Senior pastor Greg Laurie didn’t say why two top leaders at his Riverside, California, church left suddenly in the early 2020s. No one acknowledged pastors Jeff Lasseigne and Brad Ormonde’s absences to the 15,000 people at Harvest Christian Fellowship’s three Sunday services, even though the pair had overseen the church’s in-person pastoral ministry.
Instead, online bios, teaching videos and Facebook photos quietly disappeared. Some church staffers furtively tried to piece together facts. But when they asked questions, church leaders reportedly scolded them for gossiping and sternly warned volunteers not to talk about it.
But the hushed-up stories tumbled into public view last Friday in a 201-page federal court filing in an ongoing lawsuit against Laurie and Harvest. The March 6 filing consolidated the 23 lawsuits filed by survivors of alleged childhood sexual abuse by another former Harvest pastor, Paul Havsgaard. As reported previously by The Roys Report (TRR), the men and women who grew up in church-funded homes in Romania accuse Laurie and Harvest of covering up years of horrific sexual abuse.
McAllister Olivarius, the law firm suing Harvest and Laurie, claims Lasseigne and Ormonde both engaged in sexual misconduct with women who worked on staff.
But when church leaders learned of the pastors’ misconduct, they covered it up, demonstrating a pattern of strategic concealment, the filing states. The church even reportedly paid Lasseigne $4 million in exchange for a nondisclosure agreement.
“Harvest Riverside followed the same playbook” three different times, with three different pastors, the lawsuit claims. “Harvest Riverside offered no explanation to its employees or congregants” and “did not disclose to donors that their charitable contributions were being spent to cover up … misconduct.”
Harvest and its lawyers did not respond to emails from TRR. Lasseigne, 70, and Ormonde, 63, did not reply to texts asking about the allegations.
Six people who previously worked at Harvest, however, told TRR that the claims about the scandal and cover-up are true and widely known behind the scenes at California’s fourth largest megachurch.
“When the staff found out, the volunteers found out, and the leaders came down and said, ‘Do not tell anyone,’” one former volunteer who attended the church for years told TRR. “That was their mode of operation. I mean, it’s not like it was the written policy, but it might as well have been written down, ‘Do not talk about anything bad.’”
Former church staff and volunteers spoke to TRR on the condition of anonymity. They fear Harvest will blacklist them and their family members from ministry positions at other churches or pressure their current employers to silence them.
“The culture there is, Pastor Greg would say ‘Make this go away’ and then it would go away,’” one former employee said. “It’s a cover-up culture. Anything they don’t like, they hide.”
Lasseigne started attending Harvest in 1980, a few days after a co-worker shared the gospel with him, according to a now-archived church biography. He joined the staff in 1989 and rose to administrative pastor in the late 1990s, around the time Havsgaard went to work with street children in Romania.
A church organizational chart from the 2000s shows that Lasseigne oversaw worship and pastoral care, including support for pastors, family ministry, marriage ministry and all youth ministry.
Lasseigne also preached through the Bible verse-by-verse at Harvest’s Wednesday night services. Harvest Ministries published his book on studying Scripture in 2004 and released a second edition in 2014.
“He is a fantastic communicator of the Word of God,” Laurie wrote in the book’s introduction, “and whenever I hear him speak, I am blessed and built up in my faith.”
People often visited the church to hear Laurie, former members said, but they stayed because of Lasseigne. Members of the staff considered him their pastor.
“Greg really wasn’t around, and when he was, he wasn’t, like, friendly with the staff,” a former employee told TRR. “But people would point at Jeff and say, ‘That’s my pastor. Not Pastor Greg. Pastor Jeff.’”
At the same time, starting in 2004 or 2005, former staffers and volunteers now believe, Lasseigne was secretly having sex with a woman who attended the church. She volunteered alongside his wife on the welcome team, which Lasseigne also oversaw.
Former church members refer to the misconduct as an “affair.” But experts say that because ministers have spiritual authority over congregants, the proper term is “adult clergy sexual abuse.”
