Guillermo Maldonado and El Rey Jesus

Who Guillermo Maldonado Is

Guillermo Maldonado is the founder and senior pastor of Ministerio Internacional El Rey Jesus, an independent charismatic congregation in the Miami area, and his Spanish-language preaching reaches a wide audience across the United States and Latin America. He was born in Honduras, emigrated to the United States as a young man, and built the ministry from a home meeting into a large campus with services in Spanish and English. His wife, Ana Maldonado, serves alongside him and leads much of the intercession and women's ministry.

Three things account for most of his reach. He preaches in Spanish to an audience that large American church networks have often served poorly, in a city that functions as a hub for the whole Latin American diaspora. He teaches an expectation of the miraculous that is stated flatly and without qualification, which draws people carrying problems that no one else has taken seriously as spiritual problems. And he organised the result, turning a single congregation into a training operation with conferences, a school, a publishing output and a network of pastors who receive what the movement calls apostolic covering.

Assessment of him divides. Those who follow him describe a preacher who took Pentecostal expectation to immigrant communities that had been written off, who trained ordinary members to pray for the sick rather than reserving that to the platform, and who put the person of Jesus Christ at the centre of every service. Critics, including Protestant theologians in the cessationist and Reformed traditions as well as Catholic writers, question the title of apostle, question the way healing claims are presented without verification, and question the teaching on giving. Both readings are held by serious people. What follows separates what is documented from what is disputed and labels which is which.

On size: this page gives no attendance or membership figure for El Rey Jesus. Congregation counts for large independent churches are almost always self-reported, they are not audited, and they vary wildly between the ministry's own materials and outside estimates. Press coverage of Miami religion regularly describes the congregation as one of the largest Spanish-speaking churches in the country. That ranking is a description in circulation rather than an audited finding, no publisher could be named for it here, and no number is asserted.

From Honduras to Miami

Guillermo Maldonado was born in Honduras and grew up in a country where the Catholic Church was the inherited religion of most families and where Pentecostal and evangelical churches were growing quickly through the 1970s and 1980s. He has spoken publicly about a conversion in his youth that he describes as decisive, and about a period of his early life marked by drift and by trouble at home. He tells that story frequently from the platform, because it is the template he preaches: a person with nothing to offer, changed suddenly and completely.

He emigrated to the United States and settled in the Miami area, which by the 1980s had become the effective capital of the Latin American diaspora in North America, with large Cuban, Nicaraguan, Honduran, Colombian, Venezuelan and Haitian communities layered over one another. Miami mattered for what came later. A preacher who works in Spanish in Miami addresses a dozen national communities at once, each with relatives in the home country, and a message that lands in that room travels outward through family networks across a continent.

Maldonado's formation was in the charismatic and Pentecostal world rather than in a mainline seminary. He has pursued theological study through Christian institutions and uses academic titles in his ministry materials. His theological grammar comes from the Word of Faith and healing-revival streams of the twentieth century and from the later apostolic and prophetic movement, and the vocabulary he uses, impartation, activation, the glory, spiritual atmosphere, breakthrough, comes from those sources rather than from classical Pentecostal denominations such as the Assemblies of God.

On dates and biography: this page gives no birth year, no year of emigration and no specific account of his early life beyond what he has stated publicly, because those details vary between sources and none of them could be checked against a primary record here. Where a date could not be confirmed, the general fact is given and the specific is omitted.

The Founding of El Rey Jesus

Ministerio Internacional El Rey Jesus began as a small group meeting in the Maldonados' home in Miami, and the ministry dates its founding to 1996. The account it gives of itself is a familiar one in independent church history: a handful of people, a living room, no denominational funding and no building, followed by a series of rented spaces each outgrown in turn. The church later established a large campus in the Miami area with an auditorium, offices and classrooms.

