SLO pastor resigns after inappropriately photographing young women in 2020
A San Luis Obispo pastor recently resigned after old rumors came to light that he was caught taking inappropriate pictures of young women at Trader Joe’s five years ago.
The incident was apparently worrisome enough that it prompted a strongly worded warning from the board at the time and then recently, a public church FAQ webpage to address the situation.
The Tribune spoke to the person who initially reported the incident to the church — which has not been publicly acknowledged until now.
Taylor Berns was an employee at Trader Joe’s in San Luis Obispo on Oct. 9, 2020, when lead Pastor Rick Olmstead at the Arise Vineyard church — known as Mountainbrook Church at the time — was caught taking nonconsensual pictures of college-aged women’s backsides and following the women around the store, she told The Tribune.
Berns, who was also an intern at Mountainbrook at the time and said she had experienced what she felt was inappropriate behavior from Olmstead once in her role at the church, immediately reported the Trader Joe’s incident to the board — but with no noticeable result.
The current board told The Tribune the situation was dealt with internally when it happened and “did not meet the threshold for law enforcement involvement.”
Nevertheless, the incident did spur the board to write a memo that included an unusually pointed admonition.
The 2020 memo from the church board, obtained by The Tribune, confirmed there was an incident involving Olmstead at Trader Joe’s that prompted a counseling plan, an apology to the store and a requirement that Olmstead “not be alone with teens or young women associated with the church.”
In addition to serving as pastor, Olmstead was also the global leader of the 4/14 Movement and president of Generation Now at the time, two religious nonprofits focused on kids and teens.
The incident came on the heels of the resignation of former Mountainbrook Pastor Thom O’Leary, whom Olmstead replaced, due to inappropriate behavior toward women and excessive drinking in 2020, which Berns thought was why the church swept Olmstead’s indiscretion “under the rug.”
“We just lost a pastor, and it was incredibly public and incredibly damaging, where a lot of people switched churches, and now we’re bringing in this pastor, and he’s supposed to be saving everything, and if we bring this out, our church is going to crumble,” Berns said. “Instead of doing the right thing, they wanted to save face over it.”
How did pastor’s incident resurface?
Arise Vineyard is a member of Vineyard USA, an evangelical Christian movement of nearly 500 congregations. A former church member, who asked to remain anonymous, characterized Vineyard as a charismatic denomination.
The Arise board did not ever notify Vineyard leadership or its congregation members of the Trader Joe’s incident. Future board members were informed to varying levels of detail, mostly having just been told that the situation had been fully addressed at the time.
The current board of Arise only became aware of the incident in 2025 after the former church member anonymously reported it to Vineyard USA’s Guidepost Solutions hotline, a third-party oversight firm, in August — even though one current board member also sat on the board that previously reviewed the incident in 2021.
In response, Rick Olmstead and his wife Becky, who was the Arise kids director, resigned from the church on the Saturday before Christmas, though he did give a short sermon on Christmas Eve.
The Tribune first reached out to Arise about the incident in November.
The day after Christmas, Arise church published a Frequently Asked Questions webpage about Olmstead’s resignation and the 2020 incident.
“While the response was deemed sufficient at the time by the board, in hindsight, this lack of broader disclosure contributed to the current situation, and responsibility for that has been acknowledged,” the FAQ page says.
But for Berns and the other former church member, this acknowledgement is too little, too late.
“The incident was kept from the congregation for five years,” the anonymous reporter said. “It is reasonable to question the board’s safety assurances now.”
What happened at Trader Joe’s?
Berns worked at the Trader Joe’s in San Luis Obispo from 2017 to 2021, at which time she was also a member of Mountainbrook Church and for a short period, an intern with the children’s ministry.
When she came into work at Trader Joe’s on Oct. 10, 2020, she said, her boss told her what had happened the day before.
According to Berns’ manager, one of her co-workers had been monitoring the line outside the store — which was a social distancing protocol during the Covid shutdown — when she noticed an older man standing there with his phone out. He was wearing a Mountainbrook T-shirt.
“He was zoomed in on the butts of the girls in front of him and snapping pictures,” Berns said she was told.
The women looked to be “on the younger side” of college-aged, maybe 18 to 20 years old, Berns was told.
Her coworker confronted the man “out of pure reaction,” and asked him what he was doing, causing him to quickly put his phone away, Berns said. The employee alerted the situation to her manager.
The man was allowed into the store, but Berns said everyone was watching him to keep an eye on what he was doing.
Berns was told he seemed to be “lurking and following different girls” around the store, and appeared to possibly be intoxicated, according to the store manager and employees on shift.
He was in the liquor aisle — which is near the manager’s desk — picking out a bottle of tequila when he realized that the manager and other employees were watching him, Berns said her manager told her.
He put the bottle back and left without purchasing anything, then got into his car and drove off, but not before employees wrote down his license plate number, Berns said.
