Pastor accused of running his multimillion-dollar Taylor church as a ‘cult’

To current members of Joshua Media Ministries International, the Taylor-based organization represents a path to the kingdom of God; a journey shepherded by a full-fledged prophet.

To former members, though, the multimillion-dollar church at 20320 Superior Road that police monitor daily is “a slave labor cult” operating on an unholy trinity of intimidation, manipulation and greed.

In February 2017, former JMMI member Chris Sorensen “was on fire for God.”

He packed his belongings into a car and drove from just outside Minneapolis to just outside Detroit, ready to become a full-time staff member at the church. He said he was burning with the desire to serve God.

“I wanted to be in ministry,” he said, recalling almost two years later. “That’s what I wanted to do in life. I thought this was my calling.”

Six months after joining, Sorensen left JMMI.

He said the work of the church “didn’t add up,” pointing to what he called misbehavior by church officials, including physical assault and sleep deprivation.

Other former members accused the organization of taking advantage of individuals with a desire to serve the Lord by having them solicit donations, which were then used to enrich church leaders. A renowned gospel recording artist alleged that David E. Taylor, JMMI’s minister and her former boyfriend, repeatedly violated his duties as a man of the cloth by having sexual relations with more than 40 women, many of them in his ministry.

‘He preys on women’

From March 7-9, JMMI hosted a Women of Destiny conference at its Taylor headquarters near the intersection of North Line and Allen Roads. A four-minute promotional video for the gathering hypes the event (“your life will be phenomenally revolutionized”) and its leader (“the Lord appeared to David E. Taylor and commissioned him to help you fulfill your identity and destiny”). In the video, footage of Taylor preaching is spliced with imagery of female warriors and backed by swelling, dramatic string music.

Taking place during Women’s History Month, the three-day conference was met with protests from individuals calling JMMI a “slave labor cult.” Some of the protesters were former church members, while others were friends and relatives of past members.

Hank Dunkerson, who lives in Kentucky, said he came up to show support for his cousin, Vicki Yohe, a Dove Award-nominated gospel recording artist who began speaking out after her relationship with Taylor ended late last year.

Yohe said the minister considered her a “spiritual daughter” during their 16-month relationship, a tactic she alleged he has repeatedly used to have sex with women in his ministry.

“He preys on women,” she said. “He does not honor women. Women are just a vagina.”

According to Yohe, Taylor made a habit of buying her expensive gifts — including Louboutin “red bottom” shoes, a fur coat and a Jaguar sedan — during their relationship. She said some of the money for gifts came from JMMI accounts.

“He said God just spoke to him to bless me with a car,” she said. “So that money for my car actually came from Joshua Media Ministries. Absolutely. He says that. He doesn't deny that. He says, ‘Yes, our ministry blesses other ministries with vehicles sometimes.’”

Yohe went public with these claims in December. Only three months earlier, she recorded a video of herself defending Taylor following a Charisma magazine story accusing JMMI and its leader of “spiritual abuse.” She said Taylor responded vindictively when she first told him she was going to speak out regarding his philandering.

“He told me if I went public, I would get cancer,” she said. “He puts all these curses on people. … When you first get with him, he asks you for naked pictures, inappropriate pictures. ... If you even think about getting mad or you want to break up, (or) if you expose him, he's going to send those pictures out.”

Yohe said other women have told her similar stories detailing their experiences with Taylor.

Yohe said she shared risqué photos with Taylor, and that he threatened to release them after she went public. In Michigan, so-called “revenge porn” is illegal and punishable by imprisonment and a fine.

While protesters were being interviewed outside the church March 9, counter-protesters from JMMI marched in a circle, chanting: “We love God. We love America.” Many of them carried signs reading “JMMI loves God’s kingdom” and “We are here to save America.”

When asked for comment on the protests and allegations against JMMI, a man in a suit — later identified as the Rev. Joseph Busch — said that JMMI planned on releasing a statement.

A statement never came and repeated requests for comment from the church and its minister were not returned.

A repeated destination for police

Since 2016, Taylor police have had 30 calls regarding JMMI. Some were seemingly innocuous, while others — including a bomb threat — suggest a climate of tension between current and former members of the organization.

On May 5, 2017, according to a Taylor police report, a former member threatened to blow up the church. According to the report, the man “was angry that God created him, but he couldn’t kill God so he would kill the pastor of JMMI.” He claimed to know how to rig the furnace and/or water heater to cause an explosion. When Taylor police responded, they “offered to search the church for anything suspicious or to bring in a bomb dog,” but church officials declined.

On June 8, 2018, a former member of JMMI reported an alleged assault at the church. The woman said she went to JMMI five days earlier to see her father and sister, both of whom were members. Upon entering the premises, the woman said she was confronted by members about her “bad attitude” and told she shouldn’t be at the church. The woman reported then being forcibly pushed and pulled from the property.

Nearly three months after that episode, at the end of August, a father requested help from police in getting his son out of the JMMI building. He told officers his son worked at the church, though he wasn’t sure in what capacity.

