Three Years Later: What Changed in Chi Alpha?
After the XA Lion’s Den exposed the largest abuse scandal in Chi Alpha history, survivors and families are still waiting for answers.
Three years ago, in April 2023, I launched the XA (Chi Alpha) Lion’s Den forum and website.
The goal at the time was simple. Find more survivors.
We had already discovered a few survivors of Daniel Savala, a longtime spiritual mentor inside Chi Alpha campus ministries who had sexually abused students. But we suspected there had to be more. Especially because Daniel was convicted in 2012 for sexually abusing minors in Alaska and had been a registered sex offender since then.
At first, the situation appeared to be what many scandals look like in the early days.
One bad actor.
One tragic story.
One predator.
But something changed once the forum went live, and our attorney, Rep. Mitch Little, sent letters to just about every university in Texas, and a few news articles dropped. The Texas A&M University newspaper was the first to break the story, and then Christianity Today picked it up.
The stories started pouring in.
Students from different campuses in different states.
Former Chi Alpha leaders, interns, staff members, and missionaries.
Parents worried their kids had been pulled into something unhealthy.
Some of those stories of abuse stretched back three decades.
With thousands of page views a day, what quickly became clear was that this was not simply a story about one predator. It was a story about a system that failed to protect students from Daniel.
“The highly celebrated Chi Alpha discipleship model was missing something essential. Discernment. And without discernment, there was deception.”
Three years later, the question that still hangs over this scandal is painfully simple.
How did this happen?
How did one man have thirty years of unrestricted access to groom and sexually abuse students with virtually no resistance?
It reminds me of what my pastor said about Daniel Savala from the very beginning. “Daniel wasn’t helping your kids; he was helping himself to your kids.”
And perhaps even more disturbing, when he was finally arrested and jailed, many campus pastors inside the South and North Texas Chi Alpha leadership network rallied around him.
Those closest to Daniel in leadership sent emails to alumni, encouraging them to raise money for his legal defense. Leadership asked people to send letters to the judge requesting leniency.
A Chi Alpha pastor served as Daniel’s legal chaperone and even paid his bail. We also learned that Daniel Savala was continuing to groom and sexually abuse others while he was attending court-appointed reform classes.
His status as a registered sex offender remained largely hidden until 2023. Eli Stewart, pastor of Mountain Valley Church and Campus pastor at Texas A&M, never told his board or church about Savalas ' sex offender status. Daniel was allowed access to students until 2023.
Accountability didn’t really happen until the XA and the Lion’s Den forum launched, the news media began reporting on it, and lawsuits began to surface.
Three years later, we are here asking, What has Chi Alpha actually changed?
Over the past three years, survivors, journalists, advocates, and investigators have documented patterns that reveal a deeper problem within Chi Alpha and the systems and people responsible for overseeing it.
These patterns include:
Long-term grooming of students by leaders placed in positions of spiritual authority
A culture of honor that discouraged questioning leaders
Reports of misconduct that were minimized or ignored
Leadership structures that allowed abusive leaders to remain in influence for years
A “brotherhood” culture among leaders that made accountability difficult
Internal teachings that normalized sexual perversion (Nudity is Unity)
Institutional instincts that protected the reputation instead of protecting students
What began as an investigation into Daniel Savala’s crimes expanded into something much larger.
It exposed what many survivors now describe as gross negligence and systemic failure in accountability, not just in Chi Alpha but also within the Assemblies of God Denomination.
So three years later, the natural question becomes: What has the organization actually learned?
To be fair, several developments have occurred since the scandal became public. Many of these happened because of the internal pressure of whistleblowers, survivors, parents, and advocates.
Daniel Savala, along with five others, has been arrested and faces criminal and civil trials
Two indictments involving sex trafficking of minors have been issued
Some top Chi Alpha leaders were dismissed, fired, or retired
Lawsuits and investigations are ongoing (Texas A&M Holt Case)
The scope of the scandal reached national attention through NBC’s Pastors and Prey series
Chi Alpha has also separated from Assemblies of God U.S. Missions and restructured its governance. New bylaws were created, and a governing board was introduced.
According to sources, E. Scott Martin, former Chi Alpha National Director, was forced to resign.
These changes have been presented as steps toward reform. But structural and policy changes alone do not answer the deeper question.
They explain what changed administratively, not what failed culturally, theologically, and morally.
And that distinction matters.
Over the past three years, The Assemblies of God leadership has acknowledged the seriousness of the scandal and expressed concern for victims.
Statements have referenced the pain caused by abuse and the importance of protecting students. Denominational leaders say reforms are underway and policies have been strengthened.
Some have suggested the failures were primarily tied to individuals rather than the system itself.
