DFW Transparency

Hello Texas Disciples,

I wanted to write you an honest account of the fruit of Kernans’ leadership during their time in Dallas and Los Angeles. When Joey and Karen were leading DFW, they increased the membership to 131 disciples. They had close to 90 baptisms a year, and the church was giving about $4,500 a week.

In July of 2023, Kernans landed, bringing almost 50 disciples hailing from LA, Denver, and Washington, DC. They also pulled in disciples from other Tribe churches. Due to so many move-ins and particularly “big givers” coming from LA, the contribution jumped to almost $9,000 a week. On top of this, part of the Kernans leaving LA, I had to agree to send DFW $7,200 a month for the last six months of 2023 and $3,200 a month for all of 2024 to help supplement the Kernan’s salary in Dallas. On top of that, the Kernans also get $3,000 a month from ICCM. They also tax all the American Tribe churches an extra Central Administration payment, which goes directly to DFW (keep in mind this is in addition to the 18% these churches pay to the ICC directly). If that wasn’t enough, Dallas was also given another $100,000 – $150,000 from missions in 2024, at Tim’s demand.

Now, despite all these extra funds, the DFW ministry staff going from having one Evangelist/WML couple to four ministry couples, and the cost of running the church increasing by nearly 600%, the number of baptisms under Kernan’s leadership has plummeted, decreasing by over 50%! The Dallas Church has not even had 40 baptisms so far in 2024. These are destructively shocking statistics!

Now, those of us in LA knew this would happen undoubtedly. Why? Because we took over the destroyed LA church from the Kernans.

In LA, the Kernans were given over $700,000 – $1,000,000 yearly from missions to supplement the church and hire more staff. Remember, all other ICC American Churches do not get this benefit. In San Francisco, we never got money from the movement; we only gave money to the movement. Like in Dallas, the Kernans, despite this enormous privilege, under their leadership, the LA church shrank from 916 when they got it in 2015 to a tragic 793 when Sarah and I took it over in December of 2022. By the time we got to LA, the church was wrecked, and the standards of commitment had been decimated. Some Bible Talk Leaders didn’t go to midweek, and Tim & Lianne tolerated it because they, themselves, no longer attended midweek services. In addition, 30% – 40% of the church didn’t give contributions, and nearly half the church wouldn’t attend monthly congregational services because they didn’t want to drive. The once powerful Jerusalem Church, which had daily baptisms under the McKean’s leadership, had decayed, barely seeing 200 baptisms a year under the Kernans. Upon our landing, we started calling people back to a “sold-out” commitment, and another 150 or so left throughout the year, not wanting true biblical discipleship.

We realized as we were trying to solidify the church in 2023 that we were not calling disciples “back” to total commitment; we were actually calling non-Christian church members to it for the first time. Sadly, after investigating many situations, these members were never called to be committed upon getting baptized. One couple in the South Region, who the Kernans personally studied with, said they were taught upon their Counting the Cost Study that meetings of the body were “optional” and they didn’t have to go if they didn’t want to. On top of this, Tim forbade many of the region leaders from removing people from their membership rolls because they wanted to keep the stats looking a little better than they really were. In actuality, we took over the LA Church, and only about 600 true disciples were in it! During the Kernan’s 7 years of leading the LA Church, millions of dollars in missions were wasted, hundreds of disciples’ faith was shipwrecked, and all the while, the church went backward by over 350 disciples!

Also, when we arrived, Michael Kirchner had taken over the LA Church budget and finances, and Ryan Keenan had been fired. This was due to terrible misuse of church finances and wild overspending! Add this to the countless cases of abusive behavior, and you would come to the clear conclusion that the Kernans should simply not be leading people spiritually. Raul has personally acknowledged this to me several times and has told me that in the future, Tim should only be leading ICCM.

I share these things as a shepherd who loves God’s people. Ask yourself, are these allegations very different from your experience over the last 17 months in Dallas? After so many moving in and so much financial aid, the DFW Church has barely grown by 20 in almost a year and a half. This is not the impact you see in the Book of Acts, which the ICC says they are restoring in this generation. I know this is hard and hurtful to accept, but we cannot dress the wounds of God’s people as if they were not serious (Jeremiah 6:14)