The leader of a round-the-clock prayer room in suburban Atlanta told staff on Friday that the ministry is facing a serious financial shortfall. After 20 years, ceaseless worship will have to “take a break.”

Gate City Church, which is closely associated with the scandal–plagued International House of Prayer – Kansas City, had been spending between $150,000 and $600,000 per year to pay worship leaders to staff the 24/7 prayer room, sources told Roys Report (RR).

At the end of the month, the church will stop paying prayer-room leaders. It will continue with unpaid volunteers and pre-recorded music through the fall, according to the email sent to staff. After that, the prayer and worship will stop while leaders figure out what is next.

Pastor Billy Humphrey has long claimed God told him that prayer would continue until revival took over the city, the state, the Southeast, the South and the United States. He preached that the 24/7 prayer room, about 30 miles northeast of the city, was the spiritual “gate” for God’s transformative work.

Humphrey has also said the prayer and worship would continue until God ends racism and destroys empty religion in Atlanta, leading to that promised revival.

Now he is developing a different vision for the end point.

On his blog in February, Humphrey suggested the church’s prayers might be fulfilled by demographic change. He pointed out that nearly a third of the 361,000 people who moved to Gwinnett County between 2000 and 2020 identified as “Christian adherents.” Humphrey said the percent of Christians was “not normal” and “stunning” and would help “dispel nagging doubts” that the labor-intensive prayer ministry was worth the time and effort.

On Friday, he didn’t mention any metrics but said that the church leadership felt God saying that they had accomplished what they were supposed to accomplish.

“We honestly believe that the assignment to continue ceaselessly for the last 20 years has been completed,” Humphrey wrote. “We sense the Lord’s affirmation and pleasure and His invitation that something new is going to emerge.”

Gate City did not respond to an RR email asking for more information.

According to the statement to church staff, the prayer room could be relaunched in 2027 in a “new format” that costs less money.

Fallout from Kansas City scandals

Gate City has been roiled by internal controversy for several years following reports that Mike Bickle, founder of the International House of Prayer in Missouri, used his spiritual authority to sexually exploit women.

Humphrey had frequently called Bickle his “spiritual father.” He even claimed he inherited a prophetic “mantle” from Bickle and once said people pointed out the resemblances between them so often, it was both flattering and annoying.

After multiple women came forward with allegations against Bickle in 2023, some Gate City volunteer leaders worried that the similarities might not be strictly spiritual. Two of them went to another pastor on the executive team in 2025 with reports that five women said Humphrey had made them physically uncomfortable.

The board dismissed their concerns, according to a recording of a meeting released by Gatecityaccountability.com, a site run by former members.

“There’s really nothing to investigate,” Lead Pastor Dustin Pennington says in the recording. “Billy, as has been his custom, would kind of give a side hug and do like a kiss on the head. That had not been a problem up until this point, until they began to read the Mike Bickle report, and that was one of the patterns of behavior he had.”

In another recording, Humphrey notes that no one in church leadership talked to the women directly. He implied the concerns came from volunteers who were hypersensitive.

In the board meeting, another church leader is heard saying that if they did investigate Humphrey’s behavior, they would also have to look into “every husband because they’re male.”

Pennington, the lead pastor, subsequently stepped down. As RR reported in April, Pennington acknowledged he had failed to report allegations of child sex abuse while leading at a previous church. He called it a “significant lapse of judgement.” Ministers are required to report suspected child abuse under Georgia law.

According to an FAQ given to Gate City church members, the person accused of sexual abuse was also allowed to volunteer at the prayer room in Lawrenceville. The FAQ says the man did not volunteer with children. There is no indication, however, that Gate City leaders investigated to confirm these assertions.

Former members say issues are systemic

Former Gate City volunteers say they have deep concerns about accountability — and about the church’s entire organizational structure. 

“So much was handed down from Mike Bickle,” James Haynes, a former volunteer, told RR on Monday. “Maybe not all the scandals were handed down, but the methodology, the culture, the policies and the incredible power given to the main leader were all handed down.”

Questions about Humphrey’s leadership and the connections between Gate City’s prayer room and the Kansas City ministry have not been well received, former members say. The controversy has prompted an exodus from Gate City. Attendance is reportedly down from 1,500 to about 500 or 600 each Sunday.