More recently, Chi Alpha has emphasized that its separation from Assemblies of God U.S. Missions allows greater autonomy and the ability to implement internal reforms.
However, when I asked individuals still inside the organization whether the national office has produced a report defining the problem, identifying responsibility, and explaining the reforms, the answer was simple.
No report has been provided to campus pastors.
What many insiders are hearing instead is that the problem was largely a lack of policies, vetting volunteers, and a focus on ministry growth.
Those explanations may contain some truth. But statements alone are not transparency.
And that leads directly to the missing piece.
Three years after the largest abuse scandal in Chi Alpha’s history, there is still no publicly available independent report explaining how the system failed.
No comprehensive analysis has been released addressing critical questions such as:
What leadership failures allowed abusive pastors and mentors to operate for decades
What cultural dynamics made reporting misconduct difficult
What structural safeguards were missing
Which leaders were held accountable, and which remained in place
What reforms addressed the underlying leadership culture
Without those answers, students, parents, and universities have no clear way to evaluate whether the underlying problems have actually been addressed.
When institutions do not examine themselves publicly, others inevitably begin asking the questions.
These are not hostile questions. They are the same kinds of questions responsible leadership asks after a crisis. Hospitals conduct internal reviews after medical failures. Airlines conduct investigations after accidents.
“Healthy institutions examine themselves publicly so the same failure never happens again.”
One Assemblies of God pastor recently asked a question that captures the frustration many leaders are quietly feeling: “Why do I have to get updates about the scandal from a website forum instead of from my AG district or national office?”
That question should concern every leader in the denomination.
Because when the public record of a scandal is assembled by survivors and journalists rather than by the institution itself, something is deeply wrong.
We have now waited three years.
There has been no public report.
No institutional repentance.
No clear accounting of responsibility.
And I have yet to find a single leader inside the Assemblies of God or Chi Alpha who has stood up and said: “This scandal was on me. The buck stops here.”
If Chi Alpha leadership believes meaningful reform has taken place, these questions should be easy to answer.
Below is a compiled list of questions survivors, parents, advocates, and anyone interested in truth have been asking for the past three years.
The Accountability Questions
Who in Chi Alpha leadership accepts responsibility for the systemic failure that allowed Daniel Savala to groom and abuse students for decades?
Has any leader publicly acknowledged their personal role in the failure to act sooner?
If no one has accepted responsibility, why should the public believe the system has actually changed?
What specific leaders were disciplined, removed, or restricted because of failures related to the Savala case?
How many leaders remain in ministry today who were aware of concerns about Savala before his arrest?
The Culture of Fear Questions
What protections now exist for Chi Alpha staff, students, or alumni who report misconduct by leaders who control careers or ministry opportunities?
Has Chi Alpha conducted any independent review of whether fear of retaliation prevented people from reporting concerns earlier?
If someone reports misconduct today, what guarantees exist that their ministry future will not be quietly damaged?
What cultural changes address the fear many former staff and students describe when speaking up?
What systems allow whistleblowers to bypass the very leadership structures they may be reporting?
The Investigation Questions
Has Chi Alpha conducted a full independent investigation into how Daniel Savala operated for decades?
Who conducted it?
Was it truly independent or conducted by insiders?
Will the full findings be released publicly?
If not, why should the public trust conclusions they are not allowed to see?
How many survivors were interviewed?
How many Chi Alpha staff were interviewed?
What policies or leadership failures were identified?
Which of those failures have been corrected?
The Prevention Questions
What structural changes ensure that someone like Savala cannot operate again?
What warning signs were missed?
What systems now detect those warning signs earlier?
How are students educated about grooming and spiritual manipulation?
What training do Chi Alpha staff receive on abuse dynamics?
Who teaches it and verifies that training is actually happening?
The Transparency Questions
Why has Chi Alpha not released a public report explaining these failures?
Why has there been no public timeline of when leaders first became aware of Savala?
Why has there been no public accounting of how complaints were handled?
Why should families trust a system unwilling to examine itself publicly?
Is Chi Alpha willing to publish a full transparency report? If not, why not?
What was the specific reason top Chi Alpha leadership (Eli Gautreaux, Jason Bell, Josh Bell, Daniel Young, and Eli Stewart) were defrocked from the Assemblies of God?
The Structural Questions
Chi Alpha leaders suggest independence from AG oversight will improve accountability.
Why would internal policies succeed where previous internal policies failed?
Why were these safeguards not implemented decades earlier?
If the leadership culture remains the same, why would outcomes change?
How will the new governing board be selected?
Who appoints them?
Who oversees them?
What mechanisms exist to remove board members who fail to act?
