WATSONVILLE, Calif. (ABP) — All Mike Stewart was trying to do, he says, was prevent an unethical, non-denominational pastor from “stealing” a tiny, struggling Southern Baptist church — and its $3 million property.
What the director of missions of a California Baptist local association didn't expect, though, was that his opposition would include the Southern Baptist Convention itself and one of its former agency presidents.
The pastor, Hank Holley, says he was only trying to rescue First Baptist Church of Las Lomas in Watsonville, Calif., from extinction by merging it with New Life Community Church, his 30-member, non-denominational church that was looking for a place to meet.
Now after 28 months of conflict — including secret agreements, contradictory church votes, a lawsuit by the association, a countersuit by New Life — the whole sordid affair will likely be aired publicly at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting. It takes place June 13 in Greensboro, N.C.
A trial judge ruled last September in favor of Central Coast Baptist Association. But the church property is still in Holley's hands pending appeal. Stewart is worried the association could lose on appeal since, he says, the SBC has sided with Holley.
That's why he will ask convention messengers June 13 to rescind an affiliation letter convention officials sent to New Life extending the congregation membership in the SBC. The letter bolsters New Life's claim on the Las Lomas property.
“Now the dispute threatens to vomit out onto the floor of the SBC in Greensboro,” lamented convention official Kenyn Cureton.
But that's of little concern to Stewart. “If my national convention sells us out down the river…they deserve the consequences,” he said. “I don't mind losing,” he said in a recent e-mail to other directors of missions, “but I don't want to look up and see the SBC national convention playing for the other team!”
The question that may confront SBC messengers — and the question that was a focus of the trial — is: Who decides what constitutes a Southern Baptist church?
There's no question First Baptist of Las Lomas was originally a Southern Baptist church. But that started to get a little hazy in —February 2004, when church trustee Bonnie Caudill met privately with leaders of New Life. According to her testimony in court, she signed a “memorandum of agreement” — later destroyed — that turned over First Baptist's assets to New Life.
Aware of the older congregation's struggles — membership had plummeted in recent years, down to only 10 — Stewart met with the remaining members, many of them elderly, on March 1, 2004. “All the members who were there said they couldn't continue,” Stewart said. They agreed to disband and sign the congregation's property over to the association, he said.
The church's constitution dictates that, should it ever disband or cease to be a Southern Baptist church, its property would revert to the association. Stewart said association officials would have allowed the church to continue meeting on the Las Lomas property.
The constitution also requires the church as a whole and its pastor to be cooperative with local, state and national SBC affiliates, although the language about cooperation with the associational and state entities does not pertain directly to the so-called “reverter clause.”
The next day, Holley told Stewart he was scheduled to be “guest preacher” at First Baptist of Las Lomas on Sunday, March 7. But at the same time, on New Life's website, Holley announced his non-denominational church would be moving that day into “a permanent home” that “God has graciously provided” — the property occupied by First Baptist.
“When we saw that, we knew we had a liar,” Stewart told Associated Baptist Press.
The association informed Holley March 5 about the reverter clause and, based on the March 1 dissolution vote, claimed ownership of the property — three acres of land at a crossroads in the Las Lomas area of Watsonville. The property was complete with a sanctuary, education building, and two residences.
“What's valuable in this area is the land,” Stewart said of the Monterey Peninsula, where the association is located.
But Stewart coerced the March 1 vote, Holley said. “Michael Stewart had other plans for the building,” Holley told Associated Baptist Press. “He knows he can generate income for his association. He saw an opportunity to get some property.… He got them so confused, they thought they could dissolve and keep the church functioning.”
When First Baptist members realized their “mistake,” Holley said, they rescinded the dissolution March 6. But that meeting was held without proper notice and was thus invalid under the church constitution, the association said.
Holley seemed to concede the vote was on shaky ground. “With a church that size, [decision-making] becomes more of an informal thing,” Holley told ABP. “You reach a consensus. Whether or not there was a properly called business meeting, I can't tell you. But they made it clear. Everyone was in agreement. It was all very appropriate.”
Then, on March 24, the church members met again and agreed again to dissolve, giving the property to Central Coast Baptist Association. Stewart said the association planned to start a Spanish-speaking mission at the site, located in a community that had become heavily Hispanic.
But, Holley alleges, that vote was also rescinded. “Six of the nine then-members rescinded that confused document that they voted on March 24,” he said. They passed a resolution inviting New Life to merge with them, which the congregation did May 2.
The church also fired its Southern Baptist pastor, John Jackson, and evicted him and his family from the parsonage.
Leaders of the association, meanwhile, voted April 14 that First Baptist had ceased to be a Southern Baptist church. On May 7, the association filed a lawsuit invoking the reverter clause to seek the assets of First Baptist. A month later, on June 4, the California Southern Baptist Convention determined First Baptist was no longer a cooperating Southern Baptist church.
