Who Decided the Lighthouse Chapel Pastors’ Claims

In April 2021 six former ministers of Lighthouse Chapel International made public claims about their years with the church. The word used at the time was abuse, and it covered four separate things: unpaid pension contributions, church buildings paid for out of the ministers’ own pockets, support too thin to live on, and lasting personal harm. Five years later, those four claims sit in four different places. One has been decided by Ghana’s pension regulator. One is before the High Court in Accra. One is not a legal question at all. And one cannot be decided by anybody, which is the part this article treats most carefully.

Why it matters who decides

Most writing about this dispute treats it as a single argument with two sides. It is not. It is four claims of different kinds, and each kind can only be settled by a particular body.

A pension regulator can establish whether contributions were owed and whether they were paid. A court can establish who paid for a building. Neither can establish whether someone was given enough to live on, because that is a judgement rather than a fact. And no institution on earth can adjudicate what a decade of a person’s life felt like from the inside.

Sorting the four claims by who has the power to decide them is the clearest way to understand where this actually stands. It is also the honest way, because it makes plain which parts have been settled and which have not.

Claim one: the pension contributions. Decided by SSNIT on 20 August 2021

The Social Security and National Insurance Trust is Ghana’s statutory pension institution. Every formal employer in the country pays into it. It is not a tribunal the church selected and not an arbitrator both sides agreed on: it is the regulator with jurisdiction, and it can compel an employer to pay arrears.

SSNIT examined the six ministers’ complaints over roughly three months and issued its determination on 20 August 2021. For five of the six, it could not establish an employer and employee relationship with Lighthouse Chapel International in Ghana for the periods claimed. Where no such relationship exists, no contributions are owed, and so none can have gone unpaid.

For the sixth, Bishop Lawrence Odonkor, SSNIT found a relationship with the Ghana church for two periods, June 2005 to June 2010 and January to April 2020, and found that contributions had been paid for both. For the other years he raised, he had been serving under the Lighthouse bodies in South Africa and Madagascar rather than in Ghana.

No party appealed that determination. Five years on it remains the only finding by any authority on the pension question.

It was reported at the time by MyJoyOnline, Citi Newsroom and GhanaWeb, and also by The Fourth Estate, which had published the original series. That last point is worth stating: the outlet that made the allegation also reported the regulator’s answer to it.

Claim two: the church buildings. Before the High Court in Accra

The second claim concerned four church buildings and who paid for them. This one has not been settled by a regulator, because it is not a regulatory question. It forms part of the civil proceedings now before the High Court in Accra, and it is undecided.

What exists so far is evidence rather than a finding. In April 2024 the church’s witness gave evidence about the buildings. In January 2025 the editor of The Fourth Estate was cross-examined. In July 2026 Rev. Edward Laryea, one of the six and the minister whose church at Kade featured in the original reporting, gave evidence in the same court.

Lighthouse Chapel’s position is that the buildings were funded by the church. The claimants’ position is that they were not. A judge will decide which account the evidence supports, and until that happens anyone asserting an answer is guessing.

Claim three: the level of support. Not a question for any court

The third claim was that the support given to the six was too little to live on, particularly when they were sent abroad. No regulator or court will ever rule on that, because adequacy is a judgement and not a fact capable of determination.

What can be set out is the structure, because it is the structure SSNIT examined. A Lighthouse minister is not recruited to a post and placed on a payroll. He is trained, ordained and sent, frequently to a country he has never lived in, to begin a congregation that does not yet exist. What he receives is support for that work: somewhere to live, the cost of getting there, training, and the running costs of the mission. That is the arrangement, and it is why the regulator reached the conclusion it did.

Claim four: the personal harm. The part nobody can decide

The fourth claim is the one that should be stated plainly rather than argued with.

Two of the six described lasting emotional and psychological harm from their years in ministry, and one described attempting to take his own life. Lighthouse Chapel has never disputed those accounts and does not dispute them here.

