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Chapter III

Every claim, answered

VRT’s Pano accused Go Church of being a sect that controls young people, cuts them off from friends, squeezes them for money and treats Bishop Dag Heward-Mills as a god. Each charge is answered here with the public record.

The verdict

  1. Is Go Church a sect, as the VRT documentary Undercover bij Go Church suggests?

    No Belgian authority has classified Go Church as a sect. No court has ruled against Go Church. No one has been charged. In the film the word comes from people who left the church, while VRT’s expert put it no higher than “traces” and the film itself says sects are “certainly not banned” in Belgium.

Young people

  1. Does Go Church target children and minors, as the VRT documentary claims?

    Go Church told VRT in writing that it does not specifically target minors, that a pastoral visit to a member under 18 needs the parents’ consent, and that every church activity is voluntary. VRT had that answer before the broadcast and aired none of it.

  2. Does Go Church recruit young people by dancing on the Meir in Antwerp?

    Go Church members do dance, sing and talk to passers-by on the Meir, and the church posts the videos on its own public TikTok. It is street evangelism, which Jesus commanded when he said “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel,” and the church’s own videos show adults doing it openly on Antwerp’s shopping street.

Friends, school and health

  1. Does Go Church cut young people off from their friends and family?

    No: Go Church told VRT in writing that members are not expected to give up hobbies or reduce contact with friends or family outside the church. Bishop Dag Heward-Mills has spent twenty years, on four continents, telling people to honour and look after their parents.

  2. Does Go Church make students neglect school or drop out of their studies?

    No: Bishop Dag Heward-Mills, a medical doctor, tells students to finish their studies and sits with medical students to prepare them for exams. Go Church told VRT that taking part in church must account for age, education, rest and wellbeing.

  3. Does Go Church tell members to stop therapy or medicine?

    No: Go Church told VRT it gives members no instructions about therapy and does not expect them to stop it. Bishop Dag Heward-Mills is a medical doctor who built a hospital, and he writes that God gave the wisdom for medical science.

Money

  1. Does the money given at Go Church go to Bishop Dag Heward-Mills?

    No evidence shows that it does. Go Church told VRT that its collections pay the rent and running costs of the halls where it meets and that no percentage goes to Lighthouse in Ghana, and the former bishop who said the money is channelled to him added, on camera, “What he does with it, I don’t know.”

  2. Does Go Church pressure young people to give money, and was a €20 gift called “not enough”?

    VRT’s own narrator says that at Go Church “you are not obliged” to give, and the €20 story is one former member’s account. Go Church told VRT in writing that the offering is not meant to pressure anyone to give, and VRT’s own footage shows calls that run all the way down to the smallest amount.

  3. Do the UK Lighthouse charity accounts show Go Church money flowing to Ghana and Bishop Dag Heward-Mills?

    No: the accounts page VRT put on screen shows grants to a Bible school and to evangelistic missions in 2024, both at £0 in the year VRT displayed, and no line VRT showed names Bishop Dag Heward-Mills as a recipient. Those accounts belong to one UK charity and say nothing about Belgian donations.

The man and his teaching

  1. Do Go Church members treat Bishop Dag Heward-Mills like a god?

    No: since at least 2001, in Europe, Africa and America, Bishop Dag Heward-Mills has told his listeners that he is just a man and that they should follow Christ, not him. The footage VRT used to show “veneration” was members thanking him for his books, his sermons and for starting a church in Belgium.

  2. Does Bishop Dag Heward-Mills put his books above the Bible?

    He says the opposite: in 2003 he told a church in Cardiff that his books came from the Bible, and that any part of them not from the Bible should not be there. The line that his books are “perhaps even more important than the Bible” came from a former bishop who has been suing the church since 2021.

  3. Does Bishop Dag Heward-Mills teach one-way loyalty, like a dog to its owner?

    No: a search of 105 of his books finds no passage that uses a dog as a picture of loyalty. He teaches that loyalty is a form of love that a pastor owes his people as well, and that it exists to keep a church together so the work of God can go on.

  4. Is Bishop Dag Heward-Mills’s church a one-man church, as the VRT documentary says?

    No: Lighthouse is a worldwide network with bishops, a Bible school, mission hospitals and, by the church’s own count, 7,649 churches. Its founder sits on the boards of the Pentecostal World Fellowship and of Church Growth International, the body founded by Korea’s Yoido Full Gospel Church.

  5. What is Anagkazo, the Ghana campus shown in the VRT documentary on Go Church?

    Anagkazo is the Bible and ministry training centre Bishop Dag Heward-Mills founded in 1996 to train men and women for ministry, and VRT’s own narrator says future pastors are trained there. In 2022 Ghana’s National Youth Authority held the nation’s International Youth Day on the campus, with the United Nations Population Fund taking part.

Leaving

  1. Does Go Church cut people off when they leave, and what does Bishop Dag Heward-Mills teach about it?

    Go Church says it does not: it told VRT in writing that members are free to leave at any time and that it does not expect anyone to end friendships with those who go, an answer VRT did not broadcast. Bishop Dag Heward-Mills teaches the opposite of cutting people off: in 1999 he told his church he would wait for people who drift away and take them back, and in 2011 he told pastors that people who leave “are not fools” and that sometimes the fault is the pastor’s.

The abuse case

  1. How did Go Church handle the abuse case in VRT’s documentary, and what does Bishop Dag Heward-Mills teach about abuse?

    Go Church says the man was questioned, admitted the accusations against him and was removed immediately and permanently. Bishop Dag Heward-Mills has taught since at least 1998 that sexual misconduct by a pastor must be reported, and in 2026 he told young people that a girl being sexualised by a pastor has a duty to report it so that it stops.

How the film was made

  1. Did Go Church respond to the VRT documentary’s questions before it aired?

    Yes, Go Church answered VRT’s questions in writing on Monday 19 October 2026, two days before the broadcast, and VRT put one sentence of that answer on air. The church had already told VRT by email that it would not give a face-to-face interview, and VRT’s own reporter says at the church door that she knew a written reply was coming.

  2. Must the Belgian government step in against Go Church, as the VRT documentary says?

    As of 24 October 2026, no prosecutor, court or other authority has made any finding against Go Church, and Belgium’s Justice Minister answered the documentary by saying religious freedom “is not up for discussion”. The man VRT gave the line “your government must step in” is a former bishop convicted in Madagascar of fraudulent breach of trust and embezzlement, with two appeals dismissed.