The growth pattern is worth understanding because it explains the shape of the ministry. Services are long, loud and participatory, with extended worship, prayer for the sick conducted in the aisles as well as from the platform, and a call at the end of most services for people to come forward. The congregation is bilingual in practice, with separate Spanish and English services rather than translation, and the Spanish services carry the centre of gravity. Small groups, called houses of peace in the ministry's vocabulary, meet in members' homes through the week and are the mechanism by which the church multiplies. A member is expected to attend a group, and then to open one.

That structure has a real strength, and it is worth naming honestly before any criticism. It refuses the spectator model. A person who joins El Rey Jesus is expected to pray out loud for a stranger within weeks, to open their living room, and to bring somebody. Many Catholic parishes would be transformed if a tenth of their registered families did those three things. Whatever a Catholic concludes about the theology, the pastoral method deserves attention rather than dismissal.

The ministry also runs large conferences, held in Miami and in other cities, built around supernatural ministry and apostolic leadership, at which visiting preachers from the same stream teach and at which attendees are prayed over for impartation. These events are the main channel by which Maldonado's influence reaches pastors outside his own congregation.

What Guillermo Maldonado Teaches

Guillermo Maldonado teaches that the supernatural works recorded in the New Testament are available to ordinary Christians now, that God has restored the offices of apostle and prophet alongside evangelist, pastor and teacher, and that spiritual power is transferable from one believer to another through prayer and the laying on of hands. What follows states each element as he and his ministry state it. The Catholic response comes later on this page, and it is kept separate on purpose.

The supernatural as normal Christian life

The governing conviction is that the book of Acts describes the standard rather than an exception. Maldonado teaches that healing, deliverance, prophecy and miracle are the ordinary equipment of the Church, that the absence of them in most congregations is a failure of faith and teaching, and that a believer who has been taught properly should expect to see them. His most quoted texts are John 14:12, where Jesus says that whoever believes in him will do the works he does and greater works, and Hebrews 13:8, that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. The argument from Hebrews 13:8 is simple and it is the engine of the whole system: if Christ is unchanged, then what he did then he does now.

Apostolic authority and the fivefold ministry

Maldonado holds that Ephesians 4:11, where Christ gives apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints, lists five permanent offices rather than a historical arrangement that lapsed with the first generation. He teaches that the apostolic office carries authority to found, to align and to govern, and that a church without apostolic covering lacks the government God intended. He uses the title apostle of himself and confers recognition on others in his network. In this framework, submission to an apostle is treated as a spiritual protection, and independence from apostolic covering is treated as a spiritual exposure.

Impartation and the transfer of anointing

Impartation is the teaching that spiritual gifting and anointing can be transferred from one person to another, usually by the laying on of hands, sometimes in a large meeting to hundreds at once. The scriptural warrants offered are Paul's words to Timothy about the gift within him through the laying on of hands in 2 Timothy 1:6, and Paul's stated desire in Romans 1:11 to impart some spiritual gift to the Roman Christians. Conferences in this stream are organised around impartation, and attendees are told to come expecting to receive and to leave carrying something they did not arrive with.

Deliverance from demonic influence

The ministry treats a wide range of human difficulty as involving demonic influence: addiction, chronic fear, sexual compulsion, generational patterns in a family, illness in some cases, and what the movement calls curses passed down a bloodline. Deliverance is conducted openly, often in a group setting, with commands issued in the name of Jesus and with renunciations spoken by the person seeking freedom. This practice draws people who have tried medicine and counselling without relief, and it is one of the main reasons newcomers attend a second time.

Healing and the miraculous

Prayer for physical healing is a standing feature of services, and testimonies of healing are given from the platform by the people who report them. The ministry publishes such testimonies through its own media. Independent medical documentation is not part of what the ministry ordinarily publishes, and this page makes no judgement about any individual testimony, in either direction. What can be stated is the structure: the claim is made, it is broadcast, and verification is left to the hearer.

The glory and the presence of God

Maldonado uses the word glory for a manifest, felt presence of God in a meeting, distinguished from God's presence understood as everywhere and always. Much of his teaching concerns how a congregation prepares for, welcomes and sustains that presence through worship, expectation and holiness. Physical reactions during services, weeping, falling, shaking, trembling, are treated as ordinary responses to it rather than as anything requiring explanation.