California legislators recently considered legislation making adult clergy sexual abuse a crime, but it did not pass. However, 14 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws against it.
According to a pamphlet Harvest gave church employees at the time, sexual relationships between people on staff could also be considered criminal harassment. Federal law prohibits “requests for sexual favors,” the church-distributed document said, when submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual’s employment.”
Administrative pastors such as Lasseigne regularly made decisions about hiring and firing at Harvest. But people spoke of Lasseigne’s misconduct only as an “affair” — and then only in hushed tones, sources told TRR.
Former employees told TRR that Lasseigne had not just an “affair” but “an affair within an affair.” While allegedly having sex with the church volunteer, he started having sex with a church employee. According to the lawsuit, this happened after Lasseigne’s wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Lasseigne’s wife died in September 2019. Early in 2021, church staff say, the man they considered their pastor suddenly disappeared.
“We were just told the Wednesday night service was cancelled,” an employee told TRR. “Then the marketing team started removing all references to him on the website, all images, anything on social media. Even, like, pictures of a baptism where he was just in the background, they were gone.”
Clark County, Nevada, records show that on Jan. 26, 2021, Lasseigne married a woman who had worked at Harvest.
“It was fast,” one former employee said. “I didn’t know what had happened, but people were saying, ‘Greg is not happy.’”
People who were on staff at the time say they were eventually told in a meeting that Lasseigne’s departure was “due to an affair.” They weren’t given other details. And they were told not to talk about it.
One person recalls wondering why no one said anything about Lasseigne being disqualified from ministry.
“It’s unbelievable,” a woman who worked at the church messaged a friend. “Not that he was dirty, but the length of time and the intentional, habitual, and gross sin.”
Lasseigne relocated to Middle Tennessee in March 2021, buying a home about 30 miles south of Nashville for $1.5 million. Today, Laseigne hosts a weekly Bible study podcast and teaches classes at The Gathering at 840, a Southern Baptist church in Franklin, Tennessee.
Ormonde’s sudden departure came a year after Lasseigne’s. Former staff members said that at a meeting in December 2022, church leaders, without explanation, started assigning others to do Ormonde’s work.
Ormonde had been on staff at the Harvest since 2002 and was an administrative pastor, the same level as Lasseigne, since at least 2006.
When staff members pressed for an explanation, they were again told the departure was “due to an affair.”
One long-time volunteer said Ormonde’s betrayal of his marriage vows was even more shocking and upsetting than Lasseigne’s.
“He was the leader of the Men of Valor group,” the former church member said. “Brad was counseling men who had cheated on their wives, and he was held up as, like, the most loyal man. I thought loyalty was really important to him. Then you find out all this horrible stuff.”
Former employees and volunteers say Ormonde also had an “affair” with another church secretary, lasting five to seven years. The illicit relationship was exposed, they claim, when the woman’s husband grew suspicious and caught them having sex.
“I know we shouldn’t be shocked,” another former employee told TRR. “We see it all the time and we know how sin works. But it did surprise me.”
Ormonde resigned in December 2022. California court records show Ormonde’s wife filed for divorce the following year. The dissolution of the 42-year marriage was finalized in February 2025. The former pastor now works at a store in Southern California that sells power tools.
Harvest’s former employees say it felt as if Ormande had vanished.
“I was told not to ask questions,” one staff member said. “It was weird. It was like he never existed.”
According to McAllister Olivarius’ updated court filing, the hushed disappearance of two top ministers in 2021 and 2022 is evidence of conspiracy. Harvest, the law firm alleges, has a pattern of covering up sexual misconduct, pushing people out quietly to protect its reputation.
“These are not isolated incidents but part of a documented pattern of institutional failure,” the firm said in an email to TRR on March 6. “The complaint alleges a systemic practice of buying silence.”
Harvest has previously said in a statement that it plans to fight all the allegations in court.