Taylor police agreed to assist, classifying it as a mental health commitment. Seven police officers met at a nearby Burger King with a plan to pick up the son. Officers covered the west and east side of the JMMI building, then waited for the son to come to his father’s vehicle. When the son eventually did so, officers approached and placed him in handcuffs, putting him in the back of a patrol car.

While this occurred, officers noted that several men in suits exited the building and stood in the vestibule watching and filming.

Other Taylor police reports related to JMMI include a sudden death and a missing persons report, both filed in November 2017.

On November 5, 2017, a 57-year-old man died of natural causes while attending a prayer group at JMMI. Taylor police and firefighters arrived at the scene around 2:15 a.m., and “observed a group of people chanting and singing” and “touching and pressing down on the body.” A witness told officers that, when people pray at the church, “all of them … faint under the light of God.” She told officers the deceased was sleeping and “God (would) wake him up soon.”

A police detective took some items, including a stack of credit cards and ID, from the deceased and turned them over to his wife. The county medical examiner was called to retrieve the man’s body. The cause of death was later determined to be heart disease.

Two days later, in a separate incident, a woman reported a friend as a missing person. She told police the friend had come to Michigan two years earlier to join JMMI, and hadn’t been seen in-person by his parents in over 18 months. She said church officials gave her different stories about the whereabouts of her friend. She also said she found his vehicle in the parking lot with expired plates. The police report states that she feared he “ha(d) been brainwashed.”

Taylor Police Chief John Blair said his department is monitoring the situation at JMMI “on a daily basis.”

“We are working in conjunction with another agency to determine if there’s any criminal wrongdoing, or anything at all that’s improper that’s occurring at that location,” he said.

While Blair declined to name the other agency his department is working with, Yohe said she’s "working with the FBI.”

Special Agent Mara Schneider of the FBI’s Detroit field office said she couldn’t “confirm or deny the existence of any investigation involving Joshua Ministries.”

‘Visitations from Jesus’

When Chris Sorensen first heard about JMMI, it was through books written by Taylor, the church’s self-proclaimed apostle. The first, released in 2009, is titled “Face-to-Face Appearances from Jesus: The Ultimate Intimacy.”

According to its Amazon page, the book is a 256-page account of Taylor’s “visitations from Jesus,” which claims to teach its readers how to “meet Christ face-to-face in person” and “experience multiple appearances from Him on a lifetime basis.” The author biography section states Taylor “most prizes his face-to-face appearance relationship and friendship with Jesus.”

“I got associated with Taylor’s ministry in January 2015,” Sorensen said. “That’s when I very first heard of the guy, and I saw ads for his book, saying, ‘If you buy this book and you read it, you’ll see Jesus.’ So I took the gamble, and I bought it and I read it.”

After finishing the book, Sorensen got a message from JMMI.

“I got this Facebook message,” he said. “‘Oh, Jesus told me to reach out to you. I was in prayer last night, and I was drawn to your page to contact you.' I’m like: ‘Oh wow. I just read your book and now you’re reaching out to me?’ I was so honored.”

When Sorensen arrived in Michigan to work at the church, he said he realized the message was nothing more than “spam mail,” sent relatively indiscriminately to thousands of people like him.

He would later learn of the inner workings of a ministry machine that he said was focused on bringing in as much money as possible. He said JMMI, which, according to tax records, brings in millions of dollars in donations every year, developed email and phone call solicitation scripts for members to follow, sending out thousands of messages each day in an effort to hit certain benchmarks.

“Every single staff member had a $500 per day quota you had to meet in donations, or $20,000 collectively,” Sorensen said.

“You pretty much work every single day. You might have had one day off a month. I remember I would want so, so much for a day off, and just week after week would pass and I just never got the day off. So you’re always sleep deprived; you never can catch up on sleep.”

Sorensen described an example of how the church’s Facebook team operated.

After working and praying from 8 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., he said, he regularly worked from midnight to 4 a.m., typically sending copy-and-pasted messages to users who had “liked” a Facebook post from a well-known televangelist’s page — Billy Graham, Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen. The goal, he said, was to send 1,000 messages per day, which required creating dummy accounts to avoid Facebook’s spam filters. He said he usually slept around three hours each night.

During his six months with Joshua Media Ministries, Sorensen also said he was repeatedly told to leave his wife, who was skeptical of Taylor and JMMI. He said he also witnessed Taylor physically assault other JMMI members at their building. He recalled Taylor coming in late at night, and yelling and screaming at seven men.

“He just started off on this one guy, and just started slapping him,” Sorensen said. “He slapped him two or three times, knocked down to the ground and just grabbed him by the collar and (shook) him. ... He just went one after another — slap them across the face, push them down to the ground, sit over them.”

Sorensen said four of the men were being “corrected” for smoking weed, and two of them for interactions with females. The seventh happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

An alleged money-making machine
Tax filings for JMMI indicate the organization had total revenues of $4,096,502 in 2017, all from gifts, grants, contributions and membership fees. From 2013 through 2017, the organization received $12,119,508 in the same categories.