Giving, seed and expectation

The ministry teaches the tithe and calls for offerings beyond it, and it presents giving in the language of seed and harvest: what is given in faith is expected to return. Special offerings are taken for specific purposes and are framed as acts of faith. Maldonado's public position is that God is generous and that generosity in the believer is answered by God's provision. Critics identify this with prosperity theology, which the site covers in the guide to the prosperity gospel and what Scripture actually says about wealth. The disagreement is over whether giving is being taught as Christian generosity or as a transaction with a promised return, and the answer depends on the wording used in a given appeal rather than on any single doctrinal statement.

The Apostolic Network and the Training School

Around the Miami congregation Maldonado has built a network of affiliated churches and pastors who receive what the movement calls apostolic covering, and a training operation that supplies it with teaching. The network is not a denomination in the legal sense. Affiliated congregations keep their own property, their own finances and their own names, and the relationship runs through personal recognition, conference attendance, curriculum and voluntary submission rather than through canons or a constitution.

The training arm teaches supernatural ministry as a curriculum: how to hear from God, how to pray for the sick, how to conduct deliverance, how to plant a house group, how to lead. Graduates are commissioned and sent, and some plant congregations that then affiliate. The model is deliberately reproducible, and reproducibility is the point. A denomination grows by adding institutions. This kind of network grows by adding people who have been taught to do the same thing somewhere else.

Three features of that arrangement are worth naming, because they shape everything about how such a body behaves.

• Authority is personal. A pastor is covered by a man, and the covering is a relationship. When the relationship ends, the covering ends, and there is no external body that adjudicates the dispute.
• Accountability runs upward, and it stops at the top. A network leader who submits to no council, no synod and no bishop has no structural check above him. Whether that matters in practice depends entirely on the man's own character and on the finance and governance arrangements a given congregation has adopted.
• Doctrine is set by teaching rather than by confession. There is no signed confession that a member could hold the leadership to. What is believed is what is currently being taught, and it can move.

None of that is an accusation against Guillermo Maldonado. It is a description of a structure, and the same description applies to hundreds of independent apostolic networks. A Catholic reading it should notice that the questions it raises are exactly the questions the Church answered with bishops, councils, canon law and the fixed deposit of faith, and should also notice that the Church's own record shows those structures failing when the men inside them chose to fail. Structure reduces risk. Structure does not remove it.

The Books and the Broadcasts

Maldonado is a prolific author, and his books are a substantial part of his reach. They are published in Spanish and English and cover the recurring themes of his preaching: the supernatural power of God, the glory, deliverance, prayer, faith and the apostolic and prophetic ministry. How to Walk in the Supernatural Power of God is among the better known. They are written as practical manuals rather than as academic theology, with short chapters, scriptural texts, testimonies and prayers the reader is told to pray aloud.

His teaching also circulates through television and online broadcast in Spanish and English, through a Spanish-language programme built around supernatural ministry, and through the ministry's own streaming of services and conferences. For many people in Latin America who have never been to Miami, the broadcast is the whole of their contact with him.

The practical effect of the publishing and broadcasting is that the teaching travels far beyond anyone Maldonado has met. A pastor in a small town who has read the books, watched the broadcasts and attended one conference may reorganise a congregation around the model. That is how movements of this kind spread, and it is why a page about one man in Miami is relevant to readers who will never set foot in Florida.

The Apostolic Question and the New Apostolic Reformation

The substance of Guillermo Maldonado's distinctiveness is his doctrine of apostolic authority, and that doctrine has a history. The term New Apostolic Reformation was coined by C. Peter Wagner, an American missiologist, to describe what he saw as a global shift in which independent churches were being organised under living apostles and prophets rather than under denominational boards. Wagner argued that the offices of Ephesians 4:11 had been restored in stages through the twentieth century and that apostolic government was the form the Church was taking in the present age.