But Holley and the New Life congregation, with the help of trustee Caudill, had already taken possession of the First Baptist property in May and moved in. They evicted former pastor John Jackson — who had been fired in January, illegally the judge later said — and his family from the parsonage in June.
Stewart says that's just the kind of takeover First Baptist members were trying to avoid when, after a similar attempt in 1986, they inserted the reverter clause in their constitution.
Stewart said Holley, an independent pastor for two decades, had no intention of becoming a Southern Baptist — at least not until the eve of the trial.
Holley said Stewart is painting New Life all wrong. “We just want to help these people save this church. If he wanted a vibrant church on this property, there it was.”
“We are not Hari Krishnas or something,” he said, noting he grew up a Southern Baptist. “It's not like there's some Machiavellian plot to get rid of [First Baptist] Church.”
Stewart is more suspicious of Holley's motives. Why would New Life, a non-denominational Anglo congregation in the predominantly Anglo community of Prunedale, move 12 miles away to merge with a dying Anglo congregation in Las Lomas, which is 75 percent Hispanic? Most Anglo churches looking to grow don't move into ethnic neighborhoods, Stewart said. New Life likely would have sold the valuable property so the congregation could move back to Prunedale richer.
Holley objected. “We didn't care about the property,” he said. “We did what the association should have done: We helped that church revive.”
He insisted he and New Life are both Southern Baptist now. When first approached by Caudill about a merger in February 2004, he said, “our elders made the decision that we would affiliate if necessary.”
“In May [2005], about a month before trial, we realized that this was probably something we should do,” he continued. “We put it before the church and they voted. So we became a Southern Baptist church.”
It wasn't quite that easy.
Baptist polity has generally recognized the local association as the first and best judge of a church's doctrinal suitability. Recognition of New Life from the Central Coast Baptist Association wasn't likely at that point. So the congregation sought membership in the state convention, but those officials — aware of the Las Lomas dispute — reportedly declined.
In the Southern Baptist Convention, every church that is a member in good standing with its state convention and contributes money through the Cooperative Program is counted as an SBC church. But the SBC reserves the right to refuse membership at the national level, most notably for pro-gay sympathies. And the SBC routinely accepts funds — and thus affiliation — from churches that choose to skip support of the state convention in their regional area.
For example, one of the likely candidates for first vice president of the denomination this year is pastor of a Washington church that no longer cooperates with the District of Columbia Baptist Convention. Instead, Capitol Hill Baptist Church sends its funds directly to the denomination's headquarters.
That's the route New Life chose — national affiliation through the SBC Executive Committee in Nashville, the SBC's top administrative agency. “About a month before trial, we realized that this was probably something we should do,” Holley said.
Stewart says New Life used a network of friendships to enlist support — retired Executive Committee administrator Ernest Mosley, current SBC attorney August Boto, and influential Southern Baptist leader Henry Holley — who happens to be Hank's father.
On May 30, a week before trial, New Life got what it wanted — a letter of SBC affiliation from the Executive Committee. “It is an honor to welcome you and the members of New Life Community Church into the Southern Baptist Convention family,” wrote John Revell, associate editor of the committee's magazine, on behalf of the convention relations staff.
Holley's church had been accepted into the national convention, even though the local association and state convention had each determined it was not a cooperating Southern Baptist congregation.
Stewart says the Executive Committee staff was fully aware of the issues about to go to trial — a contention convention staffers deny.
New Life members also sought an “expert witness” to attest to the legitimacy of their “Southern Baptistness.” They contacted the California Southern Baptist Convention, Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, and Mosley, but all declined. Larry Lewis, a former president of the SBC Home Mission Board who had since moved to California, agreed to take up their cause.
Lewis' participation added insult to injury, Stewart said. Lewis' former agency (now the North American Mission Board) is the SBC agency most often advocating for local Baptist associations.
“I asked him repeatedly not to come,” Stewart wrote in one of a series of e-mail blasts regarding the controversy he has sent to his fellow associational directors across the nation. “I cannot tell you how painful it was to watch someone I had respected testify against our churches.… Dr. Lewis testified that he was a life-long friend of the pastor's father. It was one of the saddest examples I have witnessed of: 'It's not what you know; it's who you know.'”
Lewis' testimony supported New Life's status as an SBC church and the Executive Committee's decision to affiliate the church over the association's and state convention's objections. Although he acknowledged that standard SBC polity views the local association as the entity best qualified to determine if a church is in good doctrinal standing with the convention, Lewis said that only the national convention gets to decide who is Southern Baptist.
The trial judge didn't agree.
