EXCLUSIVEI preached to thousands at my megachurch. An insane choice left me praying on my knees with a gun to my head
'This is the last time.'
Those are the words John Lee Bishop remembered muttering to himself in the early hours of December 11, 2017, as he drove a sedan through Tijuana toward the San Ysidro port of entry at the base of California.
Bishop, then a broad-shouldered 54-year-old with shaggy hair and a goatee, pulled into the SENTRI lane, a passageway for frequent travelers across the border who have passed a rigorous background check and are considered low-risk.
On paper, Bishop seemed to be an upstanding citizen: he had established himself as a successful pastor, and the megachurch he founded in his hometown of Vancouver, Washington, was among the fastest-growing in America.
As he pulled up to the border agent’s booth, he gripped the steering wheel tightly and offered a soft smile.
‘What business did you have being in Mexico?’ the agent asked.
‘Setting up a church, then heading up to another church in Chula Vista,’ responded Bishop, adding pauses in the right places to project an air of nonchalance.
But just as Bishop was about drive to back onto U.S. soil - and to freedom - the border agent suddenly ordered him to stop. He’d spotted something of interest poking out from Bishop’s rear bumper.
The agent bent down to inspect the car and pulled out a large brick of marijuana wrapped in duct tape.
Within seconds, a stream of border agents surrounded Bishop, rifles drawn.
He was hauled out of the car, thrown onto the pavement, and ordered to keep his hands on his head.
With his knees pressed to the asphalt and his eyes squeezed shut, Bishop started to pray.
But no miracle would be forthcoming; God was screening Bishop’s call.
‘It was the scariest and most shocking moment of my life,’ Bishop told Daily Mail.
‘Everything came crashing down [...] I couldn’t hear God’s voice in my head.
‘I felt like the loneliest person in the world.’
John Lee Bishop was once the founding pastor of one of America's fastest-growing Megachurches. But the late 2010s he was running drugs for the Sinaloa Cartel
Bishop was renowned for his energetic, theatrical sermons that often included live animals. Seen above with Bishop is a 350 Bengal tiger that tried to swipe him on stage
Bishop's life story is being made into a movie starring and produced by Batman star Christian Bale (left)
Inside the car, officers found almost 300 pounds of marijuana stuffed away in the dashboard, bumpers, the wheel well, and underneath the rear seats.
Bishop would later admit to smuggling marijuana into the country on 20 other occasions over 18 months, having fallen in with members of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel in Cabo San Lucas, where he owned a vacation home with his wife, Michelle.
Bishop’s arrest marked a stunning fall from grace, the wheels of which had been greased into motion years earlier.
He has shared his remarkable story in full for the first time in a new book, The Church of Living Dangerously: Tales of a Drug-Running Megachurch Pastor, which was released by Harper Horizon on March 25.
Bishop’s upbringing in the rough, industrial town of Washington was marred with trauma and violence.
When he was just four years old, his father, a 25-year-old truck driver called David Lee, died in a drunken wreck after crashing his Chevrolet Corvair into a tree a stone’s throw away from Bishop’s family home.
Inside his father’s vehicle, police reported finding 25 empty beer cans.
The number 25 became something of a prophecy for Bishop.
In his book, he writes that his father’s death was his first indication that Bishop men have trouble ‘hitting the brakes’.
‘When we drink, we drink a lot,’ he writes. ‘When we get into fights, we go until the other guy is on the ground.
‘And when we go bad, we go all the way bad [...] to hell on earth.’
Bishop's father died in a drunken wreck when he was 25, and Bishop just 4. His father's dead led him to believe he wouldn't live past 25
Bishop married his high-school sweetheard Michelle and they've been together ever since
Bishop's upbringing was marred with violence and trauma. He discovered his faith after suffering a near-death experience when he was 25
Bishop has released a new book about his remarkable life story, which released on March 25
Life only became more difficult for Bishop after his dad died.
His mother remarried an abusive drug dealer who regularly beat and terrorized Bishop and his mom.
Bishop’s uncle also ran a child fight club in the family’s backyard in which he was pitted against other children in shirtless, bare-knuckle brawls as other parents from the neighborhood swigged beers in lawn chairs and wagered bets.
The violence Bishop grew up around, combined with the lack of a consistent positive role model, left him feeling as though he was doomed to lead a life of deprivation - and almost certainly destined to die young.
‘I just assumed, like my dad’s, that my life would just end at 25 without fully understanding why,’ Bishop told Daily Mail.
‘And I think that’s why I became a 0-60 type person.’
In search of discipline, Bishop took up martial arts and became a competitive bodybuilder, competing for trophies in local competitions to emulate his hero Arnold Schwarzenegger.
His life began treading a more positive route in his mid-teens when he met his future wife, Michelle, a cheerleader at a rival school.
Michelle was devoutly religious, and Bishop started going to church with her in the hopes that she would agree to date him.
