Bryan Loritts suddenly left Abundant Life Christian Fellowship (ALCF) in Mountain View, California. His departure was quick and with not much notice. This blog has a question for Gary Anderson, and ALCF. Did you learn about Bryan Loritts role in the cover up a voyeurism and child pornography scandal at Acts 29 Fellowship Memphis in 2010?
“If you look at any successful professional – a salesperson, a marketer, a real estate agent, a trader – they all have the same qualities as the con man. The only difference is that one side uses their talents in the right direction and the con man is taking the easy way out.”
Frank Abagnale
Here is a trustworthy saying: Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. 2 Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3 not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. 4 He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full[a] respect. 5 (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) 6 He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. 7 He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.
1 Timothy 3:1-7 NIV
Bryan Loritts
On February 26, 2016 through Facebook Abundant Life Christian Fellowship (ALCF) in Mountain View, California announced that Bryan Loritts would become their new pastor. This is how ALCF announced the new leadership.
Join us in welcoming Pastor Bryan Loritts to the ALCF family on Sunday, March 6! This is his first official Sunday as our lead pastor.
Worship Celebration: 10–11:30AM
Pastor Bryan Loritts shares the first message—”First Things First: Jesus Above Ministry” from Revelation 2:1–7—in a new, four-part series: “First Things First” that leads us through Easter Sunday.
Meet & Greet: 12–1PM
Join us for an opportunity to connect with Pastor Bryan in the fellowship hall over light refreshments following our worship celebration. Read this week’s interview with Pastor Bryan on The Pastor’s Pen: bryanloritts.tumblr.com.
Bryan Loritts was at ALCF for about four years. As he continues to move on this blog has a question for Gary Anderson. Did ALCF know about the dark voyeurism and child pornography scandal that took place at Acts 29 Fellowship Memphis in Tennessee? If not this blog will bring ALCF up to speed on what occurred.
Bryan Loritts has Left Abundant Life Christian Fellowship
On January 8, 2020 at his blog Bryan Loritts revealed the preaching schedule for the next few months. Topics such as the marginalized, the church, singleness, good sex, and Biblical manhood/womanhood would be boldly taught. Despite the preaching schedule Bryan Loritts suddenly left ALCF. The last time Bryan Loritts preached was on January 26, 2020 when he preached “Healing Historical Hurts.” And then sometime over the next couple of weeks it appears as if Bryan Loritts suddenly resigned. It created a lot of confusion and left people with many questions. This blog scrubbed the social media and internet looking for more information and ALCF as I learned is very image conscious church. They proclaim to the world when they bring a pastor on staff but say nothing when one suddenly leaves. Gary Anderson preached on February 17, 2020 about what is happening at ALCF and attempted to spin it as God being in control and at work. Gary briefly addresses what happened in the sermon I have inserted up above. If you listen to the talk he addresses Bryan Loritts leaving ALCF at 2:09 and continues on until about 5:30.
Questions This Blog Would Like to Answer
This is a difficult post to compose because I have more gaps than answers. What is known is that ALCF has problems with their elder board. The elder board is authoritarian with some elders having been in their roles for around 20 years. When prompted to step down some have refused. The elder board had fired the founding pastor of ALCF and several other pastors as well. Some of those pastors were quite loving and did a good job from what this blog has heard. In the chaos Bryan Loritts ended up on the hiring list. But this post has a lot of questions and I hope that this post will flush out some answers. If any members or former members or attenders of ALCF can speak to any of these questions please contact me at wonderingeagle261@gmail.com
- How was Bryan Loritts hired?
- How was he vetted by the elder board?
- Did the elder board know about the sex crimes at Acts 29 Fellowship Memphis and the role Bryan Loritts had in covering them up?
- Did the elder board know how Bryan threatens people with unjust church discipline?
- Were there any problems that happened at ALCF? Things like sex abuse, unjust termination, power plays or spiritual abuse?
- Why did Bryan Loritts leave? What was said behind the scenes?
