A Pastor Who Should Not Have Been Part 1

Part four of a series of articles.

You are the first monster in my story of abuse. You have tried to throw scripture at me and tried to convince whoever will listen that this is merely a case of adultery. You know that is not true. What you did to me was a crime. Whether or not god forgives you is none of my business, what is my business is trying to gain justice for my child self. You are a pedophile and you ruined my adolescence. You took away my chance to ever be normal. I have been the walking wounded ever since the day I met you. I may have been swayed by your manipulative fake kindness as a child but i can now see it for what it is, grooming. I don’t feel you have ever been honest with yourself about what you have done. When we met I had never had my first kiss, in fact I had not even held a boy’s hand. By time your were done with me that was no longer the case. You cannot hide from the truth forever. I have carried the shame of what you did to me for too long and now I’m trying to do something about it. – Debbie, a survivor of child sexual abuse in the United Pentecostal Church

(Some statements in this article are what have been alleged by a survivor. There have been no convictions as the cases mentioned here were not reported to the police at the time and to my knowledge, the alleged perpetrator has not admitted guilt.)

This article covers information about Steven Dahl and his alleged molestation of at least two children in the 1980s. I am going to start by sharing some details concerning the people involved in this situation and will be making additional posts in order to cover it more in depth.

 Steven Joseph Dahl was born on February 10, 1952 and was raised Lutheran. Prior to his involvement with the United Pentecostal Church, he “was married, divorced, and went bankrupt by age 22.” In his late 20s, a friend shared with Steve about his religious conversion. Claiming an angel appeared to him the night before, on March 14, 1981 Steve prayed and spoke in tongues and was delivered of “drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes.” On March 17th, he was baptized at Calvary Gospel Church in Madison, Wisconsin.

Steve married Debra (not to be confused with Debbie) on July 18, 1981. She was seven years younger than him and his second wife. On March 26, 1985 Debra would file for divorce and on April 17, 1986, Steve married Alice, Debra’s younger sister, in Clark County, Nevada.

Debra remarried in 1991, and at the time of this article, her husband held a local license in the UPCI. [2024 Note: He is no longer licensed and is with another woman. It appears he and Debra jointly filed for divorce in October 2020 and it was final in late 2021.]

During the time that Steve was molesting Debbie, he was caught in bed with Debra’s sister, Alice, when she was 15. Alice is eight years younger than Debra. By the time Alice turned 18, her and Steve married. Steve was 34.

Steve Dahl’s Involvement at Calvary Gospel Church & Christian Life Center

[Most links in this section take you to partial screenshots of Facebook posts Steven Dahl made in December 2021.]

Steve quickly became popular at Calvary Gospel United Pentecostal Church (CGC), was involved in the music ministry and played the trumpet, as well as being active in other ways. (He had previously played the trumpet semi-professionally in a 14 piece swing band called The Academy of Swing [screenshot December 1, 2021 Facebook post]. They were the house band at the Edgewater Hotel in Madison on Saturday nights. He was told to leave the band by Pastor Grant and sold the band to a friend.)

Much to his dismay, he wasn’t allowed to be an elder due to having been previously married. At the time, CGC was located at 3511 Milwaukee Street and John W. Grant was the pastor, an ordained minister of the United Pentecostal Church. (It is presently located at 5301 Commercial Avenue.)

When he started attending the church, Steve was living in a duplex “with a girl who was a nurse.” As they were not married, he was told by the pastor to stop living with her. He was working as a wholesale company representative for Vincent Supply Company in Madison, where he was fired not long after joining CGC.

He then became a hardware salesman for Bud’s Wholesale Hardware, from which he was also fired about nine months after the supply company job, and claimed Bud was going out of business a month later. He also claimed that his territory at the supply company “never produced another cent.” In his mind, these were punishments from God for firing him.

He was finally hired by Olan Mills, a church directory company, where he continued to work until retirement. Claiming to have “opened up the state of Wisconsin” to them, he would later take young Debbie with him at times when he was working out of town for Olan Mills.