But religion was something Bishop struggled to get on board with. A sufferer of ADHD, Bishop said he found it hard to listen to the long, stuffy sermons at Michelle’s family’s church, but persevered because he was determined to marry her.
He got his wish; after graduating from high school, they tied the knot.
But it wasn’t until Bishop turned 25, and experienced a close brush with death, that he started to question his mortality and place his faith in the existence of a divine force.
One day, he was sparring with a friend when he took a roundhouse kick to the face, severing a crucial artery in his nose.
Initially, Bishop dismissed the injury as a minor wound but had to be rushed to the hospital when the bleeding wouldn’t stop.
A doctor told his family he was unlikely to make it and to send for Bishop’s priest if he had one.
Michelle called someone from her church, Neal Curtis, who came to pray by Bishop’s bedside.
Against the odds, Bishop pulled through.
He emerged from the other side a man reborn, believing he’d heard the voice of God.
‘Nobody likes to think about death, but those are the most sobering moments when you’re in a situation like that - that’s when you really start wondering what happens to us next,’ said Bishop.
‘After, Neal asked me if I died, do I think I would’ve made it to heaven? I’d never really thought about heaven, I didn’t know what it was.
‘The Bible says that when one person repents, the whole of heaven rejoices, and that day I believed that Jesus was the God and father figure I’d been searching for my whole life.’
Bishop purchased a broken Cessna aircraft and surrounded it with palm trees for a religious service based on the hit TV show Lost
Bishop's team typically came up with their ideas within 72 hours and designed elaborate sets to keep worshipper's engaged
Bishop's religious theatrics were inspired by Saturday Night Live and he strove to make his sermons as culturally relevant as possible
Bishop wasted no time; he volunteered to run a youth ministry for Curtis and soon started his own congregation, called Living Hope, which he geared towards the social misfits that he felt other churches often left behind.
The church’s rise was meteoric, and Bishop became famous for his extravagant, theatrical services that oftentimes resembled something more suited for the Las Vegas Strip than a rural place of worship.
On one occasion, for a sermon about Noah’s Ark, Bishop brought on stage a cohort of live animals, including a bear, a crocodile, and a camel.
For a different service, he brought a 350-pound Bengal tiger on stage that lunged at him when he tried to pet it.
Other dramaturgical ventures included purchasing a broken Cessna and surrounding it with palm trees for a religious service based on the TV show Lost. He also wrapped the church in razor wire for a Prison Break parody to demonstrate how one can become imprisoned by their beliefs.
Bishop said he was inspired by Saturday Night Live and strived to make his sermons ‘predictably unpredictable’, visually engaging, and culturally relevant to the events of each week.
Bishop’s whacky antics and energetic homilies helped generate a huge following for Living Hope.
In 2007, less than a decade after first opening its doors, the church reached 2,000 members, the threshold to be considered a megachurch.
That same year, he preached to 15,000 worshippers at a stadium in Oregon, and Outreach Magazine designated Living Hope the seventh-fast-growing church in the country.
By 2011, Bishop’s flock was so large that Living Hope had to relocate to an abandoned Kmart store nearby.
Satellite versions of the church were opening across the world, and Bishop soon came up with the idea to open another south of the border in Cabo, Mexico, where he owned a vacation home.
But his activities in Mexico drew unwanted attention.
One night, Bishop was stirred by a knock at the door. Standing in the doorway were two men, one of whom identified himself as 'Chucho'.
‘Am I in trouble?’ Bishop asked Chucho as the stranger forced his way inside, took a seat at Bishop’s table, and placed a Glock in between them.
‘I hope not,’ responded Chucho.
Bishop, Chucho explained, had caught the eye of the Sinaloa Cartel, who were suspicious he was trying to set up a ‘gringo drug network’ on their turf.
Two weeks later, Chucho - a cartel Sicario - returned to inform Bishop he’d been cleared of suspicion.
To celebrate, Chucho pulled out a bag of cocaine and ordered Bishop to try some.
He reluctantly obliged, and Chucho left. But that would only mark the beginning of his dealings with Mexico’s criminal underworld, rather than the end.
Bishop's son David (center) started falling in with the cartel and using hard drugs
Living Hope Church got so popular that in 2011, Bishop had to move his congregation to an abandoned Kmart superstore at a local mall
Bishop admitted the fame got to his head and soon was no longer a conduit for God's message, but instead a narcissist with a God complex
Back home in the U.S., Bishop’s life gradually began to fall apart.
He was struggling with burnout from his work with Living Hope and was increasingly turning to alcohol and prescription pills to numb his physical and psychological ailments.
His family was suffering too, particularly his son David, who kept running afoul of the law and had taken to using hard drugs.
Then, in 2015, Bishop was ousted from Living Hope after it was discovered he was having an affair with his assistant.
His whole family paid the price for his transgression, and they all soon became pariahs in the local community that had once worshipped them.
With his marriage on the rocks, Bishop fled the U.S. to live in Cabo full-time, hell-bent on self-destruction.
‘I knew that when the adultery happened, I knew my days were numbered and that an implosion was imminent,’ said Bishop.