- Was ALCF attracted to Bryan Loritts due to his status of a celebrity pastor?
If anyone can answer those questions or talk about the power structure of ALCF let’s start talking so it can be analyzed and unpacked.
Did the Voyeurism and Child Pornography Scandal at Fellowship Memphis in Tennessee Catch Up with Bryan Loritts in California?
It was one of the darkest emails I received at this blog. In August of 2016 a victim of a deviant sex crime at Acts 29 Fellowship Memphis contacted me. She proceeded to tell me of a dark scandal. The Memphis Commercial Appeal, Memphis main newspaper also covered part of it. Bryan Loritts co-pastored Fellowship Memphis with John Bryson. Bryan Loritts brother-in-law was Rick Trotter who also led worship at one of the locations of Fellowship Memphis. Rick Trotter was also into voyeurism and recorded people including underage children and in the process manufactured child pornography inside a church restroom in 2010. Bryan Loritts knew about the history of his brother-in-laws voyeurism and sex crimes. Loritts own children were recorded and Bryan did not take the issue to the Memphis Police. Bryan banned his brother-in-law from his home but did not report him to the police or tell his church community. Bryan, out of his greed put his career and book publishing ahead of his own family. This blog considers him an abject failure of a man and a father. When Rick Trotter was caught one of those in the know wanted to tip off the Memphis Police to the sex crime. Bryan Loritts attempted to use a membership covenant to invoke church discipline on a person only to realize that the person did not sign a membership covenant. What happened under the leadership of Bryan Loritts and then John Bryson is that Fellowship Memphis covered up the sex crimes of worship leader Rick Trotter. The church went through the illicit recordings and contacted the women who were recorded and made them forgive Rick Trotter. Fellowship discouraged the females from going to the police. The crime was put on them and the church communicated that they didn’t want Rick Trotter’s life destroyed. And then they let him go where he supposedly went into sex addiction counseling in Georgia.
The scandal hung over Bryan Loritts and followed him around the country. Rick Trotter then went onto another church in Memphis in 2011 as a part time contractor and then went full time in 2015. He was hired knowing the situation that took place at Fellowship Memphis. He resumed his voyeurism for about three years inside a Presbyterian Church plant before he was caught. He was abruptly fired and the police were contacted. This blog told the story of Bryan Loritts, Rick Trotter and Fellowship Memphis and Downtown Church. The Memphis Commercial Appeal wrote about it and this blog also has kept up with the story as Bryan Loritts has fled. Bryan Loritts has never owned his role in the cover up. Loritts continues to bully the victims in Memphis as he scans social media and has tried to silence them. The question that needs to be asked is does Bryan Loritts still have the child pornography from the situation? For a deep dive into Fellowship Memphis you can read the following post in, “The Sordid Tale of Rick Trotter, Bryan Loritts, John Bryson and Acts 29 Fellowship Memphis and Downtown Presbyterian Church” And you can read the Memphis Commercial Appeal article in, “Former Grizzlies announcer Rick Trotter reportedly recorded women at another church in 2010.”
The question this blog has is the following. Did this scandal finally catch up with Bryan Loritts and were people at ALCF starting to ask questions? The behavior of Bryan Loritts in suddenly leaving fills a pattern as that is what he has done. For all the talk about responsibility, manhood and being a man, he has failed. For Bryan Loritts being in ministry is kind of like having serial killer Ted Bundy running an internet dating website. So if people have any additional information please contact me and let’s unpack what happened at ALCF.
Wondering Eagle 
Skipping town until the heat blows over and he can get on the Comeback Trail.
(If there’s even the hint of a kiddie-porn scandal, the word IS going to get around. At least outside of churches.)
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He is already hired as a head pastor at the summit church in Raleigh Durham NC.
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He works at a church in N.C. as a head pastor effective June 1st, and he disclosed his past to the church elders. He stated that he knew nothing of his brother’s sin until he discovered evidence and reported it within two hours of the discovery.
