“The family itself is very invested in Life Church,” LoBianco said, arguing those financial and professional ties make it hard for Beckwith and his family to simply walk away as the scandal deepens.

On the bricks-and-mortar side, LoBianco says Noblesville city records show Life Church bought a house near its campus, across from the Wawa on Sheridan Road, around 2020 or 2021. In November of last year, the church secured a zoning exemption to turn that property into a medical clinic.

“They’ve been planning this for years,” he said. “I saw that they actually went through the process and they got the zoning exemption that they needed to make it a medical clinic… and they were still plowing forward with it” even as the scandal emerged and members began to leave.

At the same time, the church renamed its coffee shop so it would be less obviously branded as a Life Church operation.

“They’re just trying to push ahead as though nothing happened,” LoBianco said.

Behind much of the church’s growth strategy, LoBianco points to longtime Hamilton County Republican attorney Ray Adler, a veteran of county and Noblesville council politics and a player in local real estate.

“Mike Beckwith brings in Ray Adler into the church, and Adler fast tracks this stuff,” LoBianco said. “Basically, they brought in Michael Beckwith… but he also brought in this major power broker.”

Inside the church, LoBianco says many former and current members describe feeling betrayed — not just by the scandal involving Jonathan, but by what they see as hypersexual preaching and counseling from Nathan Peternell, a lack of transparency about the “restorative” process, and what they view as an autocratic leadership culture that discourages questions.

“The sex stuff is really, it’s really interesting to me,” LoBianco said, describing portions of Peternell’s sermons and counseling as “disturbing” even to him as an adult. Some former members and sources, he says, characterize it as grooming behavior, pointing to explicit talk from the stage and in private counseling sessions that involved young congregants.

LoBianco has been reporting on the Life Church story for nearly a year and says more is on the way.

The next piece, he says, will focus on the person who advised Nathan Peternell through the scandal — someone LoBianco says “has some problems of their own inside the Assemblies of God.”

He’s also working through the state’s ViaPath system to set up a video or in-person prison interview with Jonathan Peternell, calling the process surprisingly complex and fee-heavy.

And he says his request for comment from the key players remains open.

“As I text Nathan Peternell for every story. I text Michael Beckwith,” LoBianco said. “When there’s updates, people will know… at 24Sight News.”