Within a year of attending CGC, Steve was asked “to go to a nursing home to teach the people a bible study.” Within a few months he “was asked to teach at another nursing home.”

Around 1984, after he had been caught in bed with his second wife’s younger sister, he had moved to Appleton and started attending another church. [In Steve’s December 2021 testimony series, he conveniently neglects to mention his second marriage, how he was caught in bed with Alice when she was 15, or what lead to him moving.]

By 1986 or 1987, he and his third wife Alice were living in Neenah where they attended Christian Life Center, located at 670 North Green Bay Road in Neenah, Wisconsin. John J. Bridges was pastor. There Steve started teaching the senior Sunday School class and sometimes was permitted to preach to the youth. (Let that sink in, knowing what he’d allegedly done to little Debbie.)

Around 1987-1988, Steve was asked by the assistant minister at the Neenah church to go to the Green Bay Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison, to teach a bible study for him there. After his first time doing so, he was asked to take over that ministry on Saturday mornings. He did this ministry for six years.

After needing to arrange for someone else to come to the prison to baptize, he claims he was eventually given a special license by his church to baptize the men there. He also later went to Kettle Moraine Correctional Institution, a medium security prison, on some Saturdays, as well as a prison in Oshkosh on Sundays. He claims that after one service at an Oshkosh Prison where he had been invited, he was told he’d not be invited back.

After Steve stopped doing the prison ministry, he was invited to preach at a United Methodist youth camp for three days, but when others discovered the type of church he attended, he was told he could not preach about Oneness or baptism.

The Beginnings of the Oconto Church

The church in Oconto came about due to Steve’s brother and sister-in-law wanting him and Alice to come to their apartment in Oconto to teach them a Bible study. The couple started inviting their friends to these studies and this went on for a few months. At the suggestion of Pastor Bridges to look for another place due to it becoming too crowded in the apartment, in April 1995 Steve started holding Sunday meetings in the conference room at the Cruisers Yacht Company factory. The room was large enough for 40 people and in the first few months over 30 were attending. After two years there, the company told them they would have to move.

From there they were given the use of their present building where they were not charged rent, but had to pay the utilities and put them in their name. This was a former VFW hall. Services started there in February 1998. In mid 2014, the building was donated to them after the owner first installed a new roof and added a steeple and cross.

The building was dirty and in need of much work and over time, with the help of the man who allowed them to use it, they made many improvements, both inside and outside.

Because Dahl did not want to be a pastor, John Bridges suggested that an ad be placed in the Wisconsin District News and five men responded. Pastor Bridges disqualified three of them immediately and the other two were invited to preach. One chose to bow out and the other accepted the invitation to preach. However, his pastor, a presbyter from the Michigan District, later called to say Steve Dahl should remain the pastor.

Back to Debbie, John Grant & Calvary Gospel Church

Debbie alleges that she was first assaulted by Steve Dahl in either 1981 or possibly the spring of 1982. She had turned 11 in June 1981 and the abuse started before she turned 12.

She shared with me that “it was warm enough that we stopped for ice cream and we were driving around with the windows down. I remember there was no leaves or snow or anything like that on the ground. …When he started molesting me I was just starting to really get to know the other kids in the church. I was baptized when I was 10 and up until that point we came on Sunday mornings but we were not super involved with other families. I was just starting to make some connections with the other kids in a deeper way. So it was this real window of time when I was just on the verge of starting to make some connections with kids my age. He stepped in and in some ways interrupted that process.”

Debbie reported her multiple accounts of sexual abuse to pastor John W. Grant when she was 12, either in 1982 or 1983. She shared, “It was during the school year because I was pulled out of class to talk with him.” Debbie was attending the church operated school. The pastor did not report the sexual abuse to the police, nor did he get back to Debbie as promised.

John Wesley Grant was a presbyter of the Wisconsin District, while R.P. Kloepper was the Superintendent. He had long held license in the organization and had been the pastor of CGC since 1972. Prior to his time in Madison, he was pastor in Cushing, Texas for a few short years, followed by a few years each in Shawano and LaCrosse, Wisconsin.

