This is the third episode of Letters to the Church, the series that starts with an actual document and then works out what it says. The document is a letter dated 17 September 2023, in which Pastor Thomas Cunningham of New Philadelphia, Ohio, notifies the Board of Elders of Christian Fellowship Ministries that his church is withdrawing from the Fellowship, in his words, “effective immediately.” The first two episodes examined a warning and a protest. This one is different in kind. It is a completed break, and it is built around serious allegations that belong entirely to Thomas Cunningham and that the other side has not answered. Those two facts, that this is a finished separation and that it is one man’s account, shape how it should be read.
Who Thomas Cunningham was
Like the two men before him in this series, Thomas Cunningham wrote as a long-standing insider, not a detached critic. By his own account he was saved in 1983 in a Foursquare church in Ohio, was brought to Alaska by the Air Force in 1984, and was ordained in January 1989 as the first church planted out of Anchorage. He had been in the Fellowship for thirty-nine years, had pastored six churches within it, and signs the letter with a doctorate in ministry and a Ph.D. That standing is the point. When a man with that history writes that he is leaving “effective immediately,” the letter is not a young convert’s complaint. It is reproduced in full below, followed by the analysis, and then by a plain statement of what the document is and is not. Document first, analysis second.
The letter of September 17, 2023
Attn: Board of Elders, Christian Fellowship Ministries, Inc. Worldwide:
Dear Sirs:
I am sending this letter as notification that effective immediately, the New Philadelphia, Ohio Church is withdrawing from Christian Fellowship Ministries [the Fellowship]. We have met as a church body and in unity with the church council we are presenting this decision formally and this letter is to act as such. Our decision primarily revolves around what we perceive as unrighteous treatment of our fellow Fellowship Pastors, whose dedication and commitment to the faith should be acknowledged and respected.
You all know me. I have preached for most of you. I was saved in 1983 in a Four-Square church in Ohio and the Air Force brought me to Alaska in November of 1984. I was launched/ordained as the very first church planted out of Anchorage Alaska in January 1989. I have been with this Fellowship for 39 years. This is not a decision made in haste or to be taken lightly. You deserve to know why I am doing this, so please indulge me as I explain.
As you should all know by now, Joe Stephens was removed from ministry for alleged “accusations” against him. There were no ‘two or more’ witnesses. There was no communication with the person leveling the charges, no letter from the accuser outlining the accusations being investigated. There was only insinuation, ambiguity, and intimidation. Joe Stephens proved every single accusation wrong. Not only did he prove they didn’t happen, but he proved conclusively that they could not have happened. One example; he was preaching on livestream with date, and time stamped. Other proof was presented conclusively in the same manner. They absolutely had no evidence.
Pastor Greg Mitchell promised to exonerate Joe in writing. He was to send the exoneration letter to Joe’s church, his church council, and a wider body of Fellowship pastors if Joe would promise to turn over his church peaceably to his son.
Excerpt from the letter written by Greg Mitchell regarding those meetings: “…on September 8th, Pastor Paul Stephens met with Pastor Joe Stephens to discuss a rumor that has been raised against Joe Stephens. Pastor Joe was able to answer the allegations, and Pastor Paul Stephens is satisfied that these allegations were untrue. Unfortunately, it became clear that there are unresolved personal issues that are clouding lines of communication, and this became a deeply emotional issue, and issues concerning Joe Stephen’s family were discussed with others. This is regrettable and not helpful for anyone…”
In short, while Joe was collecting evidence to prove his innocence, his father was undermining his character to his council members with information that was provably false.
That is only the beginning. This isn’t simply a Joe Stephens story. Joe and I have been friends, our families intertwined, for 25 years. We were in business together. We have preached at each other’s churches for decades. I am his friend. I knew he did nothing wrong. I have the proof. I have the letter from Pastor Greg exonerating him. I have the communications from the Fellowship’s lawyers, etc.
While I was in the Austin area on business in late July, I preached for Joe in his church in Jarrell at his request. Why not? I am, after all, a preacher called to preach. For the record, I have preached for multiple churches in my 35 years of ministry that are not in this Fellowship.
Soon after, Pastor Greg called me and challenged me on it. He was adamant that Joe was a rebel and therefore all members of the fellowship, including his own father and son, were not only justified but compelled to shun him and his family. As a consequence of this, Joe can’t see his granddaughter again, nor has he ever met his recent granddaughter, now 8 months old. I don’t shun people. Neither does the Bible teach shunning except in extreme cases and even that is only ‘for a time’. To make his case for rebellion, Pastor Greg went all the way back to Korah in the time of Moses. When you have to go all the way back to Moses to substantiate your claims about rebellion in the New Testament church, you may want to rethink your position.
Joe is not a rebel. Rather, he was unjustly and unrighteously treated. In this same phone call, when discussing the details of Joe’s case, Pastor Greg lied to me at least twice. I called him on both of them. I had the proof. I had his own words to authenticate the truth. He told me that Joe had done things, and I just didn’t know the whole story. So, I “reminded him” of the letter he wrote to exonerate Joe that he didn’t follow through with as promised. He played it off as a ploy to get Joe to cooperate and walk away from the Jarrell church. He lied again by pleading his case that he’d tried to talk to Joe, tried to help him through this very difficult situation when in fact the opposite was true.
Within 24 hours of the confrontation that ended Joe’s career and wrecked his family forever, Greg Mitchell put up a legal wall of fellowship lawyers to block Joe from contacting him again. Is this any longer even a Fellowship of Christian pastors?
Our withdrawal from the Fellowship is not a decision made out of rebellion, anger or spite but rather out of a deep concern for the direction in which this Fellowship is headed. We believe that it is crucial for us to align ourselves with a community of believers that embody the values and principles we hold dear, including fairness, truth, justice, righteousness, and the unwavering support of our fellow pastors.
