30/09/2026
🚨 HOW THE HELL DOES JOHN CAMERON GET A SECOND ACT?
This isn't some ancient church scandal everyone should politely forget.
John Cameron founded and led Arise Church during the period that produced allegations of unpaid labour, brutal hours, bullying, unsafe working conditions and interns doing work at pastors' homes. An independent review process received 545 submissions, including hundreds from people still connected to Arise.
And now, in September 2026, Arise itself has finally admitted it got part of the internship programme wrong.
After a Labour Inspectorate investigation running since 2023, the church agreed that four former interns were actually employees and agreed to pay them wage arrears.
Meanwhile, Cameron resigned from Arise, crossed the ditch and has resurfaced in Australia with another church.
New city. New congregation. Same position of spiritual authority. 🤨
And THAT is where this becomes bigger than one pastor.
Because New Zealand has heard disturbingly similar accounts from people emerging from parts of the Pentecostal/megachurch world before.
When the Arise story exploded, former interns and volunteers from other large Pentecostal churches also spoke to 1News. One former C3 Auckland intern described being worked so hard they were on the brink of a mental breakdown, while accounts included unpaid volunteering reaching around 50 hours a week alongside study and paid work.
Then there's Destiny Church.
John Campbell's 2025 investigation interviewed more than 20 current and former Destiny members and reported allegations involving patriarchy, violence and coercion. Campbell said that in more than three decades of journalism he'd never encountered so many frightened interviewees as the women he spoke with during that investigation.
A former Destiny member involved in church-connected youth programmes was also sentenced to six years and four months imprisonment after admitting sexual offending against six young men; the judge described it as an egregious abuse of trust. Destiny banned him after the offending was reported to police.
And this is precisely why accountability structures matter.
It would be unfair to claim every Apostolic or Pentecostal church behaves the same way, or to lump Equippers into allegations that haven't been established against it. In fact, Equippers currently publishes a formal independent complaints pathway covering spiritual abuse, bullying, financial mismanagement and failures to respond to abuse.
But there is a legitimate question staring us in the face:
What happens when a charismatic religious leader controls the culture, the employment, the spiritual authority and the narrative — and the people underneath them are taught that serving the leader is serving God?
Because apparently destroying your reputation in one country doesn't necessarily prevent you from becoming “Lead Pastor” somewhere else.
John Cameron shouldn't disappear from this conversation simply because Arise is now dealing with consequences years later.
The uncomfortable questions remain:
Who benefited from all that unpaid labour?
Who created the culture?
Who held the power?
Who was accountable when people complained?
And what meaningful safeguards stop history repeating itself?
Faith isn't the problem.
Pentecostalism isn't automatically the problem.
Unchecked power wrapped in religious authority absolutely can be. 🤬
And perhaps instead of asking why former members keep speaking out about these institutions, we should start asking why so many people had to speak out before anybody bloody listened.
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