Berns said her managers had called the police, but the man left before they arrived, so no police report was taken. A San Luis Obispo Police Department call log obtained by The Tribune showed Trader Joe’s called the police on Oct. 9, 2020, to report “suspicious” activity, but the call log does not mention Rick Olmstead because staff was not yet aware it was him.
At first, the Trader Joe’s employees thought the man might’ve been from out of town because he had Colorado license plates, but Berns had a hunch it could’ve been Olmstead.
At the end of her shift, she drove to the church and took a picture of the pastor’s car. The license plate was a match to the one the Trader Joe’s staff had written down.
Suddenly, Berns said she was sure Olmstead was the man in Trader Joe’s, because she had recently had her own uncomfortable experience with him.
Just days before, on Oct. 4, Berns said Olmstead put his hand “incredibly low” on her back while she was setting up a coffee bar for the Sunday morning service. He leaned in and told her, “Thanks for being here,” she said.
“I remember thinking in my head, ‘There’s no way that he or anyone around us can peg this as normal,’“ she said. “‘There’s no way that everybody can look at that and think this is appropriate. Like, is everybody in denial?’“
Berns did not report that incident to the church, saying instead she “just turned inward and felt very uncomfortable.” She was 25 at the time.
When asked for comment, the church board said it never received a report about the claim.
Soon after, Berns asked her co-worker at Trader Joe’s who witnessed the incident to write her a letter of the first-hand experience. Berns hand-delivered a physical copy of the letter to Greg Jeffery, another Mountainbrook pastor at the time, at his home. She said it was a brief and quiet interaction and Jeffery seemed “very sad and kind of disappointed.”
But nothing happened.
“I reported it to the board under my name, and they did nothing,” Berns said. “They did absolutely nothing about it.”
After some time, Berns asked the board for an update. They told her he had admitted to the allegations and that he needed help.
“Because he said those words, they brushed it under the rug,” she said. “They didn’t make it public. They allowed him to keep his position. They allowed him to do everything he was still doing.”
At that point, she left her internship and the church.
“I was at a place where I really needed an honest church, and that, to me, just, I couldn’t go and create connections, create community,” Berns said. “I couldn’t serve to people feeling like it was a dishonest place.”
Olmstead eventually stepped down, and new pastors took over in July 2021, in a move seemingly unrelated to the incident. But based on Guidepost Solutions’ report, it did not appear the information was passed down to all future board members, and the current Arise board invited him back as pastor in the summer of 2024.
“I think when stuff like this happens, people get — especially Christians — get apprehensive about shedding light on things that are not right, and it comes with a fear that it’s going to push people away from God,” Berns said. “And what actually happens is when you’re covering up somebody’s dishonesty ... you’re actually pushing people away from God, ultimately, because it all comes out in the wash. And when it does come out, and people look back and realize that there were a handful of other Christians who covered it up, that’s going to make them not want to go to church or not want to have a relationship with God.”
The Tribune repeatedly asked to speak with Olmstead about the incident. The board initially said he was open to a meeting and offered a date for a call, but ultimately never followed up. Additional requests for a meeting with the pastor went unanswered.
Trader Joe’s corporate did not immediately respond to The Tribune’s official request for comment.
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What was the church’s response?
The board of Arise confirmed to The Tribune that in 2020 it “addressed a lapse in judgment” by Olmstead, but it did not say anything more specific about the incident.
On the FAQ page, the church shared that “five years ago, Rick exercised poor judgment when he took unsolicited photographs of young women while waiting in line outside a local store.”
“The conduct did not meet our leadership standards, and the board acted immediately according to church guidelines,” the church board said in a statement to The Tribune.
“The matter required an internal response but did not meet the threshold for law enforcement involvement,” the church board said. “Rick was temporarily removed from leadership and evaluated by an independent counselor, along with clear expectations to avoid any appearance of impropriety.”
The incident was reviewed a total of three times by three iterations of the church board since 2020.
The Arise church board memo from October 2020 obtained by The Tribune describes a response plan to “the actions at Trader Joe’s,” which included an apology to Trader Joe’s on behalf of the church, individual and couples counseling for emotional support and healing for Olmstead and his wife, a reduction in his amount of preaching, and the stipulation that Olmstead “not be alone with teens or young women associated with the church.”
Berns nor the former church members recall any pause in his preaching, however. Olmstead continued to be featured on the church’s Instagram leading prayer.
“He didn’t change positions or pause preaching at all,” Berns said. “Everything was exactly the same.”
The former church members said he was still considered the main pastor until mid-2021.
In August 2021, a new board consisting of some new and some previous members met with Olmstead and his counselor, who “assured the board that his time with Rick was healing and transformative and that Rick should feel free to continue ministry and leadership within the church,” according to a board memo from the time.
