MARSHFIELD (WI)
The Roys Report [Chicago IL]
September 26, 2024
By Rebecca Hopkins
Megan Anderson, wife of popular worship artist Jared Anderson, has watched her former pastor lead four different churches over the span of 25 years, while she’s lived with an open secret that he sexually abused her. While the abuse lasted less than a year, she said the ongoing platforming of this “predatory” pastor has exacerbated her pain and given the pastor opportunity to abuse others.
“It’s taken me this long to make sense and to find my voice,” Anderson told The Roys Report (TRR). “I still feel like the truth needs to be told. There needs to be accountability.”
The pastor Megan Anderson accuses of abusing her is Ed Gungor, former pastor of the now-shuttered Believers Church in Marshfield, Wisconsin—a church Anderson credits for saving her life when she was a struggling teenager. Ed Gungor is also the father of the well-known musician Michael Gungor.
Due to what Gungor called a midlife crisis when he turned 40, Gungor moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the late 1990s, where he founded Believers Church Tulsa. By 1999, the new church had grown to 4,000 people. That year, Anderson, age 25, said Gungor invited her to move to Tulsa to be his kids’ nanny and to work at the church as his assistant.
During this time, Ed and his wife, Gail, also counseled Anderson through some tough times. The first time Ed Gungor touched Anderson sexually was in a prayer deliverance session for her depression, Anderson says.
“I could feel him brushing against my breasts when he was trying to pray for me,” Anderson said. “He kept stroking my breasts.”
She said he also sexually abused her at her apartment, his house with his wife nearby, and at the church offices. After these encounters, Gungor gave Anderson financial bonuses, Anderson said. She added that he told her if she told anyone, he’d kill himself.
Gungor didn’t respond to TRR’s repeated requests for comment.
In 2000, Gungor resigned from Believers Church Tulsa when his sexual misconduct with Anderson was discovered. But according to former church staff, church leaders called it an “affair.”
Two years later, Gungor’s wife, Gail Gungor, incorporated People’s Church in Tulsa, where by the mid-2000s, Gungor was pastoring, according to the Oklahoman.
In 2009, the church changed names to Sanctuary Church Tulsa. Gungor is no longer listed as pastor at Sanctuary but still regularly preaches there.
Gungor also serves as the founding bishop of the Order of St. Anthony and the Diocese of St. Anthony, an Anglican Diocese in Tulsa, belonging to the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches (CEEC). He’s also on the board of Celebration Church, the Wisconsin megachurch his brother, Mark Gungor, pastors.
In 2019, Anderson began seeing a therapist who helped her understand what Gungor had done to her as clergy sexual abuse.
“Affair” isn’t the right word for sexual misconduct of a pastor with someone in their care, but rather, “abuse” is, said David Pooler, adult clergy sexual abuse (ACSA) researcher.
Pooler’s research shows that ACSA survivors suffer higher rates of traumatization than war veterans.
“Generally, an affair with someone does not cause PTSD but abuse does,” Pooler said. “There are deep, profound, and long-lasting injuries.”
Given this new understanding, Anderson wrote a letter to several church leaders in March 2023, documenting Gungor’s abuse. These included the leaders of the Order of St. Anthony and Diocese of St. Anthony; Paul Paino, the rector at Sanctuary Tulsa; and Pastor Mark Gungor, Celebration Church pastor, author, and creator of the popular “Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage” seminar.
Ten advocates, including Megan Anderson’s husband, Jared Anderson, signed their first names and initials of their last names on Megan’s letter to show solidarity.
An unspecified “Church Leadership Group,” responded with a letter through attorney Michael King.
“We have been involved with Ed and Gail and are confident that we are fully informed of the facts necessary for us to evaluate his position here,” the leadership group wrote. “Ed has over the past 23 years demonstrated the accountability and submission to oversight required for leadership in our organization.”
But Anderson says Gungor’s abuse has never been publicly named. And the reality that those who have known about the abuse for 24 years have failed to permanently remove Gungor from ministry is “devastating,” Anderson said.
“It was so public in the way he exposed himself . . . and no one ever did anything,” she said.
Trust betrayed
Anderson told TRR that when she moved to Tulsa in 1999, she trusted Ed Gungor and his wife, Gail. So, she continued to process with them about a past trauma—how she’d survived a sexual assault as a teenager, and how her assailant, once discovered, killed himself.
In September 1999, Ed Gungor helped Anderson to get into a weekend of psychiatric care.
But the next month, Gungor, who was in his 40s, called Anderson, age 25, from a business trip to describe his sexual fantasies of her, Anderson said.
“I had a mirrored closet, and I remember I was sitting on the floor, and I felt like my face split in half,” Anderson told TRR. “After all my therapy, one of the hard, biggest pieces that I’ve had to work through is the absolute terror in that moment, the absolute confusion in that moment, and the absolute arousal in that moment that Pastor Ed noticed me.”
