FROM THE DESK OF RON BLOOMINGKEMPER JR.

IN THE LIONS DEN| 2/4/2026

Why I’m Giving My Life to This Work

Launching Wrestling Lions, built on hard-earned scar tissue, and asking a small group of people I trust to stand with me as I go full-time.

Hey, Friend

Some of you have known me for decades. Some of you met me through XA (Chi Alpha) and the Lion’s Den. Some of you only know me as the guy who keeps talking about abuse and cover-ups in the church when most people seem ready to move on.

I want to tell you, simply and honestly, where I’ve been, what I’ve seen, and why I’m giving my life to this work of exposing spiritual and sexual abuse and building creative tools and a community to protect students.

If you’re reading this, know that I consider you part of a group of ride-or-die people. I don’t send letters like this lightly. I’m asking you to consider standing with me as I launch a new venture and step into this work (calling) full-time. It’s time I go All In!

Where I’ve Been

I had no religious upbringing. Except for the 35-pound family Bible that sat on the bookshelf collecting dust.

In the summer of June 1991, after crawling out of an upturned car with a cracked pelvis and a mouth full of broken glass from being broadsided by a truck, I heard a voice ask me three questions, and then he said the only person who can save you now is my son Jesus.

Right there lying on the hot Texas cement, I prayed, “I just want to know the truth about you…Oh, and don’t get caught in a cult.”

I found a church that taught me to love God, devour Scripture, and pursue holiness. I’m grateful for that foundation.

Inside the same religious system, I also learned something darker: to trust leaders more than my own discernment, to interpret discomfort and suffering as immaturity or sin in my life, and to confuse obedience to spiritual authority with righteousness. I was being groomed and didn’t know it.

In the mid-90s, I became part of Chi Alpha campus ministry at Sam Houston State University. I believed in it. I served in it. I gave it my time, energy, creativity, loyalty, and trust. I even introduced a friend and mentor to Chi Alpha, a decision I deeply regret.

In 2013, I learned that the man I brought in was convicted of sexually abusing minors in Alaska in the 1990s. Daniel became a registered sex offender. Years later, we found out these were not isolated incidents, but rather occurred across campuses and over decades. And to my disbelief, it was the Chi Alpha leadership who wrote letters to raise support to pay for his defense.

I did what I could to warn people and alert leadership. I later learned warnings had existed long before the public knew anything. Concerns were raised, minimized, reframed, and passed around without meaningful action. No one listened, so I walked away for a decade.

In 2022, I got word that Daniel Savala was still being promoted within Chi Alpha. I finally understood something that had haunted me since the late 90s.

He had attempted to sexually cross a line with me, and I rejected it. At the time, I did not realize my rejection threatened his standing in the group, or that afterward he quietly worked to undermine and destroy my character and reputation.

When we found our first survivor and started telling others, I watched parents and leaders hesitate. I watched institutions move slowly. I watched as protecting the church quietly took precedence over protecting students. Victims and advocates became liabilities. Predators became management and PR problems. The response was nothing as I expected.

What I’ve Done

There came a moment when God made it clear I could no longer stay silent. He showed me in the book of Nahum that sin will not be hidden anymore. And like the story of Gideon, He was going to destroy idols.

That’s why I launched the forum XA and the Lion’s Den. Not to build a brand. Not to start a business back then. But because I could no longer hear another abuse story and do nothing.

The last three years have been a fight on every level, spiritual, emotional, physical, and legal. God has turned my pain into purpose, not fear.

The Lion’s Den became a gathering place for survivors, advocates, parents, and former Chi Alpha leaders. It proved something important. This problem is not isolated. It is systemic. People were desperate to be heard and to see justice, but they lacked the resources and tools to know what to do next.

Over the last three years, we’ve turned outrage into organized reform. We started building toolkits, legal templates, and media campaigns that help students, parents, and leaders recognize and report abuse.

I even got ot testify before the committee on Judiciary and civil jurisprudence in Austin, Texas, to advocate for the anti-slapp law and Trey’s law, doing away with institutions using NDAs to silence sexual abuse survivors.

I’ve spoken with survivors across the country. I’ve listened to parents describe watching their kids slowly lose confidence, battle anxiety, lose identity, and abandon a sense of marketplace calling. I’ve heard former staff describe coercive discipleship systems that punish questions and reward compliance. Different stories. Same system. Same damage.

God is taking this whistleblower mission and turning it into something structured. A real creative movement.

Over time, my life has turned out to be something I never planned. I’m a survivor, a whistleblower, a designer by trade, an abuse advocate, and someone who knows how to connect dots.