In an Aug. 22, 2021, letter to Olmstead, the board wrote: “It was overwhelmingly and unanimously clear to the entire board that you have moved through a time of focus and healing that has been transformative and strengthening to you. We unanimously and joyfully affirm that you fulfilled all that was asked of you with humility and sincerity and that the matters that began this process are in the past and no longer have any bearing on your life and leadership.”
The FAQ page shared that while the Arise board was informed of the incident shortly after it occurred and responded “appropriately” and “within its scope of responsibility,” broader leadership, including Vineyard USA, was not made aware of the situation at the time.
The congregation and church members were also not informed, nor, it appears, were all future board members after 2021. One of the board members who reviewed the incident in 2021, Michael McCreary, also sits on the current Arise Vineyard board.
The current Arise Vineyard board met once more with Olmstead on Oct. 8 to review the incident after being made aware of it through the Guidepost Solutions report. It again affirmed that “the documentation and response of the prior board was sufficient to address the severity of the incident,” according to a board memo.
“The board is fully satisfied with the work that Rick has done and the fruits of his repentance,” the memo reads. “Each board member has forgiven Rick. The official statement of Arise is that this matter is now closed.”
The church said it has not received any other negative reports related to Olmstead’s behavior either prior to the incident or in the years since.
The FAQ page also states that Olmstead was never paid by Arise for his volunteer pastoral role and that he and his wife are expected to rejoin Arise as congregants once they return from some traveling over the next month or so.
“They have made this decision to attend to their well-being,” the page says.
The church asked that questions or concerns be directed to the Arise board via email at board@arisevineyard.com “rather than discussed publicly or through speculation.”
The FAQ page does not appear to be linked directly to the church website and cannot obviously be navigated to from the website. The only way to view it is by using the direct URL to arisevineyard.com/olmstead-faq, which Arise emailed to The Tribune and its congregation members the day after Christmas.
As of Wednesday, Rick Olmstead was still listed as the lead pastor on the homepage of the Arise church website.
Former church members outraged by lack of transparency
When the two former church members heard the rumor about Rick Olmstead at Trader Joe’s, they weren’t sure what to believe.
“We kind of sat on it for a while and were like, ‘There’s just no way this is true, right?’” the first former church member said. “ ‘There’s no way that a pastor was caught taking pictures of girls’ butts at Trader Joe’s, and is still a pastor.’ ”
For them, keeping the congregation in the dark for all these years was the church’s greatest mistake.
“As far as Christianity goes, this does not feel biblical in any way,” said the second former church member who made the anonymous report. “Every example of a failure of a leader from the Bible — from King David to Peter in the New Testament — was public.”
They said that the information should’ve been made public so that congregation members could decide for themselves if they forgave Olmstead and wanted to move on under his leadership.
The second former church member also took issue with the board only addressing the issue publicly now after hearing from the media.
“A church board exists to protect its people, not shield its royalty,” they said. “Forgiveness is central to Christianity, but it is never a license to put young people at risk.”
Even when the issue was first revived in 2025 through the second former church member’s Guidepost Solutions report, the church again attempted to deal with it internally.
In a recent email exchange between the second former church member and the church, obtained by The Tribune, McCreary — who sits on the board — requested a private, face-to-face meeting to discuss the situation.
“Scripture has very strong warnings against bearing false witness (Ex. 20:16) and sowing discord in the church (Prov. 6:16,19),” A Dec. 1 email from McCreary on behalf of the board reads. “ ... If you do not respond to this request we can only assume your intentions are not sincere and that you are wanting to discredit and defame God’s church.”
The second former church member said this language felt “threatening and spiritually coercive, rather than taking ‘responsibility’ or responding sufficiently.”
They did not respond to the church’s email.
“Our goal has always been to fully understand and address all concerns regarding our church with integrity,” the Arise board told The Tribune about the email exchange. “When this matter was initially reported a few months ago, the board treated it with the utmost seriousness.”
The board said that because initial communications from the anonymous Guidepost reporter used spiritual language, the board assumed the person was a member of the faith community and quoted scripture in its response.
“Our intent in using scriptural warnings in that final communication was not to threaten, but to underscore the gravity of the situation and to achieve finality in what had become a stalled process,” the board said. “We recognize now that using such language added an unintended weight to the communication and we regret any distress it caused.”
The board said it repeatedly requested a face-to-face meeting with an outside, neutral mediator to fully understand the reporter’s perspective and review factual inaccuracies and misrepresentations in the allegations.
The board said it remains open to meeting with them.
The first former church member, who is a woman, said the whole thing sounds like a broken record to her.
“For me, having grown up my whole life in and around the church, I’ve seen this happen over and over, where a few men do everything in their power to keep another man in power,” she said. “If that’s not the definition of the patriarchy, I don’t know what is.”
The lack of accountability makes her blood boil, she said.
“Who are they protecting?” she asked. “Who does the church — the larger church — have an obligation to protect, if not the most vulnerable among us?”
Chloe Jones contributed to this story.
This story was originally published January 2, 2026 at 10:00 AM.