‘I didn’t know how or when, but it was a horrible way to live. And I’d also become what I hated most: a hypocrite.’
The next few months would be filled with desperation.
Having given up on his own life, Bishop turned his attention to his son, David, who’d wandered further from a righteous path than he had, living a life of drugs and crime while frequently running into trouble with the cartel.
In what he claimed was an attempt to better understand his son, Bishop decided to ‘jump in the ditch’ with David so he could learn how to pull him out.
Bishop’s ostensible rescue mission would see him smoke meth with his son and, on one occasion, even try heroin.
David, meanwhile, soon became the go-to drug dealer for the cartel.
When David ran up a debt with a low-level street thug named Fish, it was his father who confronted the crook and paid him off, earning Bishop the respect of high-ranking Sinaloa members.
Before long, Bishop became the cartel’s designated pastor, leading funeral prayers for fallen foot soldiers and offering spiritual advice to trained killers.
He earned the nickname ‘Papa John.’
But David ran into trouble one too many times and was arrested. To buy his son’s freedom, Bishop was asked to run a shipment of heroin across the border to Vancouver, but he refused.
However, money was so scarce for Bishop. He’d declared bankruptcy in the U.S. and was living off food stamps.
So one day he came back to the cartel with a compromise: he’d agree to smuggle drugs into America for them - but only marijuana.
Bishop was fired by Living Hope in 2015 after it was discovered he was having an affair with his assistant
His whole family was outsted from the church and Bishop moved Cabo, hell-bent on self-destruction
Bishop later became an unofficial pastor for the cartel, leading funeral prayers and offering spiritual advice
After completing 22 practice runs, Bishop was given the green light and introduced to his handler.
The handler drove Bishop to a sedan that was parked around half a mile from the border.
He was handed a burner phone and told he’d be contacted with further instructions once he’d made it safely across.
Bishop made it through and was ordered to drive to a nearby Denny’s, park out front, and leave the keys in the ignition.
A short while later, as he sat in a booth eating breakfast, he watched as a group of guys got into his car and drove away.
Two hours later, the car returned empty of drugs.
Bishop was told to drive back to Mexico. His first mission had been a roaring success.
In a matter of weeks, after conducting numerous other successful runs, Bishop made over $50,000 for his illicit work.
He funneled the cash back to Michelle in the US, whom he claims had no idea how he was making the money.
It was on a vacation with Michelle, funded by his cartel salary, that Bishop decided he wanted to clean up his act.
‘I just kept looking at my wife and thinking, "this is not the life I want to lead. This wasn’t the life I was supposed to be in,"’ reflected Bishop.
‘There’s a rebelliousness in me that says f- the world sometimes. But in that moment, looking at my sweet and wonderful wife, I realized that I not only needed to be done with all this, but I wanted to be.’
Bishop told the cartel he wanted out.
His handler told him ‘fine,’ but he’d have to complete one more run first.
That last run came on December 11, 2017.
Like a cliche from a second-rate crime movie, it was Bishop’s last job that landed him in jail.
Bishop is still married to Michelle. The couple live together in Vancouver where Bishop has returned to work as a pastor
Bishop said his fall from grace was both a corruption of faith and a test of faith
To this day, he’s unsure if he was set up.
Bishop was offered incentives if he was willing to rat out his cartel associates, but he refrained, afraid his family would be killed in retribution.
In November 2018, he was sentenced to five years in prison.
Bishop started a bible study behind bars and was granted early release in November 2021.
Prosecutors accused Michelle of laundering her husband's drug money but Bishop denied her involvement and she was never charged.
Today, the couple is still together and lives in Vancouver, where Bishop has returned to preaching - though to a much smaller congregation than before.
Reflecting on his remarkable life, Bishop said he believes that while he had good intentions, somewhere along the way he became drunk on the fame of his pastoral success and developed a God complex that steered him from the light and eventually to the darkness of Mexico’s criminal underworld.
‘It’s a hard thing to admit, but I did [...] I started to believe my own press clippings,’ said Bishop, 63.
‘And it was a slow drift. But it’s not a place I wanted to be and it’s not a place I ever want to be again.
‘It was the great equalizer in my life.’
In addition to the release of his book, Bishop’s life rights have been optioned into a movie that will star Christian Bale.
Bishop was encouraged to write the book by Bale, who has visited Bishop in Vancouver on several occasions over the last few years to prepare for the role.
Asked as to whether the fame from his book and forthcoming movie could once again destabilize his life, intoxicated by attention, Bishop assured that it won’t.
‘My wires aren’t crossed anymore,’ said Bishop.
‘There’s been a change of heart that’s happened inside of me that’s remarkable and noticeable, and I want to protect it.
‘I still have a long way to go, but, like I told my wife, I want to prove that we are worth it.
‘I’m going to spend the rest of my life proving to her that I was worth waiting for.’
The Church of Living Dangerously: Tales of a Drug-Running Megachurch Pastor, is out now.