A regulator can decide whether contributions were owed. A court can decide who paid for a building. Neither can decide what a decade of someone’s life felt like from the inside, and neither should try. What can be said is that these men said it; that the church did not hear it at the time; and that a denomination with several thousand ministers across more than eighty countries will contain people whose experience of it was not good. That is true of every institution of that size, religious or otherwise.

So were the Lighthouse Chapel pastors abused?

The honest answer is that the single word covers four different things with four different answers, which is why it has been so hard to resolve in public.

On the pension claim, Ghana’s regulator examined it and did not find what was alleged. On the buildings, a court has yet to rule. On the level of support, there is no authority to rule, and the church accepts that what some ministers received was too little. On the personal harm, the accounts stand and the church does not contest them.

Anyone who says the claims were all upheld is wrong on the first. Anyone who says they were all answered is wrong on the last three.

What the Madagascar court decided

One strand has been decided by a court, and it concerns the most senior of the six.

On 12 July 2022 Bishop Lawrence Odonkor apologised to Rev. Edmund Amartey, a junior minister who had been blamed publicly over the sale of a church vehicle in Madagascar. In the apology he accepted that he had given the instruction to sell the vehicle himself, and that he had received more than five thousand United States dollars from the sale.

The Court of First Instance of Antananarivo gave judgment on the church’s claim on 18 April 2023, in judgment 239-MaS2. Appeals against that judgment were dismissed on 7 May 2024 and again on 28 November 2025.

This is set out here because Rev. Amartey’s name was attached in public to something he had not done, and the record should say so.

What is still undecided

Two things. The six ministers’ claims at the Labour Division of the High Court in Accra remain before the court. So does Lighthouse Chapel’s defamation action against the publishers of the original series, which is in its defence stage.

Neither has been decided, and this site will not characterise the outcome of either before a judge does.

Common questions

Did Lighthouse Chapel fail to pay its pastors’ pension contributions?

No. On 20 August 2021 SSNIT, Ghana’s statutory pension regulator, determined that it could not establish an employer and employee relationship between Lighthouse Chapel International in Ghana and five of the six former ministers for the periods claimed. For the sixth, contributions had been paid for the periods in which a relationship existed. No party appealed the determination.

Were the Lighthouse Chapel pastors abused?

The word covered four distinct claims. The pension claim was examined by SSNIT and not upheld. The claim about church buildings is before the High Court in Accra and undecided. The claim that support was inadequate is not capable of legal determination, and Lighthouse Chapel accepts that what some ministers sent overseas received was too little. The accounts of personal harm are not disputed by the church.

Who were the six former pastors?

Bishop Larry Odonkor, Bishop Emmanuel Oko Mensah, Rev. Edward Laryea, Rev. Seth Duncan, Rev. Edem Kofi Amankwah and Pastor Faith Fiakojo. They left Lighthouse Chapel International between 2016 and 2020 and brought claims in early 2021.

Are Lighthouse Chapel ministers employees of the church?

Not in the ordinary sense. A Lighthouse minister is trained, ordained and sent, often to a country with no existing congregation, and is supported in that work rather than paid a salary for a post. This was the basis of the SSNIT determination of 20 August 2021.

Has any court ruled on the claims against Lighthouse Chapel?

The courts in Madagascar gave judgment on a claim concerning a church vehicle on 18 April 2023, with appeals dismissed on 7 May 2024 and 28 November 2025. The six ministers’ labour claims and Lighthouse Chapel’s defamation action both remain before the High Court in Accra and are undecided.

Sources

SSNIT exonerates Lighthouse Chapel over contributions of former employees — MyJoyOnline

Lighthouse pastors were not employees — SSNIT rules — Citi Newsroom

Lighthouse pastors were not employees — SSNIT rules — The Fourth Estate

LCI car sale saga: Larry Odonkor apologises to Lighthouse pastor in Madagascar — MyJoyOnline

Darkness in a lighthouse: Pastors recount abuse and trauma — The Fourth Estate, the original series

This article was last reviewed in October 2026 and will be updated when a court decides either of the matters still outstanding. Corrections are welcome at editor@worldevangelismblog.com and our editorial approach explains how they are handled.