“Since the testimony is uncontradicted that the local Southern Baptist association is in the best position to determine whether the local church complies with Southern Baptist principles, it would indeed be puzzling if the FBCLL constitution granted that right to the national Southern Baptist Convention,” Judge Michael Fields wrote in his ruling.
Fields seemed equally persuaded by the decisions of the association and state convention that First Baptist was no longer a Southern Baptist church. “It is difficult to imagine a stronger evidentiary record that FBCLL has ceased to function in accordance with the Southern Baptist principles set forth in the [church's] articles of incorporation and constitution….”
Since the Southern Baptist Convention does not have a hierarchy or “judicatory,” Fields ruled it is appropriate for the State of California to step in and enforce the church's constitution. In California case law on church disputes, he wrote, “no case has recognized a Baptist (or Southern Baptist for that matter) judicial tribunal entitled to deference by the court on ecclesiastical issues.”
He continued: “The conduct of FBCLL during this attempted takeover by NLCC is so far outside the constitutional mandate of a 'cooperating Southern Baptist church' that the clause put in after the 1986 attempted takeover now requires that the assets be transferred to the CCBA so the assets can again be used for Southern Baptist purposes.”
The association had won, on behalf of First Baptist. But by then — 18 months from the start — there were no members of First Baptist left to rejoice. Half had sided with New Life and been absorbed into that congregation. The other half had long since drifted away to other churches or no church.
Stewart was happy, but what still stings — and threatens — he says, is the role the Executive Committee, Larry Lewis and other SBC bigwigs played in the fight. Now he's worried that an appeals court will give more weight to the SBC letter of affiliation or demur on the jurisdictional question on church-state grounds, returning the property to New Life.
“As I watched the parade of assistance coming to the non-denominational church from the employees of the SBC [Executive Committee] and the former president of the HMB, sorrow and grief consumed me for our convention,” he wrote in one of his e-mail blasts. “Our association stood alone, having to bear the spiritual, emotional and financial burden to save a Baptist church. Our attorneys asked us, 'Why aren't your own people helping you?' We did not know the answer to such a troubling question.”
“I don't mind losing,” he said, “but I don't want to look up and see the SBC national convention playing for the other team!”
“After we won the case, and the non-denominational church filed their appeal, we asked the SBC [Executive Committee] to rescind the recognition letter quietly,” he continued. “We were denied. We were told that we would have to bring it to the floor of the national convention.”
Cureton, vice president of convention relations for the Executive Committee, told ABP that Stewart is mischaracterizing the SBC's role in the dispute. The committee has only performed the limited function assigned by the convention — to accept churches into membership. “The court of final opinion” about what constitutes a cooperating church, he said, is made up of the messengers to the annual Southern Baptist Convention. “If the messengers want to change those guidelines, then we will gladly follow their wishes,” he said.
“Consequently, we have studiously avoided taking sides in their ongoing legal battle,” he said in an e-mail interview. “Obviously, Mr. Stewart seems to believe otherwise, since he has launched a massive PR campaign in advance of the convention which impugns the reputation of two E[xecutive] C[ommittee] staff, and by extension, the EC itself. However, the charge that the EC would knowingly and willingly aid and abet non-Southern Baptists intent on looting and hijacking a Southern Baptist church's assets and facilities is simply ludicrous.”
While convention attorney Boto had talked with Holley and Stewart about the case, John Revell, who wrote the letter granting affiliation to New Life, was unaware of the dispute. The two had not discussed it, Cureton said.
Nor did Revell ask about New Life's relationship with the local association or state convention, Cureton said. While the SBC encourages churches seeking SBC affiliation to communicate with both entities, it is not required, he said.
“They have their own reasons for direct affiliation [with the SBC}, and we respect local-church autonomy and their freedom to associate with the Southern Baptist organizations of their choosing,” Cureton said. “Affiliation with either, both or none of these other groups is a not a condition for being in 'friendly cooperation' with the SBC.”
Boto and Revell declined to talk to ABP about the dispute.
Stewart says he has exhausted all avenues to quietly resolve the matter. Now he and other messengers plan to ask the convention to rescind the Executive Committee's letter of affiliation with New Life.
“Our motive,” he explained in a letter to Cureton, “is to insure [sic] that this never happens again to a cooperating SBC association battling to save their pastors and churches from outsiders.”
Jackson, the fired pastor, told an ABP reporter June 8 that he was trying to move on from the incident. “I don't think that I want to be involved anymore — I feel grieved about the whole thing,” he said.
However, he added: “I just want justice to be done. If someone were robbing my house and they said, 'Well, it's Christians,' that wouldn't stop me from calling the police…. If Dr. Stewart felt that a church of theirs was being stolen, I think that maybe that's right, if that's what he did.”
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— Robert Marus contributed to this story