While we are Foursquare pastors, this is a privately owned website and is not affiliated in any way with The Foursquare Church or any particular Foursquare ministry. No one from the Foursquare denomination is monitoring this petition or site. If you have a question, comment, complaint, or allegation that you want the Foursquare denomination to know about or address, please contact Foursquare at mystory@foursquare.org.Have you experience abuse in your church? If you feel comfortable sharing, send your story here or email info@speakupfoursquare.com.
PETITION UPDATE – 6/28/2022
We thank you for supporting this petition to the Foursquare Executive Council. By signing your name, you have lifted the voices of the abused, calling for justice and mercy for the oppressed. You also join in re-imagining a renewed and transformed Foursquare Church that honors abuse victims, creates safety for the suffering, and provides healing for the wounded. As we continue to call on our leadership to address the specific abuses by Mike Larkin and the systemic issues that perpetuate such abuse in our movement, we issue the following statement and ask for your continued support and sharing of this petition to promote greater awareness.
We commend our Foursquare leadership for providing significant space to engage in this conversation at the recent Foursquare Connection in Orlando, FL. President Randy Remington, the executive team, and the board publicly acknowledged the breadth of the issue of abuse of power in our movement and repented of various ways our culture has created an environment for abusers to gain and maintain power without adequate accountability.
As the board of directors convenes in the coming days, we call on our executive leadership to continue in the spirit of repentance by taking the following action steps that have yet to be done:
- the full disclosure of the investigation results conducted by GRACE, including all reports of sexual, physical, and emotional misconduct by Mike Larkin.
- the release of a public statement fully disclosing Mike Larkin’s misconduct and Foursquare’s failures to respond appropriately in a manner that safeguards other victims from further abuse.
We are grateful for the removal of the article published on December 6, 2019, titled “President Mike Larkin transitions out of LPU-Virginia,” which praised Mike Larkin for his years of service and accomplishment without mentioning his misconduct. However, the continued public silence by our executive leadership before, during, and after Connection regarding the specific details of Mike Larkin’s misconduct dishonors the numerous abuse victims, causing the wounded to carry the burden of disclosure. This is not Heidi Cooper’s or the Ignite community’s story to tell. It is Foursquare’s story to tell in repentance for shielding Mike Larkin from the ramifications of his actions and failing to provide an opportunity for other victims to be identified, protected, or supported.
To our knowledge, there has been no communication of repentance, public or private, from Foursquare executive leadership to the victims of abuse by Mike Larkin since Heidi’s public disclosure and the release of our petition. We continue to call on Foursquare to take full ownership of its failure to protect and care for the people entrusted to its care by specifically addressing its failures directly to those impacted.
We continue to believe in a Foursquare church where leader health, ministry effectiveness, and Kingdom multiplication exist in concert. These cannot co-exist without honoring the whole truth through disclosure, humbly acknowledging and repenting of our failures, and providing adequate trauma-informed care for those who have been harmed.
May we together see Foursquare grow into maturity, becoming an even greater light of hope in this dark world.
May His Kingdom Come,
Foursquare Leaders Against Abuse of Power
(Authored by Justin Rupple & Anonymous Contributors)