Maldonado's teaching sits inside that description. He holds apostolic and prophetic offices to be current, he exercises the first, and he organises a network on that basis. Observers accordingly place him in that stream, and the placement is fair as a description of what he teaches about church government.

Two cautions belong here, and this site applies them to everyone.

• The New Apostolic Reformation is not an organisation. It has no membership roll, no headquarters, no confession and no register anyone signs. Calling a leader part of it is a statement about the content of his teaching, and it proves no formal affiliation with anyone else so described.
• Many so labelled reject the label. Leaders in this stream frequently say they have never used the term of themselves and do not accept it. That objection is legitimate and should be recorded whenever the label is used.

The full account of the movement, its history, its leading figures, what it teaches about dominion and about the offices, and the Catholic assessment of it, is on the guide to the New Apostolic Reformation. What matters for this page is narrower. Maldonado's apostolic claim is the point on which a Catholic reader will differ from him most sharply, and it is the point on which he differs most sharply from a great many Protestants too. Cessationist Reformed Christians reject the claim because they hold the apostolic and prophetic offices closed with the first generation. Classical Pentecostals in denominational bodies, who fully accept healing, tongues and prophecy, still frequently reject the idea of governing apostles because their own polity is congregational or presbyterian. The apostolic claim divides Maldonado from Christians who agree with him about the gifts.

The Criticism, and How He Answers It

The criticism directed at Guillermo Maldonado falls into four recognisable categories, and each has an answer that he or his ministry has given publicly. Setting them out in pairs is the only fair way to present a living person.

The title of apostle

Critics argue that the New Testament reserves the title for the Twelve, for Matthias chosen to replace Judas in Acts 1, and for Paul, whose apostleship rested on a direct commission from the risen Christ. They point to the qualification named in Acts 1:21 to 22, that a replacement had to have accompanied Jesus from the baptism of John to the ascension, and argue that the office by definition cannot be filled again. Maldonado's answer, and the answer of his stream generally, is that Ephesians 4:11 gives the five ministries for as long as the Church is being built up, that Scripture names apostles beyond the Twelve, including Barnabas in Acts 14:14 and Andronicus and Junia in Romans 16:7, and that the modern office is one of function and government rather than a claim to the unrepeatable role of the eyewitnesses.

Healing claims and verification

Critics argue that healing claims broadcast without medical documentation do damage in two directions: they raise expectations that leave sick people believing their faith failed when nothing changes, and they cannot be tested, which places them outside any possibility of correction. The ministry's answer is that testimony is a scriptural form of witness, that people who have been healed have the right to say so, and that faith is not required to wait for a laboratory. Both positions are coherent. The disagreement is about what a public claim owes to the public.

Teaching on giving

Critics argue that the seed and harvest framing turns an offering into a transaction, and that the people most exposed to it are the poorest members of an immigrant congregation who can least afford a speculative gift. The ministry's answer is that Scripture repeatedly ties generosity to blessing, in Malachi 3:10, in Luke 6:38 on the measure given back, and in 2 Corinthians 9 on the cheerful giver, and that teaching people to give is a pastor's duty. The Catholic response to that argument is set out below under the heading on giving.

Authority without external accountability

Critics argue that a leader who submits to no body outside his own ministry has no correction available to him if he errs, and that the covering language can be used to treat disagreement as rebellion. The answer given in this stream is that accountability is real and relational, that leaders in the network hold one another to account, and that submission is voluntary and can be withdrawn. The structural observation stands regardless of the answer, and it is set out above under the section on the network.

One thing that should not appear in a criticism of him, and does not appear on this page, is any verdict on his sincerity, his motives or his standing before God. Those are unknowable, and Scripture reserves them. Do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes (1 Corinthians 4:5). A page can weigh a teaching. A page cannot weigh a soul.

