A former attendee of Los Angeles preacher Kathryn Krick says her dramatic “deliverances” look more like suggestion and money pressure than godly power, and that desperate people are the target.
Matthew, a man in his 40s who attended Krick’s Five-Fold Church gatherings in 2022 and 2023, sat down with The U.S. Sun for an exclusive interview and described what he called warning signs inside the ministry.
He no longer believes she carries the Holy Spirit. He says the shaking, screaming, and collapsing on camera read like psychological techniques aimed at hungry crowds, while sermons kept circling back to loyalty, exclusive authority, and “sowing” money into her anointing.
Five-Fold Church did not provide a quoted reply after the outlet reached out for comment. Krick presents the sessions as freeing people from demonic oppression. Matthew’s account is his own, not an independent ruling that the church is a cult.
Matthew moved from Chicago to California in 2017. In January 2022 he found “Revival in the Park” on Instagram and showed up at outdoor gatherings in Griffith Park near the Griffith Observatory.
He went six weeks in a row. Even early on, he found it strange that the woman running park meetings rarely talked to people unless a camera was rolling.
"Even before watching any exposé, I thought it was odd that someone holding meetings in a park wasn’t actually talking to people unless it was on camera,"
He said Krick arrived as worship started, spoke and prayed, then left with an escort of seven or eight men to her car. After hearing warnings against critic videos, he watched one, stepped away, and later returned.
In January 2023 the meetings had moved indoors to a downtown Los Angeles warehouse-style venue. He attended almost every week until August 2023, when a Sunday work schedule pulled him out. He came back for one final service in December and left for good.
Matthew said the sermons increasingly centered on Kathryn herself. He recalled her drawing a hard line on who could pray.
"Nobody has authority to pray here except me, this is my domain,"
He described critics being waved off as “Pharisees” and liars, language he called a thought-terminating device that shows up in controlling groups.
"I started seeing real signs of controlling behavior, which doesn’t match a church at all, and doesn’t match what Jesus taught,"
He put it bluntly on the spiritual claim at the center of her brand.
"I don’t believe she has the Holy Spirit or any godly power,"
On the viral deliverances, followers collapsing as she casts out demons on TikTok and in services, he separated spectacle from proof.
"To me it reads more like brainwashing techniques. You hype up a crowd until they produce a wild response."
He said some warehouse moments felt staged, but he does not think most of them are fake. He also said he does not fully know what is happening. His bottom line was simpler: tell desperate people they will encounter the power of God when they meet her, and some will respond on cue. At minimum, he called it the power of suggestion.
Matthew said giving was not framed as a simple “charge,” but baked into regular teaching about “sowing into the anointing,” including warnings not to give a “dinky seed.”
"It plants this fear that if you stop giving, you’ll lose God’s protection and blessing,"
He said the pattern breaks his heart because it aims at people already in crisis.
"She’s targeting desperate people."
Public nonprofit filings summarized in the same report show how fast the books moved while he was watching from the seats. Five-Fold Church reported about $33,000 in revenue in 2020. That rose to $814,484 in 2021, $2.18 million in 2022, and $3.97 million in 2023, with roughly $3.9 million in expenses that year. Krick was listed as president. The filings showed no direct compensation to her for those years.
The reporting is explicit on the limit of those documents: they record growth. They do not prove she personally pocketed the revenue or misused donations. More recent figures were unavailable because the church is not required to file annual tax returns with the IRS in the same way.
Matthew also said he researched what he believed were increasingly expensive living arrangements tied to the ministry. The outlet did not present property deeds or ownership proof beyond his account.
One service stuck with him. A woman from Texas brought a blind daughter. Krick prayed. Matthew said he saw no improvement during the service. The U.S. Sun stated it has not independently verified the child’s medical condition or what happened afterward.
Separate from Matthew’s story, the same report cites an August investigation by The Guru Magazine into sexual misconduct allegations against GeorDavie, a Tanzanian preacher Krick has called her spiritual father. That publication reported claims from women, said it reviewed messages and an audio recording tied to an account from Melissa Archer, and said Krick had been informed of allegations as early as 2018. Former members, per that reporting, said she defended him. Krick has publicly expressed support for GeorDavie despite the allegations.
GeorDavie denied the claims. ChurchLeaders carried his statement: "I have never sexually assaulted anyone." He rejected the idea that prayers or ministry sessions involved sexual misconduct and said his intentions had been misrepresented. Those allegations remain disputed claims, not adjudicated findings in the material provided.
Matthew’s verdict on the whole experience was personal and sharp. He still prays and reads the Bible daily. He follows Jesus, he said, though not in an organized-church sense after Five-Fold.
"It’s not really about Jesus, she’s using His name, saying ‘praise God, hallelujah’ but nothing else adds up,"
He compared the control tactics to what appears in cults. That comparison is his assessment. It is not an independent determination that Five-Fold Church is a cult.
When people are spiritually hungry, he said, they want to believe God is moving and that they have found something special before the end times. That hunger is real. So is the duty of anyone who claims apostolic power on camera while the donation teaching runs in the background.
Millions can move through a ministry that never has to answer a tough question in public. Believers deserve shepherds who fear God more than the algorithm, and who do not confuse a hyped collapse with proof.
