Go Church Belgium Members, in Their Own Words | See For Yourself
When VRT Pano broadcast its documentary “Undercover bij Go Church” on 21 October 2026, it gave time to more than thirty former members of Go Church, but did not put the experience of a single current Go Church member on camera. This film gives that space to the members themselves.
After the broadcast, more than twenty Go Church members in Belgium posted short videos under their own names about what the church has meant in their lives. Five of them are shown here, told whole. They speak about faith, about depression and anxiety, about school, work and family, and about the help they received. Most speak in Dutch; the full English transcript is below.
The film also sets the members’ words beside what the Pano documentary said about them, and closes with what Bishop Dag Heward-Mills, whom Go Church looks to as a spiritual father, says the church’s job really is.
Who made it
See For Yourself was made by members and supporters of the church around the world. No one asked us to make it, and no church paid for it. We made it because we believe the whole story should be told.
Sources
- VRT NWS, Pano: “Undercover bij Go Church” (21 October 2026) –
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2026/10/21/vrt-nws-pano-onderzoekt-go-church/ - VRT NWS: Go Church’s full reaction to Pano –
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2026/10/21/go-church-reactie-pano/ - VRT NWS: Minister Annelies Verlinden’s reaction (22 October 2026) –
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2026/10/22/reactie-verlinden-go-church-pano/
Transcript: Go Church Members, in Their Own Words
On the 21st of October 2026, Pano, a programme on VRT, the public broadcaster for Flanders, aired a documentary about Go Church, a young church in Flanders that is growing fast.
The documentary said the church takes over young people’s lives: their time, their studies, their relationships and their money. This part of the film is about the people Pano talked about but never listened to, the members themselves. Pano spent 46 minutes on Go Church, and in all that time it did not put one current member’s own experience on camera. The members it did film appear with their faces blurred, in hidden-camera footage, and at the church door in Merksem.
So the members spoke for themselves. As the film came out, more than 20 of them posted videos on their own TikTok accounts, under their own names, about what the church had done in their lives.
[A short montage of members’ videos, in Dutch.]
Most of those videos run between one and three minutes. Here are five of them, told whole, by adults speaking for themselves.
[Member, in Dutch, translated:] “Before I went to Go Church, I was actually an atheist. I didn’t believe in Jesus, I didn’t know who Jesus was, and it meant very little to me. It wasn’t part of my upbringing either; we weren’t believers. Then, at twenty, I hit a serious low in my life. I became extremely depressed. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I was so frightened, so sad, so unhappy. Then I was invited to Go Church, and from day one they took the time to explain to me how to be a born-again Christian. They explained how to read my Bible and how to pray, and to this day they keep encouraging me to keep going with God.”
The film presented the church’s phone calls and early-morning prayer meetings as a form of pressure. Anke was on the other end of those calls. She describes what they were for.
[Member, in Dutch, translated:] “They are the people who prayed for me when I couldn’t pray for myself. They were the people who called me to read the Bible with me, because I really couldn’t do it on my own any more. They are the people who keep encouraging me to love God. Three years on, I’m still in Go Church. I love God, I can serve God in the church, and I’m really happy where I am.”
[Member, in Dutch, translated:] “Before, I was fairly happy, but at the end of the day I often felt an emptiness and wondered what the purpose of my life was. I saw more and more problems in the world and, honestly, I became more and more anxious. I tried to fill that emptiness with alcohol, and I smoked more than a pack a day. Then I became a believer and gave my life to Jesus, but I kept living a double life, partly in the world and partly with Jesus. After two years I’d had enough. I had gone completely backwards, I was reading my Bible far too little, and I wanted to live fully for Jesus. That’s when I found this church. I have learned to pray and to read the Bible, and every day I come closer to God. I have forgiven people who hurt me, I have overcome sins and insecurities, and I have learned to accept myself.”
Pano’s psychologist told viewers what happens to young people in a movement like this one.
[Pano clip, in Dutch, translated:] “So you invest a great deal of time in these movements. You will even put your studies or your work on hold.”
[Member, in Dutch, translated:] “After five years I’d had enough of my full-time job and wanted to do something else, but I had no idea where to start, because I lived alone, I had been working for so long and I had partly built my life already. But thanks to the help I received, I am now studying for a bachelor’s degree, and honestly, I really enjoy it. My whole life has changed completely, and I have never felt so free.”
[Member, in Dutch, translated:] “When I was sixteen or seventeen, I started to look into faith. I began to find out who God might be. I had no idea at all; I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, so I knew nothing really. One day I was invited to church. It was during Covid, so we had online services, and that was the first time I heard the word of God. Everything that was said was always backed up with Bible verses, and in that service I gave my life to Jesus, which is the best decision of my whole life. My life has changed completely. I’m about to graduate, and I work full time. My life is a blessing, and I’m thankful, because God has placed me in a good church where I learn how to be like Jesus. So whatever lies and bad things are going around, this is a good church, and I encourage you to come. Come and see.”
[Member, in Dutch, translated:] “Five years ago I was depressed and I had panic attacks. But I was invited to a Bible study, and there I learned to read my Bible and to pray. There I found a personal relationship with God, and as I walked with Him, it helped me to be healed of rejection, fear and many other things I had been through in my life. I have a fantastic family, Go Church, and these people helped me back to God when I was in a difficult situation.”
