Bethel Church is pausing the sale of The Passion Translation, a Bible paraphrase also known as TPT, the Redding, California, congregation said in a statement, as numerous Christians continue to point to significant concerns about the paraphrase.
Bethel’s leadership team said it had been talking through concerns raised about TPT and that reviews were underway by specialized groups, the church said in an update shared on its website, adding that the work would take time.
The pause will stay in place until Bethel reaches additional clarity, the church said.
Bethel also said it has been in contact with people connected to the congregation, including current and former students, staff members and advisers from outside the church and that it is putting in place accountability measures meant to protect integrity and safety within the organization and beyond it.
Bethel had sold a special edition of the TPT New Testament carrying a foreword by Senior Pastor Bill Johnson. A webpage advertising that edition stayed online, but its purchase link stopped working recently. A video endorsement from Johnson still appeared on TPT’s official website at the time.
Other churches and Bible platforms have also pulled back from TPT in recent weeks, as was previously reported by The Christian Post.
Life Bible, an app used by an estimated 1.5 million people to read Scripture, dropped the translation from its service.
Damon Thompson, a prominent charismatic teacher, also withdrew his endorsement of TPT. Thomson leads The Homestead, a congregation in Mobile, Alabama, and founded the ministry that carries his name, Damon Thompson Ministries.
In a video and a statement posted on his ministry’s website, Thompson said he had learned “the scholarly foundation upon which the Passion Translation was built is not what it was represented to be.” He wrote that credentials tied to the work had been misrepresented and that source material had been used without attribution.
Thompson said he had relied on TPT for years and had steered relatives, students preparing for ministry and members of his congregation toward it. He said he had leaned on TPT’s rendering of Aramaic verses because of his own limited grasp of the language, and no longer trusted the translation. “I no longer have that confidence,” he wrote.
Thompson apologized to followers for passing along details drawn from TPT that he has since concluded were wrong. He said he had assumed the text was accurate and took responsibility for the error.
The departures follow an investigation posted by the YouTube channel “Minor Prophets,” with input from Bible teacher Mike Winger, alleging that TPT’s lead translator, Brian Simmons, misstated his academic background and his credentials as a translator, and that parts of TPT had been copied from other sources without credit.
Winger, who teaches the Bible and is based in California, has challenged TPT and Simmons for years, arguing the paraphrase adds material and interpretations the original biblical languages do not support.
In a 2023 post on the social platform X, Winger wrote that scholars from a range of Christian traditions agreed the paraphrase could not be trusted as an accurate Bible translation.
TPT has drawn a wide following in charismatic and Pentecostal churches since it first appeared in 2017. Its website says the paraphrase “uses Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic manuscripts to express God’s fiery heart of love to this generation.”
Critics have long called the work a devotional paraphrase rather than a formal translation, and scholars have questioned Simmons’ account of an angel he said inspired the project.
Bible Gateway took TPT off its site in 2022 after consulting translation scholars.
A petition urging YouVersion, the most downloaded Bible app in the world, to drop TPT has drawn more than 17,000 signatures amid the renewed scrutiny.
In June, Winger said he deleted the YouVersion app from his phone over its continued inclusion of TPT, posting “Bye bye YouVersion” on X along with a screenshot of the app being removed from his iPhone home screen.
He wrote that people expect an app to carry only safe Bible translations and urged caution for anyone still using YouVersion.