Journalists, attorneys, former Chi Alpha leaders, survivors, and parents now regularly reach out asking for help, documentation, or connections.

I never would have imagined a graphic designer would help push predators toward consequences and into jail cells. That’s part of why the name Wrestling Lions fits. This work takes everything in you to resist the evil that destroys people and still tell the truth with love.

Standing in this space costs something.

I’ve lost relationships. I’ve lost sleep. I’ve lost professional opportunities. I’ve lost income. I’ve been sued…twice, threatened, I’ve spent thousands of unpaid hours documenting cases, reading legal filings, listening to survivors and concerned parents, praying, writing, researching, and building frameworks and tools that did not previously exist for students.

But the fruit has been undeniable.

We’ve seen national exposure, arrests, leaders lose credentials, predators lose platforms, lawsuits, and, most importantly, survivors and families see justice and get their lives back.

One pastor told me, “I never thought I’d see justice for so many of these guys in my lifetime.”

There are easier ways to live. God has not offered me any of them.

Every time I try to imagine walking away from this work, I hear the same internal sentence:

You saw the pattern of abuse.
You understand what it does to people.
You do not get to unsee it.

Where I’m Going

I’m done treating the Lion’s Den like a side project.

I’m launching a new venture called Wrestling Lions, built on hard-earned scar tissue and a calling I can’t shake.

Wrestling Lions Media is an educational and advocacy organization that exposes spiritual and sexual abuse in Christian campus ministries and builds practical field guides designed to become industry-standard tools that teach students how to spot high-control leadership, trust their discernment, and report harm.

Think of what we are building as a survival kit for college students navigating faith, leadership, and calling.

Through fearless advocacy and creative tools, we are making sure predators and the toxic systems they thrive in have nowhere to hide, and survivors have every reason to hope.

We are putting power back in students’ hands. Equipping them with the resources to recognize, resist, and report spiritual and sexual abuse.
- Ron Bloomingkemper Jr.

What we’re seeing in the church right now is only Phase One.

Phase One is Exposure. The dirty side of revival. Ephesians 5:11. Jesus flipping tables. Tearing down rotten walls. Dragging hidden things into the light. But exposure is not the end goal.

By the grace of God, what comes next is rebuilding.

Rebuilding on a biblical foundation. God’s mission, not man’s. Re-teaching what many of us were quietly taught out of

If exposure is the wrecking ball, rebuilding is the real work.

Success looks like:

• Restored discernment, so students spot grooming earlier.

• Courage replaces fear, so fewer predators get cover.

• Parents are getting their kids back.

• Religious institutions repenting and reforming.

• Healthy communities and real relationships, built on compassion, not control or cover-up.

When you support this work, you’re not just funding exposure. You’re helping build what comes after. And I want to build that future with you.

You would not believe the number of requests I’m sitting on from students and parents asking for help, investigations, and resources regarding their campuses and churches. To do this consistently and with depth, I need to move into this work full-time.

My heart is that campuses we never set foot on will one day echo with stories of freedom that began in this community.

Stand With Me as I Go Full-Time

I’m starting with only 40 people who believe in me and the mission enough to fund it at $100/month, or 80 people at $50/month.

This covers my basic living expenses and allows me to give Wrestling Lions real working hours instead of squeezing it into nights, weekends, and margins. I operate lean, transparently, and with outside accountability.

If you have the means to invest in me, click the button below to visit the Founders Circle page and choose a monthly amount.

P.S. You can type any amount if you would like to give more or less.

I’m also building a Substack-based platform where the Wrestling Lions community will live. It will function as our shared home for updates, essays, investigations, field guide releases, and behind-the-scenes progress. Think of it as our town square and living archive.

Long-term, I plan to support myself through the sale of field guides, books, apparel, podcasting, strategic partnerships, consulting, speaking, and, eventually, a full-length documentary. But every movement starts with an inner circle of believers, and together, we are going to fix this.

No pressure. No guilt. No emotional manipulation.

Read this. Sit with it. Pray about it.

That prayer I whispered in 1991 has become my mission for this generation: That they would know the truth about Jesus, and not get caught in a cult.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I want to go to work for you, your kids, your grandkids, and the students we haven’t met yet, so they don’t have to endure spiritual or sexual trauma and get talked out of their true calling as so many of us did.

Isaiah 58:12 has been my anchor since the beginning: “You will raise up the age-old foundation, you will be called the repairer of the broken walls, the restorer of streets in which to dwell.”

Silence almost cost an entire generation.
I don’t intend to let it cost another.

With gratitude, Ron Bloomingkemper Jr. Founder, Wrestling Lions

“May we be a people with splintered hands from flipping tables.”