Update: Barnett has pleaded guilty (as of Dec, 2025).

Jacob Ryan Barnett, a married dad known as Pastor Jake to churchgoers at the Catawba Valley Baptist Church in Virginia, “repeatedly asked” a 15-year-old girl last month for photos of her privates as he told her it’s “time for her to see her first d–k,” according to court documents.

https://nypost.com/2025/08/08/us-news/youth-pastor-allegedly-sexted-teens-while-on-phone-with-wife

Catawba Valley Baptist Church / Virginia

The church records video of their services. It appears to be a small church. Listening in on the video of the accused preaching, reminds me of all the small AoG churches I was part of as a child. The video below shows the accused giving a sermon:

Church Covering Up Involvement

Going to their leadership team page, I noticed it was entirely blank.

Prior versions of the site were archived at various locations, such as the web.archive.org and we can see that Pastor Jake Barnett was the leader in charge of children:

The church is doing their damage control. Removing his name. Pretending he wasn’t their pastor, their youth leader. They lack the knowledge of how sites archive websites and likely are unaware that the previous versions of these pages are available. When they realize that, they’ll issue take down requests and clean their history of his presence… they will pretend it never happened… UNTIL it happens again.

Like all problems, they must be acknowledged. If these churches wore their problems on their sleeves, they may get a few less congregants but they would be able to acknowledge and come to terms with these sexual crimes.