This story was reported in partnership with FāVS News, a nonprofit newsroom covering faith and values in the Inland Northwest. Learn more about FāVS’s work here.
The moment the prophet on stage singled him out, a man in a jean jacket with graying, slicked-back hair wept. He stood in the pews of Zeal Church with his wife, his legs shaking, lips trembling. He knelt. Tears streamed down the man’s face and his partner’s. A string of clear mucus connected his nose with the pew in front of him. They’d never been to Zeal before, they said, but it was clear to them that God had called them to the sanctuary for a reason.
“The Lord says, ‘You will not just be a guy that hangs out, that watches,” said Jeremiah Johnson, a celebrity prophet who founded a nonprofit ministry that establishes “apostolic” churches around the world and brings in about $1 million annually, according to tax filings. “You're gonna be hardworking. You're going to be confident. The Lord says, ‘I’m breaking cycles in your life today. You are graduated today into manhood. … You are going to be a success.’”
Johnson, who was there to deliver a guest sermon, predicted another man and his son who stood at the front of the pews would “become a dynamic duo” that would model healthy father-son relationships for other men and their children. He said another man would overcome the troubles of his past to become a great leader of a family. As he prophesied, he instructed the congregation to stretch their hand toward the person he was speaking over.
All who Johnson prophesied over wept. As they are with the predictions of many mediums and psychics, Johnson’s prophecies were vague enough that the recipient could find any turn of luck might fulfill them, while if they don’t come true, they might see it as their own fault for not following God closely enough.
It was not clear whether the congregation knew about allegations leveled against Johnson by a former colleague and Christian minister named Jake Kail, saying Johnson has historically used deceptive practices when prophesying and promoting himself in prophetic circles. Most notably, Johnson in 2015 issued public prophecies saying God would “use” Donald Trump but didn’t specify that Trump would become president. Years later, Johnson publicly said he had prophesied Trump would be president.
But that didn’t seem to cast a shadow on the congregation of a church that seems to … well, zealously believe in the spiritual truths in Johnson’s words. Zeal Church seems to fit squarely into the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a movement of charismatic churches that subscribe to a nondenominational governance structure, opposes legal abortion and queer rights, uses the tactics of “spiritual warfare” to minister and has seized real estate in some of the highest echelons of American power.
Zeal Church officials declined an interview request and did not respond to a detailed list of questions.
Going to spiritual war in Spokane
A plant of the Fort Worth, Texas, megachurch Mercy Culture, Zeal bought the New Community Church building downtown in May for $900,000. It made a splash by decorating the elegant 1906 gothic building in large black signs with large all-caps text and cancelling the lease for Shalom Ministries, a church that served tens of thousands of hot meals to unhoused and poor people each year. Valdez said people affiliated with Shalom were openly using drugs on church property.
The building towers above Third Avenue between Howard and Stevens streets. It’s a tech-savvy operation for the historic church with high cathedral ceilings and stained glass windows. Rather than using the classic organ that occupies the northeast corner of the sanctuary behind the pulpit, a projector screen covers it, displaying worship lyrics, a QR code to a site where congregants can tithe digitally or bass-heavy commercials advertising future events. It sells a line of Zeal-branded T-shirts for $35. There are always a couple of church photographers walking through the pews during services.
Before Pastor Ray Valdez, a Washingtonian who spent a stint at Mercy Culture, bought the building, it housed the New Community Church, which welcomed and affirmed people in LGBTQIA+ communities. Valdez talked at length with RANGE/FāVS after a recent service, but he would not give an interview on the record.
During three recent services, the church seemed to show many of the hallmarks of the NAR movement. It subscribes to the “five-fold ministry,” a church structure that places an apostle and a prophet at the top who carry out god’s will.
In contrast to its predecessor in the building, it is staunchly anti-queer, dedicating part of its belief statement to “biblical marriage,” meaning the only legitimate marriages are between one man and one woman.
Many NAR churches engage in so-called “spiritual warfare” — public worship aimed at vanquishing perceived demons from public institutions and lawmakers. One way they do this is by “speaking in tongues,” a practice of voicing speech-like sounds ostensibly derived from ancient or lost languages. At the August 30 service, the worship team led the entire congregation in an otherworldly chant in a foreign tongue.
The church frames its work in Spokane with language that evokes spiritual warfare, telling its congregants to “war with your worship.” Next year, the church will host a concert by the Sons of Thunder, a Christian metal band whose slogan is “This is war music.” In the NAR, the idea is that praising the Lord in ostentatious, public ways will repel evil forces some Christians believe have taken over American society, with some of its biggest targets being legal abortion and queer rights.
Zeal did not respond to questions about church demographics, but during the recent services, there were about 50 people in the sanctuary at any given time and an unknown number of children in the upstairs youth spaces. On September 13, at least four parents swayed to the pop worship music with infants swaddled in their arms. Some of the congregants moved here from other states, including Texas and Arizona, to be involved in Zeal Church.
As a “family church” of Mercy Culture, Valdez’s apostle — and spiritual leader — is Landon Schott, the lead pastor of the Texas megachurch. Schott has hosted events featuring another NAR-coded pastor, Russell Johnson, who recently planted a church in Browne’s Addition. When Johnson planted that church, he ran into community opposition from neighbors who were concerned about the armed guards surrounding the property and didn’t like that Johnson tore out the community garden.
Zeal is facing similar community skepticism from people who criticize it for kicking out Shalom. But like Johnson, Valdez said he was there to carry out God’s will, rather than that of the community.
‘Food does not cast out devils from people’
It’s something of a practice in the NAR community to control the message, meaning they rarely give interviews to journalists and tend to address controversy only from an environment the pastor controls. Johnson and Matt Shea, the two other prominent NAR pastors in Spokane, routinely do not return requests for comment. (It’s not a hard-and-fast practice: Johnson did do a recent interview with the Central Washington journalist Dominick Bonny, but he generally does not give interviews and has said on social media, “You don’t hate the media enough.”)
In the wake of Shalom’s lease cancellation, journalists across the community requested interviews with Valdez. He took the same tack as the other pastors. “We felt we would address the situation not from their platform but from our platform,” he said during a service.
“We refuse to allow our property to be used as illegal demonic activity,” he said, referring to drug use in the parking lot behind the church and other nearby areas.
“Food does not cast out devils from people,” said Valdez from the pulpit, who emphasized Spokane needs Jesus rather than sustenance.
Dexter Phillips, chair of Shalom’s governing board, disagreed with Valdez.
“It needs both (food and Christ),” he told RANGE. “If you're not alive, you can't get the word, and Jesus said, ‘Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked.’”
Phillips said people, including some who actively used drugs, found community and structure at Shalom’s breakfast service. Some drug users would serve the meals, and that gave them a place to be.
“They would stay even after the meals, and they would do cleanup, and they'd do prep for the next day, and they got showers, and they got bathrooms, and they got warm places to be, and they served, but they were still campers,” Phillips said.
But the experience with the new church wasn’t entirely negative. Phillips, who attends a church he said was similar to Zeal, said he liked Valdez on a personal level. And while the split was painful for Shalom, it would provide the homeless ministry an opportunity to restructure after 32 years of feeding the hungry in the church building. Phillips said that by December, Shalom would start serving meals again, possibly at sites across the city.