Anderson said she rebuffed him.
“I immediately said to him, ‘This can’t happen.’” Anderson said.
Gungor then asked her to masturbate with him while on the phone, she said. Anderson said she didn’t but pretended to.
After that conversation, Anderson said she told Gungor she was going home to Wisconsin for a few days, but he convinced her to meet him before she left. When they met, he kissed her and gave her a diamond earring, she said.
While she was in Wisconsin, Anderson said Gungor called her constantly.
When she had to return to her job at Gungor’s church in Tulsa at the end of 10 days, she hoped the time away had made Gungor come to his senses. But Anderson said he then escalated the interactions to sexual intercourse. She said some of the sexual contact happened unexpectedly in the church office. She added that sometimes Gungor would ask for Anderson’s underwear, then return it to her with his semen on it.
“He wanted me to feel him for the rest of the day,” she said.
After the sexual encounters, Gungor would give her financial bonuses, Anderson said.
One day, Virginia Cammack, a church employee who shared an office with Anderson, walked in on Gungor and Anderson having breakfast together behind closed doors. Cammack told TRR that Gungor told her not to tell anyone.
“He played it off, like, ‘I don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings that I didn’t bring breakfast for everyone,’” Cammack said.
Anderson said she told her family, who didn’t go to church, about her romantic relationship with Gungor.
Anderson’s younger sister, Becca Kanitz, told TRR she witnessed Gungor’s attempts to deceive people and hide the relationship.
Kanitz said when she visited her sister in Tulsa, Gungor made them wear baseball caps in the car. She added that when Gungor came to Anderson’s apartment, he splashed water on his face before leaving to look like sweat, so he could convince his wife Gail he’d gone on a run.
Missy Cayley, Megan’s older sister, said that when she visited Anderson, Gungor told her in a church office that he was in love with her sister. Cayley said she was shocked and worried, but “he’s so darn convincing.”
In retrospect, Cayley, who’s a high school counselor, believes Gungor is a “pretty twisted person,” who took advantage of his power.
Anderson said Gungor bought her dishes and bedding, saying he wanted her to think about him when she ate and slept. She said he also bought her a one-carat diamond necklace and gave her a cell phone they both kept secret.
Initially, the attention felt like love, Anderson said, but eventually became control.
“He’d always say—and this is another big piece—if I ever told anyone, he’d kill himself,” Anderson said.
Anderson said she dreaded the weekends when Gungor would show up at her apartment to have sex with her. In church the next day, she said he’d give her a signal from the pulpit—crossed fingers—to remind her of his love.
“So, I would just take sleeping pills all weekend just to get through Saturday,” Anderson said.
Kanitz told TRR she remembers Anderson telling her about the sign from the pulpit.
“She was so vulnerable,” Kanitz said. “Everyone was very fearful when all this was going on because—what was going to happen to Megan?”
The plan
In April 2000, overwhelmed by the situation, Anderson resigned from the church and went home to Wisconsin, where she laid in bed and lost 40 pounds.
But Anderson said Gungor kept calling her. So, in June, Anderson said she told Gungor if he didn’t tell his wife about their relationship, she would. Anderston told TRR that an hour later, Gail Gungor called her, furious.
After she hung up, Anderson said she cried so loudly, her mother heard her and came to her room to console her.
The next month, Anderson said Ed Gungor called her from Minnesota.
“He’s like, ‘. . . I want you to fly here. Then I’m going to take you to Europe, and I want to build another life with you,’” Anderson said. She added that he again threatened suicide, so she quickly hatched a plan and urged Gungor to meet her in Wisonsin.
She then invited Bill and Nancy Arndt, who were elders at Gungor’s former church in Wisconsin, to join her at the airport to meet Gungor. When Gungor walked into the terminal, Anderson said he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Then he noticed the Arndts watching.
“He was like, I betrayed him,” Anderson said.
She said Gungor’s brother, Mark, also came to the airport to try to get him to go home to Tulsa.
Mark Gungor did not respond to TRR’s request for comment.
The next weekend, Pastor Ted Haggard, an overseer for Believers Church Tulsa, travelled to Tulsa. At the time, Haggard was also the head pastor for the Colorado megachurch, New Life Church, and a rising star in evangelical circles.
Haggard told the Tulsa congregation that Gungor had participated in an affair and would no longer be the pastor, said former church staffer Virginia Cammack, who attended the service.
Cammack said she doesn’t remember any church leaders talking about it in terms of abuse or grooming.
“It was always just—she was a young, beautiful girl, and they were working too close together,” Cammack said.
Even years later—in a 2013 podcast—Gungor referred to the sexual misconduct with Anderson as “infidelity” he got “sucked into.”