By 1982 he was the Wisconsin District Superintendent and remained in that position through part of 1999 when John Putnam was elected. John Putnam was replaced by James Booker in March 2018. Grant has since retained the position of Honorary Presbyter in the District and Honorary General Presbyter on the national level. In 2014, he was inducted into the United Pentecostal Church’s Order of the Faith, which noted, “He has taught ministerial ethics and Christian principles in a very easy to understand and unique way.” [2024 Note: The Order of the Faith was rescinded in 2023 following a judicial procedure filed against John Grant. He was also removed as an Honorary General Presbyter and District Honorary Presbyter.]

In early 2013, he brought his son, Roy Howard Grant, in as a co-pastor and the following year elevated himself to the position of bishop. On the weekend of February 28, 2015, Roy was officially installed as the senior pastor.

It wasn’t until 2006 that his son, Roy, obtained a local license in his mid 40s. (While the church website states it was 2006, his name does not appear in the UPCI Directory until 2008, which would be reflective of a 2007 license. However, if he obtained license very late in 2006, that could explain the Directory delay as these are released every January.) It appears that as of 2018, Roy became a section three presbyter for the Wisconsin District and held that position through some time in 2020.

For a great many years, Calvary Gospel Church was not an affiliated church, but became one in 2016 (as was reflected in the 2017 Directory). [Every church whose pastor holds license in the UPCI is considered a United Pentecostal church. In this, there are affiliated and non-affiliated churches. In the former, there is a legally binding agreement between the local church and the organization. Should the organization investigate this church, that change to becoming affiliated would be important.]

Back to Steven Dahl

As mentioned above, Steve Dahl worked for many years as a marketing representative selling church directories for Olan Mills and then was a consultant for Lifetouch Church Directories (they purchased Olan Mills), where he retired from on November 30, 2017. At one point he covered “Northeast Wisconsin from Brown county through the Fox Valley to Washington and Ozaukee Counties.”

He is presently the pastor at the Pentecostal Lighthouse Church [the website was taken down after this article was written, so the link goes to an archive] at 821 Superior Ave in Oconto, Wisconsin and the church is a member of the Oconto Chamber of Commerce.

On the Facebook Page for the church, he claims it was founded on April 11, 1995. [screenshot – There is an unofficial Facebook Page for Steve’s church. On February 21, 2018, Steve took down the church Facebook Page.] The website domain name was purchased on October 1, 2011 and the Facebook Page stated it “is an independant Apostolic One God, Acts 2:38 church,” yet on the about us section of the website it stated, “We are not isolated or independent, we are part of a very large and growing movement of churches” and mentions the United Pentecostal Church.

The church used to be a VFW Hall as well as a Depot.

It is troubling to me regarding the origins of the Pentecostal Lighthouse Church and this will be addressed in a future post.

Steve and Alice had their first of four children and were in Wisconsin, living in Neenah by sometime in 1986 or 1987. By 1999, they may have moved to their present six acre lot home in Oconto.

Known as ‘The Rev,’ Steve Dahl runs The Rev Oconto Car Club Facebook Group. He organizes Car N Tunes events in Wisconsin and at the annual Oconto Fly-In Car & Tractor Show, where he has served as emcee and DJ at the event for thirteen years.

In the following posts I intend to cover more about what happened to Debbie, plus Steve’s reactions after some people started posting comments on his Facebook profile and church Page, as well as additional information about the start of Steve’s church in Oconto.

Yes, all too often pastors make the decision to handle crimes ‘in house’ and not report them to police. Doing so in situations such as are being covering in this series of articles, enables pedophiles and other predators to continue harming others. In Debbie’s situation, the man went on to be a pastor, something that would never have happened had he been reported to the police and convicted.

Note: On March 2, 2018 I removed the mention of a registered sex offender as it appears he is not a relation to Steven Dahl.

March 11, 2024 Note: Numerous screenshots have been added to this post, links have been checked, and many revisions were made as since this was first posted in early 2018, much more information on Dahl’s background became available due to a series of Facebook posts he made in December 2021.

You will find a complete list of articles in this series by clicking here.

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