Inside Mica Miller’s Pastor Husband’s Life With His New Wife

Tucked into a worn-down strip mall between a pet groomer and a Colombian barbershop sits what is left of John-Paul Miller’s once-expansive church empire.

The embattled pastor previously led a megachurch from a vast auditorium, where hundreds of devoted congregants gathered beneath a high-end lighting and sound system comparable to those found at major music venues.

Over Labor Day weekend, however, Miller addressed only several dozen loyal followers inside a small former nail salon near a highway bypass outside Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

A vocal group of demonstrators gathered roughly 90 feet from the service, with the protests reportedly intensifying following Netflix’s release of the documentary Death of the Pastor’s Wife.

Miller, 47, has faced sustained scrutiny since the April 27, 2024 death of his wife, Mica, who was 30 and had filed for divorce just days earlier.

As accusations emerged that he had abused Mica during their marriage and contributed to her death by suicide, attendance at his Solid Rock Church sharply declined.

Those who remained loyal moved with him to Mercy Church, a newly established congregation surrounded by businesses with names including Golf Knickers, Bare Wax and Beyond, and Hollywood’s Bar Grill.

Inside the compact space, Miller delivered his sermon with the same forceful style of his former megachurch days, wearing a green polo embroidered with the Mercy Church name.

Preaching alongside him is his new wife Suzie Skinner, 51, whom he is accused of having an affair with behind Mica’s back. Skinner’s ex-husband drowned in a swimming pool in 2021 amid her alleged affair with the pastor.

Miller was indicted by a grand jury in December last year on federal cyberstalking charges over a shocking alleged campaign of harassment against Mica in the lead up to her death. He faces trial later this year.

Mica was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Lumbee River State Park in North Carolina, after calling 911 to tell her family where to find her.

Miller is back in the headlines after the release of the damning documentary that delved into the many accusations surrounding their marriage.

For months, a growing group of ‘Justice for Mica’ campaigners have protested outside Mercy Church every Sunday, holding up pictures of Mica’s face and placards with slogans like ‘church walls won’t hide your crimes.’

Their presence has Miller rattled enough to impose paranoid security measures, including a newly installed six-foot wooden fence that blocks views of the church’s entrance and thick blinds covering the windows.

Miller was driven to and from the church and his home just 1.1 miles away by an armed private security guard last Sunday, and a uniformed Horry County Police Department officer stood watch outside the door.

The pastor sheepishly poked his head out the door minutes before the 10.30am service began to say a death threat had been made at the back entrance by someone on a golf cart.

The policeman ducked inside to investigate but returned to his post several minutes later.

No sooner was worship over about 12pm, Miller and Suzie were whisked out the back door into a gravel alley. 

By now the crowd of a few dozen protesters had moved to the intersection with the US-17 Bypass and screamed at his black Honda Ridgeline as it drove past.

When confronted by the Daily Mail outside his home soon afterwards, a furious Miller jumped back in his car and drove away while filming on his phone.

Mercy Church is Miller’s attempt at a rebrand after the fallout from Mica’s death doomed its previous incarnation, Solid Rock Church.

Boasting hundreds of members in its heyday, almost all of them abandoned Miller until the church was finally shut down and everything inside given away in November 2024 after an FBI raid on his home.

Miller soon began his new church with the few dozen who stuck by him, first meeting in a gym and an abandoned shop before the old church was sold for $2.1 million in February last year.

The humble new venue, measuring just 1,120sq ft and so narrow it could only fit rows of seven chairs, was acquired for $155,000 in cash.

Mercy Church was initially registered with a ‘Mollie Fleming’ as its sole agent, an almost identical name to Miller’s paternal grandmother Molly Fleming, who died in November aged 96.

‘Nana was closest to her grandson, John-Paul Miller, and spent her final years on Earth in deep prayer for her family,’ Molly’s obituary read.

Videos of early services showed only about 20 people with greying and thinning hair in the audience as both Miller and Suzie preached from a cheap, flimsy lectern.

Churchgoers said the congregation initially struggled to grow but claimed it had swelled to 40 or 50 people of all ages this year – despite the charges against its pastor.

Miller has largely kept his head down since he was indicted.

He and Suzie were spotted at a Myrtle Beach Pelicans minor league baseball game on September 2, dressed casually and trying to blend in.

The couple also appeared on an artist’s social media pages after she ran a canvas paint party at Mercy Church in June.

Sixteen church members, almost all of whom were elderly women, grinned as they showed off their paintings of a tropical island scene.

Also in the shot was Miller’s father Reginald Wayne Miller, himself a disgraced former pastor who is accused in civil lawsuits of sexual abuse.

The artist, Angela Bartholow, said she didn’t know who the pastor was and only realized the church’s notoriety after the Netflix documentary came out.

‘The people I interacted with during this activity were very nice to me, and welcoming,’ she said.

‘I can not, and will not judge an entire group of people based on one person’s actions, and allegations against them… At the end of the day I am just an artist who runs this small business.

‘I hope that justice is served in whatever capacity is deemed necessary, and I hope the friends and family of Mica find peace.’

Miller’s best friend and former business partner, Mark Kaufman, has also attempted to distance himself amid fallout from the documentary.

Kaufman said in a statement last week that he had ‘severed ties’ with Miller and his church and bought out his shares in a local bar they owned.

The businessman also denied accusations in the documentary that he picked up a woman from an airport and drove her to Miller so he could cheat on Mica with her.

Disturbing new claims in Death of the Pastor’s Wife included that Mica feared her husband would murder her and stage her suicide.

‘He’s gonna put a bullet in my head and then tell everybody I killed myself,’ Mica’s friend and former Solid Rock member Bruna Pabon claimed she said.

Mica’s siblings claimed Miller forcibly admitted her to a mental hospital and questioned whether she was really mentally ill.

An affidavit Mica wrote days before her death as part of a restraining order application, revealed by her lawyer Regina Ward, also accused him of sexually exploiting her.

‘Paid three homeless people to engage in threesome,’ Mica wrote, and that he injected her with testosterone to ‘keep up with [his] sex drive.’

Mica also claimed Miller showed nude photos of her in ‘sexual postures’ to members of Solid Rock Church.

‘I am afraid he will harm me due to past gun violence,’ she wrote.

In the Netflix documentary, it is claimed that Mica told friends Miller harassed her by turning the bedroom lights on and off to stop her sleeping when she didn’t want to have sex with him – something he demanded up to four times a day.

Miller faces up to five years in prison for federal cyberstalking charges and two years for making false statements, plus a fine of up to $250,000.

The case has been postponed several times and is scheduled for trial in October.

Mica filed for divorce from Miller in October 2023, before they reconciled in February 2024, then again on April 15, 2024, just before her death.

There is no evidence Miller murdered his wife and he has repeatedly denied any involvement, along with claims of abuse or infidelity.

Miller is also fighting separate civil claims, accused in a lawsuit last July of raping a 15-year-old girl in 1998 while working at his father’s church in Myrtle Beach when he was 19.

Days later, a second woman, known as ‘Jane Doe #2’, sued him and his father for sexual abuse between 1999 and 2001 starting when she was 14.

Miller has denied both claims.