Hope Church Movement

I love Hope church with my whole heart everyone is so nice and sweet I love living in community and doing life with all of you, don't know where I would be without this community
Feb 4th, 2024

Id give zero stars if I could. I went to a few of Hopes services while in college. It was a very uncomfortable experience. Not only were the students asked to go around recruiting members, once there it was very closed off to the rest of the world. I felt out of place as I watched the already established cliques gather together. The campus ministers as they called themselves many times could not answer my questions I had regarding faith and the Bible. They all seemed to date each other and I saw many young students get married not even out of college yet. This to me was very weird. Its no surprise to me that this church was under investigation by ASU. Its a cult. I ran away. They expect their own college ministers aka college students to give back the money they pay them! Pastors are egotistical. The rock band music to which they worshiped to was the worst. Im a traditional Christian. I partake in serious and soul-fulfilling prayer. This place is a joke. A scary and manipulative joke.
Dec 30th, 2023

I would like to share my experiences with the Hope Church movement in the Flagstaff campus. I transferred to NAU from my previous university and ended up meeting some members from Hope church movement within my first week or two there and was invited to a few sporting events they host. I have always been an athlete and very active so I was pumped that not only they were a church, but they had these same interest. As someone who was not a traditional college student (I served in the Navy as a Hospital Corpsman before attending college) I had a bit more life experience and understanding of the world. Throughout my time, the year and a half to two years I attended in NAU and participated with the Hope church movement and many of their activities in which I selflessly devoted my time to helping set up, take down or whatever help needed, in the various events they hosted. In the aspect of events and having a safe environment for other like-minded Christians or even people who may be interested in in the faith, I think they do a great job in putting these events together however, thats the end of the good things. My biggest issue came from their leadership and their leader of the Flagstaff church movement branch. After sometime I began noticing that I was continuously being disrespected, talked down to, or even outright lied about and lied to. I began noticing the their leader was extremely egotistical for someone who is a pastor and much of what he did was for his own gain, or to feed his ego, this came in the form of saturday flag football games( which when losing would quickly want to end the game or stop playing) , video games versus college students which he took very seriously, and contrasted with extreme insecurity that was visible on Sundays when he would speak in front of a group of people, which, if you are speaking in the name of God, how are you insecure? If anything, you should be emboldened because you are speaking the word of God. Much of the disrespect, I mentioned earlier seem to come from the fact that I presented myself as a very genuine and disciplined person, to which those were things he tried to project. Most of the time, the disrespect or shade that was thrown at me, I did not engage with or largely ignored as to not feed into it. There was an event he hosted with probably seven or eight of us, and he made dinner, which is a kind thing to do and during the dinner it came up that he hosted this because he wanted to offer the chance to be a father figure in this group of peoples life. Which on the face of it you may think is kind however, at this point it came off as something he was doing to pad his pastoral rsum. To me this is a connection that you have with someone that develops and over time , not just something you offer to people you barely know. Furthermore, this was a few months after he had heinously accused me of committing some sort of crime, which had no truth behind it, and came out of complete left field in front of other members of the church. At best it was an absolutely terrible and inappropriate joke, and at worst, and attempt to slander me, and my name. After about a year and a half to two years, I had enough of the drama and disrespect And in a particular difficult time in my life, when I had issues in my family that I was addressing and wanted the churches, guidance and support with which was completely ignored. During this time I slipped up in my abstinence, and instead of being met with moving forward in Christ, repenting and support, I was met with gloating about how he is married and can have sex whenever he wants. For me, this is not only the final nail in the coffin, but it was just a slap in the face, because it was a terrible representation of a man of God, and someone who is in the position of a pastor.
Dec 20th, 2023

While this is good church that gives encouragement, I would advise you to get involved with caution. They will set up the hype with EDM worship & rap to make it look like a concert. It is a strategy they use to attract college students. It is for the cool kids who seems to have an upper-hype life. If you are not the super hype, super cool kid, they will not even bother talking to you. In reality, most of them act like cocky kids in high school who forgot that they are in college. While I was able to get to know few genuine people, most people would not connect with me, because I am not a super hype kid. I've had few conversations over this issue with the leader, all they can say is for me to do better. Part of being in a community is for everyone to do better, not just me, or any single person in it.
Oct 31st, 2023

My wife and I were members of Hope Church Movement for a couple of years. While members, we met some incredible people, some of whom we are still friends with today. We grew in our faith and genuinely enjoyed coming to church. I would like to just share a few concerns from a humble heart. My biggest concern is that the leadership is more concerned with being a "movement" than being a biblically sound church. It's also very important to know who and what organizations a church is involved with or partnered with. Hope Church Movement has openly supported the John 17 Movement which promotes unity between Roman Catholics and Protestants. They hosted a Roman Catholic bishop and allowed him to preach from their pulpit. The Roman Catholic church teaches a blatantly false gospel of salvation by faith plus good works. God's word says the opposite, that we are saved by God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ apart from any good works. This is a deeply concerning partnership that I pray the pastoral staff cuts ties with immediately. Lastly, their worship music is sourced primarily from Bethel, Hillsong, and Elevation churches. All three of those churches currently teach or have taught false doctrine. I mention worship because a portion of the tithe goes directly towards those ministries mentioned. To summarize I will say this, if you are a young person, looking for a church, I cannot in good conscience, recommend this church. For the good that they do (and they do plenty of good!), there are too many concerning partnerships to recommend. I encourage anyone who has attended this church in the past or currently attends to pray for the pastoral leadership of this church to make the most God glorifying decisions possible.
Sep 26th, 2023