It’s been a rough few years for G3 Ministries. Not even a year after its last scandal, the board of G3 has been caught in a retaliatory shadow campaign against its former member, Tom Buck. The report from Protestia shows that G3 board member and Pray’s Mill elder Jon Norton as the culprit behind the campaign to get Tom Buck thrown out of ministry with false allegations.
G3 Background
In 2023 and 2024, G3 Ministries fumbled its opportunity to emerge as leaders in Evangelicalism when its board members used the atheist James Lindsay and his talking points to attack Christian Nationalists. Michael O’Fallon was forced to resign from the board in 2023.
With all of this at the backdrop, in 2025, Josh Buice was caught lying about operating anonymous social media accounts to slander or even just criticize ministry rivals like Tom Ascol and Voddie Baucham. He was willing to feed stories to antichrist media outlets like The Roys Report. And to add to the hypocrisy, Josh Buice spoke out against anonymous accounts. The sad fact was that Buice was unwilling to freely critique or disagree with ideal allies because he was so focused on ministry building.
From there, the 2025 G3 Conference was canceled, a major deal for a ministry centered on a conference. Even the Puritan Reformed Conference taking place this week, August 20-22 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, G3 is co-hosting with Joel Beeke’s Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, where Scott Aniol was just named the inaugural dean of the undergraduate program. This conference is a small seminary marketing event that aims to help G3 rehab its image while staying in practice.
G3’s 2027 conference has many of the same names like Aniol and Beeke. Its most unique headliners are the midwitted Carl Trueman and Todd Friel, not landing or announcing any major speakers.
The Dossier
A dossier was anonymously mailed to FBC Lindale, with FBC Lindale as the return address to FBC Lindale accusing Tom Buck of plagiarizing his sermons. This stands out as Buck has a history of speaking out against Ed Litton when he did that.
However, FBC Lindale investigated the allegations, Tom Buck recused himself, and outside pastoral counsel was sought, and the investigation concluded that the charges were overstated in an attempt to smear Tom Buck and the church.
But who sent the dossier in the mail? Protestia reports:
During our investigation, Protestia obtained testimony and information indicating that Pray’s Mill elder and current G3 board member Jon Norton was personally involved in distributing the anonymous material, which was mailed from Texas while on business (versus mailing from Georgia), using FBC Lindale’s name and return address (presumably to imply that the dossier came from someone at Tom Buck’s church, and was previously brought to his elders by a known accuser), and using latex gloves during the process to ensure fingerprints were not left on the mailed materials.
Witnesses indicated this was done to prevent the packets from being traced back to G3 Ministries (from which Buck had recently resigned amid concerns over post-Buice leadership), and that all Pray’s Mill elders were aware of the mailings.We contacted Norton before publication and asked whether he prepared, mailed, emailed, authorized, or otherwise participated in distributing the material; whether he mailed it while traveling in Texas; whether steps were taken to conceal the sender’s identity; and to what extent other Pray’s Mill elders or G3 board members were aware of the effort. As of this publication, Norton has not responded.
Jon Norton would use the niche issue of sermon plagiarism, except that Buck was quoting commentaries without proper attribution, not even that he was stealing from popular pastors or the like. It’s not the type of allegation a congregant would think to make against an elder. But it is the type that has more legs to stand on from afar, as it is far more plausible an allegation than sexual infidelity. And perhaps, Norton was so small-minded as to really care about this issue.
Intent And Motivation
Tom Buck was no longer on the G3 board sometime between late 2025 and early 2026. G3 would subsequently scrub its board members from its website. The most recently archived board is listed as Buck Braswell, Matt Broome, Jon Norton, Matt Sikes, Dylan Joyner, and Ron Mooney.
Much of the way in which G3 conducts itself is behind the scenes or anonymously. It is unknown why anyone at Pray’s Mill or G3 Ministries would have beef with Buck, but Protestia indicated that Buck had concerns about leadership, something that was not previously public.
In any case, Norton et al. wanted Tom Buck to be disqualified from ministry and disciplined by the church over what is arguably not a sin. In biblical response, the punishment a false accuser sought should be exacted on them.
G3’s Dismissal
G3 has not publicly responded to these events. Protestia got testimonies from Tom Buck, the FBC Lindale elders, and other corroberation for their reporting. Instead, it’s Proverbs 18:17 vagueposting by Travis McNeely, a G3 manager. But Norton had already pled its case.
Scott Aniol has been silent. Matt Sikes did damage control at his church over the impending report, and Protestia even has the audio of it.
We wanted to just make you all aware of something that’s come to our attention over the weekend, and we felt like it was best for us to tell you now rather than have you go this week and then experience anything that might happen and then be surprised.
So I know you’re all wondering what’s going on. So I’ll be quick about this and I’ll share just brief details about what’s going on.
So we got word that there’s more going on with people who recently left our church, specifically with Jonathan Frazier and Jarrod Wilson. We know that they have been spreading rumors about our church from the outside to other people. Specifically what concerns us is that we got an email on Friday from a man who runs a sort of gossip online blog that maybe some of you may have heard about before. It’s called Protestia, and he plans to run an article about Pray’s Mill Baptist Church and quote “the ecclesiological problems that he’s been made aware of”.
What’s important to know is that we know this man also, several months ago, talked to other former members who left our church who shared that we didn’t handle the Josh Buice situation correctly, according to them.
So we don’t know all the details. He unfortunately didn’t share the article with us. We aren’t responding to him. He asked us for a comment, he asked us some questions, some very leading questions. We refused to comment to him and give him any information, and that’s our plan moving forward.
He told us he’ll be publishing something tomorrow. Maybe it’s a bluff, maybe it’s real. We wanted you to know about it before it happened so you could be aware of it. We don’t know what all he’s gonna say in that article, again, because he didn’t share it with us.
We do know one, at least one situation that we were made aware of, and we can give more details about all that if any of you have questions of what we do know. We’re happy to share. All the elders and deacons kinda know at least what we know, at this point we’ve shared those details with everyone. So feel free to ask any of us about those questions.
So that’s the summary of what’s going on. We want you to be aware in case there is an article read and you see that this week sometime. Again, if you have any questions, please reach out to us. We’re open, our doors are open, and we are happy to answer any questions that you might have.
But as always, we want to remind you, remembering what Pastor Jon said in our most recent members meeting, that we’re going to keep on loving one another and we’re going to keep on serving Christ. And I think it’s appropriate that we are where we are right now in 1 Peter for the sermon tonight and the sermon last week. It all fits in so well with what we’re experiencing and what we’re facing right now. And for some reason Satan wants to continue to attack our church.
So again, if you have questions, please come to us and we’d be happy to talk to you later on. And obviously if anything does come up, yeah, I think I can answer those questions.
Thank you all so much. That’s all I have. And we hope you have a blessed week. Sorry to drop this on you at the end of the Lord’s Day, but as it has been otherwise a very joyful Lord’s Day and we’re thankful to be able to have worship together.
Conclusions
G3 was already on thin ice, and while its speakers are probably loyal to the core, this subsequent scandal could endanger what remains of them.
The G3 crowd spent years saying that Christian Nationalists were the problems that we wanted a tyrannical state. Yet they have shown to be petty tyrants in their own churches. These men are an embarrassment.
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