What the Public Record Shows

No criminal conviction of Guillermo Maldonado is recorded in the sources this page relies on, and this page makes no allegation of criminal wrongdoing against him. The disputes around him have been theological and financial in character: whether the apostolic office exists today, whether healing claims should be broadcast without verification, and whether the teaching on giving crosses from generosity into exchange. Those are arguments about doctrine and about method, and they are conducted in books, sermons and articles rather than in courtrooms.

That distinction matters, and it is worth stating plainly because pages about prominent preachers often blur it. A disagreement about theology is not an accusation of crime. A reader who concludes that Maldonado's doctrine of apostolic authority is wrong has concluded something about doctrine, and nothing whatever about his conduct. This site holds the same standard for everyone it writes about: an allegation is reported only with a source, a status label and an outcome, and where there is no allegation, none is manufactured.

What This Page Does Not Claim

Several things a reader might expect to find here are deliberately absent, and the reasons are given so that the absences are not mistaken for oversights.

• No attendance, membership or income figure. Self-reported congregation numbers are not audited and outside estimates conflict. No figure is asserted.
• No verdict on any individual healing testimony. This page has examined no medical record and is in no position to say that a particular reported healing did or did not occur.
• No birth date, emigration date or detailed early biography. These vary between sources and could not be confirmed against a primary record.
• No account of anything after mid-2026. Developments later than that are outside what this page tracks, and readers should check current sources for anything recent.
• No allegation of criminal or financial wrongdoing. None is made because none could be sourced, labelled and resolved to the standard this site requires.
• No judgement on his salvation or his sincerity. Neither is available to any writer.

A thinner accurate page is worth more than a fuller invented one, particularly when the subject is a living man.

The Catholic Response, Point by Point

Catholic teaching answers each of Maldonado's main positions with a distinct response, and the responses differ in kind. Some are flat contradictions. Some are agreements with a qualification about how the thing is done. Taking them one at a time is more useful than a verdict on the whole.

On apostles

The Catholic Church holds that the apostolic office continues, and that it continues in the bishops. The Catechism of the Catholic Church 857 states that the Church is apostolic because she is founded on the apostles, because she hands on their teaching with the help of the Holy Spirit, and because she continues to be taught, sanctified and guided by them through their successors, the bishops, in union with the successor of Peter. Succession is by ordination in a traceable line, and the college of bishops succeeds the college of the apostles as a body.

The Catholic objection to a self-designated apostolate is therefore precise, and it concerns the manner of holding the office rather than the existence of apostolic authority now, which Catholics affirm: an office that Christ gave to be handed on by ordination cannot be assumed by personal conviction, by the recognition of peers who hold it on the same basis, or by the size of a following. The site sets this out at length in the guide to holy orders and the ordained ministry, and the office of the successor of Peter is covered in the guide to the papacy. On the qualification argument, Catholics read the New Testament use of the word apostle as broader than the Twelve, as Maldonado does, and still hold that what was handed on was handed on sacramentally.

On miracles and how they are tested

Catholics believe miracles happen now. The Church requires a verified miracle for canonisation, maintains a medical bureau at Lourdes staffed by physicians of varying beliefs, and treats a genuine miracle as a sign that God gives freely. The difference from El Rey Jesus is procedural. The Church tests claims slowly, publicly and with outside experts, and it accepts that most claims will fail the test without that failure implying anything about God's power. Testing exists to protect the sick, who are the people with everything at stake. The site covers the whole question in the guide to miracles and how the Church investigates them.

On healing and the anointing of the sick

Catholics pray for the healing of the sick, and the Church has a sacrament for it. James 5:14 to 15 instructs the sick to call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil, and the Catholic anointing of the sick is that practice continued. The Catechism 1508 states that the Holy Spirit gives to some a special charism of healing, to make manifest the power of the grace of the risen Lord, and adds that even the most intense prayers do not obtain the healing of all illnesses. That last clause is the pastoral difference. Catholic teaching builds in the case where the sick person is not cured, and it refuses to attribute that outcome to a deficiency in the person's faith. A theology that has no place for the faithful sufferer who stays sick has a hole in it exactly where a great many Christian lives are lived.