I hope this action serves as a wakeup call to all of you. Over the years, I have pastored 6 churches in this fellowship, and they are all still standing. I was heartbroken when I went to Zambia in April of this year, bringing with me a team of 10 from our church in New Philadelphia, only to see that the Lusaka church has been emaciated. Zambians are no longer allowed to praise and worship as Africans, but they must act like dead American white people and are forced to sit down during the fast songs, in solidarity to lifeless religion, lest they get excited for Jesus and get loud. God likes it loud. This fellowship used to be so filled with life. Now it is regulating itself into oblivion because of insecure egos… I have enough influence to know that there are many more like me out there on the precipice of doing this very same thing.
At this time, we have deleted our previous corporate structure relating to Christian Fellowship Ministries, changed the name of our church, and have created a new structure that will serve us in moving forward. I will not write letters, call people or cause problems in any way unless forced to do so. We thank the Fellowship for the privilege of partnering with you and pray the best for you all.
Faithful in Christ,
Pastor Thomas E. Cunningham, D.Min, Ph.D.“By ourselves we are not qualified to claim that anything comes from us. Rather, our credentials come from God, who has also qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant, which is not written but spiritual, because the written text brings death, but the Spirit gives life… now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” (2 Corinthians 3:5-6; 17)
What Thomas Cunningham alleges
The letter presents the withdrawal as a formal, church-level act, taken in unity with the church council, and turns immediately to the case that drove it. In Cunningham’s telling, Joe Stephens, a pastor and his close friend of twenty-five years, was removed from ministry on accusations that were never properly established: no two or more witnesses, no communication from the accuser, no stated charges, and no evidence. Stephens, he says, disproved the accusations and in some instances showed they were impossible, one of them by a time-stamped livestream.
The most pointed claim concerns an offer Cunningham describes as exoneration used as leverage. He says Greg Mitchell promised to circulate a letter clearing Joe Stephens, to his church, his council, and a wider body of pastors, on condition that Stephens hand his church over peaceably to Mitchell’s son. Cunningham reproduces an excerpt he attributes to Greg Mitchell that records Paul Stephens as satisfied the allegations were untrue, and then alleges the promised clearance was never delivered as agreed. That sets up the letter’s central question, which Cunningham means the reader to feel: whether exoneration was being handled as a matter of truth or as a bargaining chip.
From there the letter widens. Cunningham says Greg Mitchell labeled Stephens a rebel and held that Fellowship members, family included, were compelled to shun him, and he names the human cost, a grandfather cut off from grandchildren. He rejects the doctrine of shunning, notes that making the biblical case for it required reaching back to Korah in the time of Moses, and observes dryly that an argument that has to travel that far may need rethinking. He alleges that Greg Mitchell lied to him twice in a phone call, that the exoneration was later dismissed as a ploy, and that within a day a wall of Fellowship lawyers was raised to block further contact. He closes by broadening the indictment from one case to the condition of the Fellowship, citing a diminished, over-regulated church he says he found in Lusaka, Zambia, and then reports the completed break: the old corporate structure dissolved, the church renamed, a new structure in place.
What this document is, and is not
Fairness requires a plain statement here. The serious allegations in this letter, that Joe Stephens was removed without evidence, that exoneration was offered as leverage, that Greg Mitchell lied and then raised a legal barrier, are Thomas Cunningham’s allegations, written from his side of a dispute in which he is Stephens’ friend of twenty-five years and former business partner. They have not been tested in a court or an independent inquiry. Greg Mitchell, who leads Christian Fellowship Ministries in his father’s place, is not quoted here answering them, and no public response from him or the Fellowship to this letter could be found; he would presumably dispute Cunningham’s account. The one piece of the other side’s paper that appears is the excerpt Cunningham himself supplies, and it happens to cut toward Stephens, recording Paul Stephens as satisfied the allegations were untrue. Beyond that, the letter does not detail what the underlying accusations against Joe Stephens actually were, and this article will not speculate about them. Read the document as one pastor’s account, offered as a primary source, not as a settled finding.
Why the Thomas Cunningham letter matters
With that caution in place, the letter still earns its place in the series, because of what it shares with the two before it. Larry Neville in 1990 objected to enforced disassociation and the shift from releasing workers to preserving the institution. Rudy van Diermen in 2003 objected to centralized authority and a notarized contract that took the assets. Thomas Cunningham in 2023 objects to accusation without evidence, exoneration used as leverage, shunning pressed onto families, and legal machinery raised against a fellow pastor. Three men, three decades, three long careers inside the same system, describing the same gravity pulling in the same direction. Concede that each wrote from his own wound and his own vantage; the pattern is still that the objections came from within, in real time, not from strangers afterward. There is a last irony worth noting. Cunningham ends with Paul’s line that the written text kills while the Spirit gives life, and that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Corinthians 3:6, 17). A series that began with a contract of submission ends with a pastor citing the letter that kills, on his way out the door.
The series
This is episode 4.3 of Letters to the Church. It follows episode 4.1 on Larry Neville’s 1990 letter and episode 4.2 on Rudy van Diermen’s 2003 letter and the pastor’s contract. If you hold other letters, contracts, statements, or internal documents connected to The Potter’s House, The Door, Victory Chapel, or Christian Fellowship Ministries, send them my way. The purpose of the series is simple: document first, analysis second.
Sources and further reading
- Pastor Thomas E. Cunningham, letter of withdrawal to the Board of Elders, Christian Fellowship Ministries, 17 September 2023 (reproduced in full above); document and scans
- Earlier in this series: Larry Neville’s 1990 letter and Rudy van Diermen’s 2003 letter
