CLEVELAND (OH)
Cleveland Scene
August 1, 2019
By Sam Allard
For a man who purports to be so boldly committed to truth, American missionary and Christian pastor Tom Randall has been at the center of – in fact, may be the chief architect of – a long and wicked deception.
Randall is a gregarious man with an earnest, unsophisticated preaching style. He stands 6’5″ and ambles about with the busted-knee hitch of a former serious athlete. He has never fully conquered his Rs, but the speech impediment has endeared him to friends, colleagues, golfers on the PGA Senior Tour, where he served for several years as chaplain, and megachurch congregations nationwide. To these audiences and others he has told versions of the same story about himself: He grew up as a thief on the inner-city streets of Detroit and was shepherded to Christ by a college basketball coach.
These days, the 65-year-old Randall lives in Stow, Ohio, with his wife Karen and preaches from time to time at the nondenominational Hudson megachurch Christ Community Chapel, where he has been on the payroll since 2014, shortly after he returned to the states from a brief and highly sensationalized stint in a Manila detention center.
The Philippines. That’s where Randall lived as a missionary for years, purportedly playing professional basketball and spreading the word of God “through sports, recreation [and] competition.”
In January 2014, Randall was back in the Philippines on a semi-regular mission trip when he was arrested during an early morning raid of Sankey Samaritan Orphanage, the children’s home he founded in 1998. Randall, the facility’s Filipino manager Toto Luchavez and Toto’s son Jake were handcuffed and taken into custody.
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