Kelly Tietsort, a former staff member at Believers Church Tulsa, said she spent time with friends of Ed and Gail Gungor and remembers hearing them process his misconduct shortly after it happened.
“During that time, the overall feeling I got from interactions with them was just not one of, ‘Man, I really screwed up.’ But they were feeling rejected and not cared for,” Tietsort said.
Seeking a fresh start
Soon after Gungor’s misconduct was discovered, Haggard convinced Anderson to move to Colorado for a fresh start at New Life Church (NLC). But when she arrived at NLC, that’s not what she experienced.
“Everyone knows about it,” Anderson said. “I wanted to prove to people that I wasn’t some—excuse my language—slut. . . . That’s what I kept hearing, that I seduced him.”
Anderson said Gayle Haggard took her under her wing and discipled her with the book, “Five Aspects of a Woman.” The book teaches women to be helpers to men and bring them glory “through her cooperation and respect for man.”
Meanwhile, Gungor started emailing Anderson again, which Anderson said she reported to Haggard.
In March 2001, Haggard asked Anderson to meet with an attorney to determine whether Gungor had done something criminal, she said.
“I had to tell all the details to these two men,” Anderson said, adding that nothing ever came of the meeting.
TRR reached out to Haggard for comment, but he declined.
In 2001, Jared Anderson moved to Colorado Springs and started dating Megan. Two years later, Jared and Megan got married and Haggard performed the wedding.
Megan Anderson said she made it her goal to meet the standards the church set for her.
“Now all of (Jared’s) songs are taking off and . . . I’m going to be the pastor’s wife and I’m doing ‘Five Aspects of a Woman.’ And I need to just do whatever my husband wants,” she said.
Meanwhile in Tulsa, Believers Church leaders told staff and volunteers Gungor was on a two-year restoration plan, Kelly Tietsort said. When Gungor planted People’s Church in the early to mid-2000s and began pastoring, Tietsort said staff complained that it was too fast.
In 2006, Haggard resigned from NLC following allegations of drug use and sexual misconduct with a male prostitute.
In 2009, Gungor invited Ted and Gayle Haggard to speak about their “redeemed” story at his People’s Church, Tulsa Worldreported.
In 2010, Haggard founded Saint James Church, where 12 years later, Haggard faced additional allegations of inappropriately touching two young men. Haggard has denied the allegations.
Seeking justice and healing
In March 2023, Anderson wrote a letter to church leaders, who knew of Gungor’s misconduct: “I have lived with the traumatic aftermath of (Gungor’s) selfish acts, wickedness, perversion, and abuse.”
In their written reply, the leaders defended Gungor, saying he walks “daily in relationship with those he submitted to 23 years ago.” In a preamble to that reply, Attorney Michael King wrote that future correspondence should be directed to him, but stated, “no further discussion will be necessary.”
TRR reached out to the recipients of Anderson’s letter—Pastor Mark Gungor, leaders from the Sanctuary Church, and the Diocese of St. Anthony, where Gungor serves—but received no response.
On April 2, 2023—the day Mark Gungor preached a Palm Sunday sermon—Mark sent Anderson and her advocates an email. Mark wrote that his brother’s acts were “terrible” and an “abuse of power.” But he also questioned the advocates’ Christian faith.
“When a small, cowardly group like yours argues against the forgiveness of sins and instead advocates for the resurrection of a 20+ year old offense, we must conclude that you are not orthodox in your beliefs and cannot, therefore, be considered Christian,” Mark Gungor wrote.
The next day, Mark Gungor emailed the advocates again and threatened Jared Anderson with legal action.
In June 2023, Megan Anderson responded to the leadership group’s letter, questioning why they’ve allowed Gungor to keep pastoring.
“It was appalling to hear that ‘you are fully informed’ of the egregious, abusive, predatory acts of Ed Gungor and that you still have him in a position of trust,” Anderson wrote.
Clergy abuse expert David Pooler said he strongly recommends permanently removing pastors who’ve sexually abused parishioners to the pulpit.
“For so many survivors, it feels like an ongoing knife in a wound to allow a person to continue to minister, or briefly send someone way to a discipleship program on steroids,” Pooler said. “(O)ne of their biggest concerns is that this person doesn’t go on and injure someone else.”
In June of this year, Megan Anderson wrote to the diocese and church leaders again to request they inform church members of the abusive nature of Gungor’s past.
“Transparency and full disclosure to congregants is expected and imperative,” she wrote.
Anderson said the leaders didn’t reply, which has been painful. But she said she doesn’t want to stay silent anymore. She wants to educate the church and encourage other survivors to find their voices.
“I’m writing this out of a place of freedom, not to get freedom,” she said. “If I can change a little corner of my world, that would be amazing.”