Numerous staff members and volunteers have quit as well.

“The model is mission-over-people,” Haynes said, “and you can only do mission-over-people for so long before you run out of people. If you have money, you can make it go a little longer, but now they don’t have money.”

It remains unclear if the concerns about leadership are directly connected to the current financial problems at Gate City. The statement Humphrey sent out on Friday said only that financial support had dropped off.

“The financial landscape that has sustained our prayer room has changed significantly,” Humphrey told staff. “Several of our key donors have been unable to support the prayer room at previous levels.”

Former members, however, say Gate City’s financial problems are systemic. They report rampant overspending and a wild disregard for budgets.

“It’s all related to mismanagement and it all goes back to Billy,” said Harrison Funk, a former member who also served on the board of Humphrey’s nonprofit, Billy Humphrey Ministries. “The church was wasting money and losing money. They spent money frivolously and there was no transparency.”

People who asked questions about the finances were told they were “not in spiritual alignment” with the church, Funk said.

Financial documents seen by RR show that in 2024, the church ran an $306,975 deficit.

“Our staffing expense is out of control,” said one report sent to the board that year. “We have an imminent cash crisis on our hands.”

Former staff members said that Gate City leadership regularly relied on other sources of funds, including infusions from Humphrey’s nonprofit, to make ends meet.

The cost of paying prayer-room worship leaders around the clock was one significant burden. Many of the musicians received a monthly stipend of $500 to $1,500, former members said.

But the prayer-room worship leaders did not make enough to keep them from asking probing questions, said former staff member Lauren Funderburke.

“Most of the people working at the church are young, young people,” Funderburke, who led worship sets in the prayer room from 2015 to 2022, told RR. “The biblical-sounding language is pretty convincing. Then you get older and the rest of your brain develops and you’re like, ‘What are they even talking about?’”

‘I didn’t make this up’

Humphrey has expressed similar doubts over the years. He has told his congregation multiple times he worries he might have made up the prophecies that led him to launch the prayer room.

When the prayer room opened in 2006, Humphrey said he was reassured by a sermon that quoted Psalm 24:7. The numbers, 24/7, seemed like a coded message from God, and the verse mentions “gates.”

“I’m weeping,” Humphrey recalled, in a recording obtained by RR. “I’m going, ‘Oh my God, you’re real. You really — I didn’t make this up.’”

In 2019, Humphrey told his church he’d often considered closing the prayer room.

“If it were up to me, or up to any individual, we would have quit a long time ago,” he said.

Humphrey has written multiple books about 24/7 prayer and describes himself in online biographies as an intercessor. The prayer ministry is also central to Gate City’s identity.

“We have this story-brand,” Humphrey said in 2021. “God has called us to be a unique expression of church.”

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the prayer room, the senior minister said on his blog that the prayer room was his “life’s work” and “personal offering to Jesus.” 

But he confessed, again, to having doubts.

“In quiet times the voices of negation can get very loud,” Humphrey wrote. “Every intercessor knows this battle. You pray with a heart full of passion and oftentimes you can’t see any tangible results. Still, you pray.” 

Calls for reevaluation

Former members who have raised concerns say they hope the current financial problems will prompt further reflection and reevaluation. They want Humphrey and other leaders to see that deeper issues have long troubled the ministry.

“The problem was never 24/7 prayer,” former member Andrew Bullard told RR. “It was the culture that prioritized the mission and pursuit of revival over the ministry and care of people to them. My prayer is this is a meaningful step by Gate City’s leadership to examine why the implementation of 24/7 prayer caused harm to so many.”

The church statement suggested, however, that the reevaluation will mostly focus on financial concerns.

The change was not announced to the congregation on Sunday.

That night, the 24/7 prayer livestream appeared to show the room was empty, except for one woman at a keyboard, playing worship music in the dark.

“Welcome to night watch,” a screen said. “Fire by night. Midnight oil.”

Correction: A previous version of this article said Gate City ran a $85,607 deficit in 2024. The total number for the entire year was $306,975.

Daniel Silliman is senior reporter/editor at The Roys Report. He began his two decades in journalism covering crime in Atlanta and has since led major investigations into abuse and misconduct in Christian contexts. Daniel and his wife live in Johnson City, Tennessee.