New Concerns Reported at Christian Youth Festival After Founder Quit

WATFORD (UNITED KINGDOM)
Vice [Brooklyn NY]

April 19, 2023

By Sophia Smith Galer

VICE World News has learned of newly-raised historic safeguarding concerns around the treatment of attendees at Soul Survivor festivals in the aftermath of founder Mike Pilavachi stepping down amid claims of inappropriate behaviour with young people.

Historic safeguarding allegations related to a Christian youth festival are being investigated by the Church of England after the festival’s founder quit over claims of inappropriate behaviour with young people. 

One of the UK’s best known evangelical leaders, the Rev Canon Mike Pilavachi stepped down from numerous roles across Soul Survivor charities and his ministry at a church in Watford, a town in south-east England, in early April. 

It was announced he was being investigated over “non-recent safeguarding concerns” by the Church of England National Safeguarding Team, including claims of “inappropriate massages” that were first published in the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. 

VICE World News can reveal that further historic safeguarding allegations have been brought to the Church of England regarding Soul Survivor since Palivachi’s investigation was announced.

Pilavachi was awarded an MBE, a British order of chivalry and prestigious honour, in 2019 for his services to young people. The Soul Survivor youth festival ran for 25 years from 1993 to 2019, attracting an average of 30,000 teenagers every year. Since the festival stopped Pilavachi continued work in his ministry and other charitable activities associated with Soul Survivor. He was also given an award in 2020 by the Archbishop Justin Welby, who had previously attended the Soul Survivor festival, for his “evangelism and discipleship amongst young people in the United Kingdom.” 

Pilavachi and the Soul Survivor festivals were well-known for promoting abstinence till marriage. “The best way to make marriage work is to embrace the gift of celibacy until the gift of marriage,” he has said on numerous occasions. Pilavachi, 65, is unmarried, and compared premarital sex to chocolate cake in an analogy he would repeat regularly. In the story, he would open up the fridge door and be tempted into eating a cake he was saving for his friends who were visiting later. He would then say that in opening the fridge door he allowed temptation in, in the same way young people must avoid “opening doors” to sex that in evangelical Christian tradition is only acceptable in marriage. 

Hannah, now an adult who spent several summers at Soul Survivor throughout her teens and twenties and who preferred to be anonymous due to her roles working in Christian organisations, recalled how a friend’s mother “let her know she knew she was sleeping around by silently leaving a chocolate cake in the fridge as an allusion to the Soul Survivor talk.”

The Daily Telegraph revealed that Pilavachi stepped back from his Church of England ministry in early April following historic allegations that he had historic “inappropriate intimate relationships” with young people including “massages,” which it claimed were understood to be connected to young people in Soul Survivor’s Christian gap year project, the Soul61 scheme.

After the Telegraph report was published and Pilavachi stepped back, VICE World News learned of more than one person who had reported historic safeguarding concerns regarding Soul Survivor events to the Church of England. They have asked to remain anonymous as they await the results of investigations into the issues they raised.

One individual said that the experience was connected to Soul Survivor’s “healing” experiences, where individuals would be asked to come on stage and the group would pray for them and suggest they were physically or mentally unwell because they had sinned. Faith healing is widely practised in evangelical traditions, where it is believed that prayer and the laying of hands on an unwell individual may bring about divine intervention and spiritual and physical healing. 

A woman also contacted VICE World News to describe her “healing” experience, who we are anonymising to protect her privacy. Now a youth worker in churches, she has decided to not bring the young people in her care to Soul Survivor events based on her experiences growing up. “I had severe mental health issues as a teen and was constantly prayed over at Soul Survivor that I wouldn’t self harm anymore. People would then announce me as healed, which would then make me feel like I failed when I would relapse with my mental health or self-harm,” the woman said. “There was no promotion of mental-health support or therapy.” 

VICE World News brought these cases to the Church of England, but a spokesperson said “at this stage in the investigation they could not give out any further details”. 

A spokesperson for Soul Survivor Watford also said that it was not possible to comment further “whilst the investigation is ongoing.”

A joint statement on the 2nd of April from the Church of England National Safeguarding Team, the St Albans Diocese, and the Soul Survivor Watford trustees said that the police were not involved in Pilavachi’s investigation, and nor was it a clergy disciplinary matter. The Charity Commission, which regulates charitable bodies in the UK, has since asked the trustees of Soul Survivor for “additional information.”

The joint statement also made two requests to not discuss the case on social media, and to not approach staff regarding the investigation. The statement has since been criticised online.

“This is the biggest news to hit evangelical christianity since Ravi Zacharias,” Natalie Collins, a domestic and sexual abuse expert and evangelical preacher told VICE World News. Zacharias was a popular Canadian-American minister who was accused of serious sexual misconduct, and an investigation into his behaviour by his own ministry after his death confirmed he had used his platform to abuse massage therapists with impunity. 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d9bkx/mike-pilavachi-soul-survivor