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Here’s a link to an interview he did about the Memphis scandal.
He basically says that he was unaware of what happened after the event.
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Bryan is not telling the truth. His video softball SBC-sponsored “interview” was filled with lies, half-truths and omissions. One would have to be a fool to assume he was terribly upset about his “baby sister” being on the videos, yet he has no idea about what became of the recordings. In the words of ESPN’s Chris Carter, “Come on, Man!”
In the video, he claims he told Pastor Richard Rieves at Downtown Church in explicit terms that his predator brother-in-law should not be hired…hmmm….we are to believe that, yet Loritts, himself, hired Trotter to lead worship at his conference. Come on, Man! Moreover, with this supposed earnest warning to Rieves, did Loritts think the congregants at Downtown Church should be warned? His protege, Chris Davis was the associate pastor at Downtown Church–are we to believe that Bryan’s supposed dire recommendation would be irrelevant to Davis? Bryan Loritts was leading sheep to the slaughter, as usual. He is hiding the truth, as usual.
But certainly he is honest and forthright, correct? Well, does an honest man tout a fake doctorate that he purchased from a fake university? (https://julieroys.com/dr-bryan-loritts-touts-questionable-doctorate-from-school-with-f-rating/) Normal people don’t do this. Wildly dishonest and insecure people might. The degree is different even from the meaningless “honorary” degrees conferred upon people by real universities; the degree he “received” is one that you, yourself, can order online…for a price. Worse, his father (well-known pastor, Crawford Loritts) was in on the hoax, posting to social media pictures of him and his wife beaming with “pride” and “celebrating” that their son was receiving his “doctorate” that day–do you think Crawford had no idea that Bryan had never done any work toward this supposed doctorate or that he had no questions about what the supposed granting institution was? Come on, Man! (One should remember that Crawford was on the board of Chick-fil-a and at The Gospel Coalition, both of which–co-incidentally–oversaw the employment of his son-in-law, Trotter, AFTER he’d been caught video-taping women and children in the bathroom and AFTER the Loritts’ were made aware that Trotter had been paying female employees at Chick-fil-a to lift up their shirts for him). Coincidence? Come on, Man! Crawford clearly has no moral compass about protecting people, either.
I know for a fact that Bryan did not tell his new SBC employers the truth (much less the complete and unvarnished truth). He was not left “out of the loop” by Fellowship elders concerning Trottter; he had numerous conversations about the matter and even took an active roll in trying to cover up Trotter’s payout (and no, it was not to protect a “widow” as claimed in his interview…the money was used by the predator, himself…Trotter’s wife fed at the church trough with Rick and enabled his tawdry behavior, when her well-to-do vocational-ministry family members made no effort to take care of this “widow”, themselves..and why should they when there is an unlimited supply of unsuspecting sheep to tote the note for their shenanigans? I suppose, in fairness, they did ultimately make some effort to tend to her needs AFTER the church money ran out…they did get the predator a job at Downtown Church and Chick-fil-a!). BTW..lest it become easy to fall for the “wife as a victim” line, it is not the case in this situation, and in many others (see how Penn State’s Jerry Sandusky’s wife intentionally turned a blind–but knowing– eye to his taking young men in the basement to molest them while the football coach abused his position as a lure. One should be careful to examine the facts before exonerating someone at cursory glance).
The SBC “investigation” into Loritts’ fabricated story was as much a sham as Loritts’ doctorate. Esteemed lawyer and victim advocate, Rachel Denhollander, was an onlooker who noted at length the shadiness of the SBC in the matter (see her Twitter account for a presentation of the problems).
Loritts has been offered an opportunity to have a discussion with his accusers and to have it videotaped and posted online. Of course, he has refused, as he cannot refute the facts and would get tangled up in his lies. He prefers to issue a press release packaged to look like an interview; it allows him to steer the demonstrably false narrative. Only a fool or a troll would overlook the obvious inconsistencies.
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