and Kevin about long work hours and irregular and infrequent personal contacts with family members, they were threatened with lawsuits by the pastors for breaching their sons’ and daughters’ internship contract. Family members could only visit the interns on the church campus in the presence of one of the newly elected church deacons.
Heresies As church members began to take sides, others left. With dwindling church attendance and a vastly increased spending budget, Randy and Kevin unilaterally tried to dismiss members’ voting rights to further their grip on the steering wheel of the church. Heresies from the pulpit continued. Randy began to teach that members should tithe to him, and he would then tithe to the church and the rest of the church staff. Kevin approached business owners in the church and asked them to write over their businesses not to the church but to Randy and Kevin personally. A handful of business owners were convinced and gave away their businesses, which were run to the ground and soon liquidated. Again, the city became interested as well as a local TV station that began to follow Kevin around undercover. With increasingly bold heresies around tithing and Randy’s authority as Apostle, Dr. Menzies asked to meet with Randy and Kevin again, yet was denied a meeting. Dr. Menzies and one other church member decided to take their concerns to the Minnesota district superintendent of the Assemblies of God. They informed the district of Randy’s disregard of the voting bylaws as well as the heresy around Randy’s apostleship authority and mismanagement of tithes and missions’ church funds. The district called Kevin and Randy to a formal hearing where they were questioned on their doctrinal standings on apostolic leadership and tithing and were informed of the illegality of the removal of voting rights for individual members.
Church Split Soon after the meeting with AG district officials, Randy took the pulpit on a Sunday morning, ending the service with his immediate resignation as Senior Pastor. He announced the startup of a new church called Oasis a few miles away where he would serve as Associate Pastor, and his son would lead as Senior Pastor. He gave the address and time for their first service and welcomed everyone. Forty-eight original EPAG members remained at what is now called The Father’s House. Many left to join other churches, and some went to the new church led by Kevin. Shortly after the church split, Kevin was exposed in the media as a fraud who swindled 212