On deliverance and exorcism

The Catholic Church affirms that demons are real and that Christ gave authority over them. It also regulates the response tightly. The Catechism 1673 states that solemn exorcism can be performed only by a priest with the permission of the bishop, and that a careful investigation must first establish that the person is genuinely possessed rather than suffering from illness, which the Church says is a matter for medical science. Every Catholic may pray for protection and deliverance in ordinary prayer, and the formal rite is reserved and supervised.

The reason for the restriction is protection of the person. A public deliverance session that treats a psychiatric illness as a demon can delay real treatment, and it exposes a vulnerable person to a distressing scene in front of strangers. This is the sharpest practical difference between Catholic discipline and the deliverance ministry practised at El Rey Jesus and across this movement, and it is covered further in the guide to spiritual warfare and what the Church teaches about the devil.

On impartation and the laying on of hands

Catholic practice knows the laying on of hands. It ordains by it, confirms by it and blesses by it, and Paul's words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:6 are read in the Church as referring to ordination. The Catholic caution concerns treating spiritual power as a substance that a person possesses and transfers at will. Scripture handles that question directly in Acts 8:18 to 20, where Simon offers money for the power to give the Holy Spirit and Peter answers that his silver perish with him for thinking God's gift can be bought. The Catechism 2111 defines superstition as attributing to practices an efficacy independent of the interior dispositions they require. Grace is the free act of God rather than a current running through a hand.

On giving

Giving is a genuine Christian duty, and the Church teaches it. Almsgiving is one of the three works Jesus names in Matthew 6, alongside prayer and fasting, and every Catholic is obliged to support the Church and the poor according to their means. The Catholic difference is that God is never placed under obligation by the gift. 2 Corinthians 9:7 commends the cheerful giver and gives no promised return. An appeal that names a specific gift as the trigger for a specific financial result has moved from generosity to exchange, and Peter's rebuke to Simon in Acts 8 is the scriptural response to it. If you have given until it hurt and the promised result did not arrive, the failure lies in the promise that was made to you. Your faith and the size of the gift are beside the point.

On the seat of authority

Underneath every specific difference is one structural difference. Catholics hold that Christian teaching is measured against a public deposit: Scripture and apostolic Tradition, guarded by the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, fixed and available to anyone who wants to check it. In an apostolic network, teaching is measured against a living teacher who receives fresh revelation and whose current teaching is the standard. The site sets out the Catholic account in the guide to Sacred Tradition and how the Church transmits the faith. Every particular disagreement on this page is a downstream consequence of that one.

Where Catholics and El Rey Jesus Agree

A page that lists only disagreements misrepresents the situation, and the agreements here are substantial. Catholic readers should be able to state them.

• God still acts. The Church that requires a verified miracle for every canonisation cannot object to the claim that God heals today. Catholics and El Rey Jesus both reject the view that the miraculous ended with the apostles.
• The devil is real. Catholic teaching affirms the existence of fallen angels and the reality of spiritual conflict, and the Church maintains a rite of exorcism because it takes the matter seriously.
• Every believer is called to act. The insistence that ordinary members pray for one another, open their homes and bring their neighbours is closer to the New Testament than a parish where a handful of people do everything.
• Conversion is expected. Both hold that a person can be changed decisively by Christ, and both call for that plainly rather than assuming it.
• Worship engages the body. Catholic liturgy kneels, stands, processes, sings and anoints. The charismatic emphasis on the body in worship is recognisably Christian even where the forms differ.

The Catholic charismatic renewal, which has existed within the Church since 1967 and which popes have repeatedly encouraged, holds the charismatic emphasis together with sacramental order and episcopal authority. Readers drawn to what happens in a service at El Rey Jesus and unwilling to leave the sacraments should read the guide to the Catholic charismatic renewal and its place in the Church. It is the answer to the question many people in this situation are actually asking.

If You Attend, or Are Weighing Leaving

Plain counsel, for someone who is inside this and deciding what to do.