The film said the church lays claim to its members’ whole lives: their diaries, their studies and their relationships.
[Member, in Dutch, translated:] “I also met my husband here, and I can say that I’ve now been married for a year. The relationship I now have with God has really changed my life.”
[Member:] “To say that my life before I joined this church, as a Christian, as I used to call myself a Christian even before I joined this church, it was not really Christ-like. I would say to people that I’m a Christian, I believe in Jesus, but I would still go to the club. I was still in drugs. Since I’ve joined this church, my life has completely changed, because before that I used to have really low self-esteem in a lot of ways. Today I am an active person. I have people in my life who truly care for me, and they help me to become a better person every day.”
One of the film’s former bishops told viewers that in this church, God, the church and the pastor merge into one entity, and that this is why oppression and abuse work so well there. Gelson describes how his leaders actually guide him.
[Gelson:] “They guide me not just with their own understanding, because the Bible doesn’t recommend us to do that, but with the scriptures, in a way that we are following the Bible and we are following Christ as we walk together as brothers and sisters in Christ. I just want to say that I’ve heard and I’ve seen what is going on online, but I don’t really believe that is the reality of us who are members.”
The film told viewers that young people in this church are asked for money everywhere they turn. Ian has been a member for three years, and he describes money moving the other way.
[Ian:] “I wouldn’t be standing here today without God, but also without where God has placed me, because I’ve been helped very much financially. I’ve been helped in school, to do my best there. I’ve been helped with student jobs. I’ve been helped in all sorts of ways to make something positive of my life.”
These are the people the documentary didn’t show.
Near the end of its film, Pano gives a man in Ghana a message for Belgium. If you want to save Belgium’s young people, he says, your government must step in. That man is Lawrence Odonkor. He used to lead the church in Madagascar. In 2023, a court there convicted him of fraudulent breach of trust, which means using property you were trusted with for yourself, and of embezzling the church’s property. He appealed twice, and both appeals were dismissed. In other words, the man telling Belgium to act against this church was convicted of taking the church’s property, and Pano gave him one of the last words in its film.
The day after the broadcast, Belgium’s Minister of Justice, Annelies Verlinden, reacted in writing. She said that freedom of religion and association belongs to the foundations of our democratic rule of law. That freedom, she said, is not up for discussion, but we must not be blind to organisations that manipulate people, put them under pressure or cause them harm.
She did not say that any case, file or investigation about Go Church exists. As of the 24th of October, no prosecutor has announced an investigation, and no court has ruled. What has happened is this: some halls were withdrawn, and some bookings were cancelled, in the days after a television programme. Belgium’s constitution guarantees the free public exercise of worship, and it says that no one can be forced in any way to take part in a religion. The members in this film took part because they chose to, and they said so on camera.
These charges are not new. They were made against Jesus himself. His enemies called him “that deceiver”. Before the Roman governor, they said, “We found this fellow perverting the nation.” In plain words, they said he was leading people the wrong way.
His followers heard the same. Before a Roman governor, the Apostle Paul was accused of being “a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes”: that is, a troublemaker, a rebel and the leader of a sect. Later, in Rome, Paul was told what people said about the Christians: “As concerning this sect, we know that every where it is spoken against.”
In 1739, the Bishop of Bristol told John Wesley that his claims were “a horrid thing, a very horrid thing”. Four years later, a mob dragged Wesley through the streets of Walsall. In 1890, Thomas Huxley, Britain’s most famous scientist, wrote to The Times to warn of organised fanaticism and of followers pledged to blind obedience. He meant the Salvation Army, which works in Belgium today. The word “sect” settled nothing in any of these cases. The evidence did.
Pano’s film also suggests that this church is really about money. One witness says it plainly: “It’s not about God at all. It’s about fame for me. It’s about money.”
Six days before the broadcast, Bishop Dag Heward-Mills spoke at the World Assemblies of God Congress in the Accra Sports Stadium in Ghana. In front of church leaders, he said what the church’s job really is: “We have a great job as a church. Our job is not to produce riches, prosperity, good families and good lives, but our job is the job that Jesus gave to us, the primary job. Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”
In other words, the job of the church is not riches. It is to tell the whole world about Jesus. That is what Go Church does on the streets of cities across Belgium, and it is what Bishop Dag Heward-Mills does in crusades across Africa and as far as the Pacific.
[Bishop Dag Heward-Mills, at a crusade:] “Now, back to the real work. Lift up your hands if you want to be born again, if you want the blood of Jesus to wash away your sins. Then lift up your hands. Lift it up high. Lift it up high. Jesus.”
See For Yourself was made by members and supporters of the church around the world. No one asked us to make it, and no church paid for it. We made it because we believe the whole story should be told.
Jesus told his followers that this would happen: “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” And: “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad.”
For many Christians, attacks like this don’t weaken their faith. Jesus said they would come. For some of us, they confirm that we’re in the right place.
[Member, in Dutch, translated:] “So it doesn’t matter what is said about my church. I will always choose Go Church.”
[Member, in Dutch, translated:] “So, three years on, I’m still in Go Church.”
The broadcast asked Belgium to fear this church. Its members are still here. The door is open. Come and see for yourself.