The Culture Questions
Did honor culture contribute to the silence surrounding abuse?
How are staff trained to distinguish healthy respect for leaders from protecting leaders?
How are students encouraged to question authority without retaliation?
What protections exist for whistleblowers?
The Survivor Questions
How many survivors have Chi Alpha leaders personally apologized to?
Has Chi Alpha created a survivor support program?
Has financial counseling support been offered?
What ongoing relationship does the organization have with survivors?
Or have survivors simply been left outside the system that failed them?
If people inside the system were afraid to speak, what exactly was the system protecting?
The Leadership Integrity Questions
Have any leaders publicly repented for failing to act earlier?
If repentance occurred privately, why not publicly?
Do Chi Alpha leaders believe institutional repentance is necessary when systemic abuse occurs?
If not, why?
The Future Questions
What measurable benchmarks should the public use to evaluate reform?
What transparency should parents expect before allowing their children to join Chi Alpha?
What evidence can leadership provide that reforms are real?
What would accountability actually look like?
And finally:
Why should the public trust a system that still refuses to fully explain how this happened?
The Final Question
After three years, why is the public still asking these questions instead of reading the answers in a report that Chi Alpha voluntarily released?
At Wrestling Lions, we believe the students and families who trusted Chi Alpha deserve total transparency.
Over the past three years I have spoken with several Chi Alpha leaders who believe the scandal is largely behind them and that the organization has learned from it.
Even the South Texas Assemblies of God district superintendent has suggested the situation is essentially resolved, based on an email sent to pastors.
But learning from a failure requires more than internal conversations. It requires a public accounting.
For that reason, Wrestling Lions is formally requesting that Chi Alpha leadership produce a public written report addressing the systemic failures that contributed to this scandal and the specific reforms implemented to prevent future abuse.
The leaders we will be sending this formal request to include:
Alex Rodriguez - Chi Alpha National Director
Delyn Cole- People and Health Director
Stefanie Chappell - Director of Missionary Formation
Robbie Anderson - Operations Director
Matt Herman- Training Director
Curtis Cole - Campus Access Specialist
James Bradford - Pastor, Central Assembly
Harvey Herman- Retired National Executive Chi Alpha Campus Ministries, USA
Choco De Jesus - AG US Missions director
A report like that would help restore trust and demonstrate that the Chi Alpha organization is serious about reform and protecting students. This is bigger than just one person inside the Assembly of God system doing PowerPoint slides about spiritual abuse once a year.
If leadership believes the failures were primarily individual, a report should explain why.
If leadership believes systemic problems existed, a report should explain how those problems have been addressed. We are aware of the current lawsuits, but these legal matters will likely drag on for years. This shouldn’t be an excuse to not be transparent as more Chi Alpha survivors come forward.
We would also like to know why many of the alleged spiritually abusive campus pastors are still allowed access to university students. If E. Scott Martin really did resign, then what was the official reason? If the Assemblies of God asked Mr. Martin to leave, why is he now allowed to keynote for various Chi Alpha campus ministries? Does Scott Martin take any responsibility for this scandal?
Survivors, parents, advocates, and pastors still have a ton of questions that Chi Alpha or the Assemblies of God has yet to answer.
Silence leaves the public guessing. Transparency creates confidence.
A Chi Alpha pastor asked me recently how long we plan to keep the XA Lion’s Den forum online.
My answer was simple. We’re not taking it down.
The XA Lions Den has become a public record of what happens when institutions refuse to listen. What began as a safe place for survivors to share their stories has grown into something much larger.
It has helped expose the largest spiritual and sexual abuse scandal in the history of Chi Alpha campus ministries. It has helped survivors realize they are not crazy, not alone, and not the only ones. And it has helped students and parents begin asking better questions about the environments where young people are discipled.
Through Wrestling Lions, we will continue building tools that give power back to students and parents. Tools that help people recognize, resist, and report spiritual, emotional, and sexual abuse.
“Our goal is not to destroy ministries. Our goal is to make sure students are safe. This isn’t cancel culture, its more like consequence culture.”
Every student should be able to pursue their education without manipulation, grooming, or spiritual coercion.
Healthy ministries welcome transparency.
The church is strongest when it confronts failure honestly. As I once told a campus pastor directly: “We are not your enemy. We are here because you didn’t listen.”
Three years later, the central question remains.
How did a system full of adults allow this to happen?
Until that question is answered clearly, the work will continue.
P.S. Wrestling Lions is writing a book built around this very question: How did this happen?
We are putting the system on the table and taking it apart piece by piece, not to obsess over the wreckage, but to learn from it, expose what failed, and help minimize the chances of this ever happening again.