The church’s tax filings list its minister as its highest compensated employee, but does not detail the amount he’s paid.

Even as millions of dollars were funneled into the church, some past members said the congregation’s leadership always wanted more.

Sorensen and Bill and Lisa Hodi, two other former members, said JMMI instructed church members to claim homelessness with the state of Michigan in order to get electronic benefits transfer (EBT) cards. Members then allegedly pooled the cards to an appointed designee, who would shop for everyone at nearby stores.

“Every person had to have an EBT card, a food stamp card,” Sorensen said. “They said that if you don’t get one, you’re not going to eat.

“So you have 50 people to feed, and one card will last one day. You'll totally empty one card on the whole entire staff, and it's not for you personally, it’s to spend on the whole entire group. So you’re not using your own card. I was in charge of it. I had to make an Excel spreadsheet of the status of everyone's card, and we kept them all in this little Trapper Keeper plastic box.”

Bob Wheaton, public information officer for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees welfare funding in the state, said the rules governing EBT card fraud “can be complicated.”

“Small details could make a difference as to whether an activity is legal or not,” he said.

Asked whether JMMI was being investigated for EBT card fraud, Wheaton said, “At this point I can’t confirm or deny whether (the Office of Inspector General is) investigating this organization.”

He also said he couldn’t comment on whether any complaints have been filed against JMMI.

Because JMMI is classified as a church, it doesn’t pay any property taxes to the city of Taylor. It does, however, pay "special assessment charges" for items such as street lighting, county drainage, etc. The church currently owes more than $3,000 in delinquent water charges, according to the city’s website.

‘Living at the church’

Sorensen said church members routinely slept in the sprawling 29,920-square-foot building, which is zoned for industrial rather than residential use. He said some people had air mattresses, while others slept on blankets on top of plywood. The Hodis also said this happened regularly, and that the building, which occupies 2 1/2 acres, had neither proper dormitories nor showers.

“There were many (members) that were living at the church,” Bill Hodi said. “I would say a minimum of 10, sometimes more — and this is mostly guys — that were staying at the building.”

The building was built in 2003. JMMI purchased it for $500,000 on Dec. 26, 2011.

The Hodis, who left JMMI almost three years ago, said the church had around 60 members at the time. After they left, they said around half of the members — all women and children — began living together in a house in Plymouth Township on a 6,404-square-feet parcel of land, while the other half — all men — began living together in a house in Brownstown Township on a 13,549-square-foot parcel of land.

According to property records, the Brownstown Township house, located in the 24600 block of Timber Ridge Trail, is owned by Charles and Karen Smith. The Hodis said Charles Smith is a current member of JMMI. The name Charles Smith shows up on incorporation documents filed with the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs on behalf of Kingdom Family Church, the nonprofit church arm of JMMI.

Reached via phone regarding the alleged living conditions, Smith acknowledged owning the house. However, he denied more than 20 people were residing there. He would not specify an exact number before hanging up.

Dispatch logs from the Brownstown Township Police Department show a mother requesting a welfare check for her child at the address Aug. 27, 2018. That same day, according to the logs, the mother advised police “that her son is in a cult” and “has court-ordered paperwork with seal for commitment” to a mental health facility.

Less than 10 days earlier, on Aug. 19, another caller requested a welfare check at the address. Police conduct welfare checks when an individual fails to respond to messages from family, friends or other loved ones who fear the individual may be in danger.

Brownstown police declined to comment on the situation in their township.

The Plymouth Township house, located in the 9000 block of Woodgrove Drive, is owned by Chunlin Liu of Bloomfield Hills. Liu could not be reached for comment.

On Sept. 16, 2018, a Plymouth Township resident contacted police and “expressed their concerns” about the house on Woodgrove Drive, according to a police report. “Information was gathered,” the report said.

On Jan. 23, a woman named Jennifer Janiec filed a report with the Plymouth Township Police Department, listing the Woodgrove address as her residence. She claimed that Yohe, the gospel recording artist, was harassing her via Facebook. After looking at both women’s Facebook pages, the Plymouth officer said he "did not observe any harassment/threats.”

Janiec’s Facebook page displays pictures and quotes from Taylor and states she “works at Joshua Media Ministries International.”

Many of her posts promote Taylor’s upcoming public engagements, including a May 3-4 Crusade Against Cancer tour in St. Louis and a July 10-11 Mission: Save America arena crusade in Orlando.

“David E. Taylor first and foremost a friend of Jesus Christ, has been granted over 150 face-to-face visitation appearances from Jesus personally,” one posts reads. “In a series of dreams that he has prophesied for over 12 years, God revealed that Russia was going to attack America and that this war would begin during the presidency of George Bush, Jr. In one of these dreams, the financial centers of America were attacked and this dream was fulfilled with the September 11, 2001 attack on the WORLD TRADE CENTER in NEW YORK. Don’t be caught unprepared for what is about to hit America!”