• Take your time. Leaving a congregation can mean losing friendships and a whole weekly structure. Nobody has the right to hurry you, and God is not running a clock on you.
• Get medical trouble treated medically. Prayer and medicine are not rivals. The Church has run hospitals for sixteen centuries and its own teaching sends the sick to physicians.
• Ask what happens when it does not work. A teaching with no honest answer for the faithful person whose situation does not improve has a gap in it, and most human lives are lived in that gap.
• Give what you can give freely. If an appeal makes you feel that withholding will cost you God's favour, that is the signal to stop and think, and it tells you something about the appeal rather than about your faith.
• Read Ephesians and 1 Corinthians straight through, without a preacher's frame, and notice how Paul orders the gifts and what he puts in chapter 13 immediately after listing them.
• Talk to a person rather than a website. A parish priest, a hospital chaplain, a trustworthy pastor. Say plainly what happened and what you are weighing.
• Report any crime to the civil authorities. That comes before any church process anywhere, in any congregation, without exception.

If you are staying, the same counsel applies. Knowing the Creed, the Scriptures and the shape of the Church's teaching makes you harder to mislead in any room, including a Catholic one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Guillermo Maldonado?

Guillermo Maldonado is a Honduran-born pastor and author based in Miami, Florida, who founded and leads Ministerio Internacional El Rey Jesus, known in English as King Jesus International Ministry. He leads the congregation with his wife Ana Maldonado, he uses the title apostle, and he teaches that healing, deliverance and miracles are a normal part of Christian life today. His preaching is broadcast in Spanish and English, and his books on the supernatural and on divine power circulate widely across Latin America and among Spanish-speaking Christians in the United States.

What is King Jesus International Ministry?

King Jesus International Ministry is an independent charismatic congregation in the Miami area, founded by Guillermo Maldonado and Ana Maldonado, which the ministry dates to 1996. It began as a small group meeting in the couple's home and grew into a large campus with services in Spanish and English. Alongside the congregation the ministry runs training conferences, a leadership school, a publishing arm and a network of affiliated churches and pastors in the United States and abroad who look to Maldonado for apostolic covering.

What does Guillermo Maldonado teach?

Guillermo Maldonado teaches that the supernatural works of the New Testament are available now, that God still appoints apostles and prophets alongside evangelists, pastors and teachers on the pattern of Ephesians 4:11, and that spiritual power can be imparted from one believer to another through the laying on of hands. His services centre on healing, deliverance from demonic influence, prophetic words and the manifest presence of God, which he calls the glory. He also teaches generous and expectant giving, which critics identify with prosperity theology.

Is Guillermo Maldonado part of the New Apostolic Reformation?

Guillermo Maldonado teaches the restoration of apostolic and prophetic offices, which is the central idea of what C. Peter Wagner named the New Apostolic Reformation, and observers routinely place him within that stream. The New Apostolic Reformation has no membership roll, no headquarters and no confession of faith, so the label describes a family resemblance rather than an organisation anyone joins. Leaders described that way often reject the term for themselves, and describing someone as part of it says what they teach about church government rather than proving any formal affiliation.

Do Catholics believe there are apostles today?

Catholics believe the apostolic office continues in the bishops, who succeed the Twelve as a body through ordination in unbroken succession, with the Bishop of Rome as head of that college. The Catechism of the Catholic Church 857 describes the Church as apostolic because she is built on the apostles, hands on their teaching, and continues to be taught and governed by their successors. On that understanding the office is real and present today, and it is held by ordained bishops rather than claimed by self-designation or conferred by a network of ministries.

Has Guillermo Maldonado been convicted of a crime?

No criminal conviction of Guillermo Maldonado is recorded in the sources this page relies on, and this page makes no allegation of criminal wrongdoing against him. The criticism directed at him has been theological and financial in character: disputes over the title of apostle, over claims of healing, and over teaching about giving. Where a factual question about his ministry cannot be verified from the public record, this page says so rather than filling the gap.

Related Reading