Patmos Church in Noblesville: CJ Johnson Starts Again

Six hundred followers, one address on Mulberry Street, and a name from the island where John was exiled. Four months after Northview fired him, CJ Johnson was back in a pulpit on Sunday, October 25, 2026 — this time in a church he started himself.

Johnson announced Patmos Church in an Instagram post on October 19, citing Revelation 1:9 and the island of Patmos. "A broken world needs a brave church," one of the slides stated. By the morning of October 23, the church's Instagram account already had more than 600 followers, according to the Indianapolis Star, and more than 750 by Monday afternoon, October 26, the Christian Post reported.

Where Patmos Church Meets

Patmos Church meets at 802 Mulberry Street in Noblesville, in Hamilton County, north of Indianapolis, with services at 9 and 11 in the morning on October 25, according to Instagram posts reported by the Indianapolis Star.

Patmos is a small, rocky island where, in Christian tradition, John was exiled and received the visions recorded in Revelation. For a pastor fired in June and launching again in October, the parallel is hard to miss. In a county where Northview Church, based in Carmel, draws thousands across several campuses, a start-up congregation meeting twice on a Sunday morning is a small thing — unless you know the backstory.

Why Northview Church Fired CJ Johnson

Elders at Northview Church announced Johnson's firing in June 2026, about three years after defending his hiring as senior pastor in 2021. The Christian Post reported that former members of Southland City Church in Minnesota, the now-defunct congregation Johnson previously led, had warned Northview before the hiring.

In 2023, former Southland members accused Johnson of dishonesty from the pulpit, lacking transparency about church finances, and threatening critics, according to The Roys Report. Northview's elders defended the hiring, saying they had conducted a full due diligence process. Executive pastor Jason Pongratz told the Christian Post in July 2023 that elders had worked hard to ensure Johnson was the person God wanted them to hire.

The June 2026 firing followed a different process: concerns reached leadership about Johnson's leadership style and interpersonal conduct, and a significant allegation went to the elder team, which brought in a law firm to investigate. The church gave no details on the allegation, and said the findings were inconclusive.

Although the findings in the investigation were inconclusive, we continued to review and evaluate patterns. On May 19th, all three of our executive pastors unanimously brought their own concerns to the elder board and shared their concern for the future of our church under its current leadership.

That quotation, from Northview's leadership update quoted by the Indianapolis Star, is the closest the church has come to explaining the decision: a pattern, not a single event.

The Questions Patmos Church Still Has to Answer

That raises questions no slide can answer. Who is on Patmos Church's leadership team, and who holds the pastor accountable this time? How is the church funded, and who controls the money? What happened to the relationships with the people who raised concerns, including Michelle Creasman, an elder at Southland from 2018 to December 2020?

In 2023 Creasman said she wanted to hold Johnson accountable and educate congregations so they could make an informed decision — not to aid a hit piece, she said, but because his actions had hurt many people still recovering. Those words were spoken about Northview. They will be read again now by anyone deciding whether Patmos Church is their new church home.

For Johnson's supporters, it is a simpler story: a pastor fired, who waited, and started again. For his critics, it is a warning about how quickly a pastor can return to a pulpit after a contested dismissal, with no denomination or elder board in between. Both stories will be tested the same way: in the open, week by week, in Noblesville. A church plant lives or dies on trust, and trust after a firing is not granted by a name. It is earned in how money is handled and how the pastor answers hard questions.

If you are weighing a new church home after a painful split, our healing articles and hope articles were written for that season.