Angry Pastor:  Give Me $75,000 or Repent

Orginally published on Monday, October 03, 2005 at 11:35 AM
by Todd Rhoades

Talk about blowing any chances you have for outreach or evangelism in your community.  Wow!  This from STLToday.com.  CENTRALIA, IL—The Rev. Johnnie Wilson II thought he was fair, giving this Tree City USA months to meet his call to collect $75,000 to spare a towering oak he considered a nuisance outside his flat-roofed church.  But time has run out on this 14,000-resident town and the mighty tree said to predate its founding in 1853…

On Thursday, the spot where the cherished burr oak once stood was nothing but a sawdust-covered stump, six feet wide.

"It just seemed like a man of God would have cared more about God's creation," said Pam Ackerman, president of Centralia's Garden Club.

Wilson takes umbrage with being viewed as a villain, saying the tree dumped damaging limbs on his Bible Based Community Church and took up potential parking space. He said his appeal for $75,000 only drew angry letters and vandalism to his church.

"I would pray that people would just move on," he said Thursday, again stressing he had every right to do what he did with the tree on his property. "I pray that people would repent, to be quite honest, repent for the hatefulness, the narrow-mindedness. I'm not so much looking for an apology. I'm just looking for them to get their souls right."

[Todd's input... He wants them to repent... OVER A TREE.]

Allison Austin, who lives across the street from the church, called the tree's demise "terrible."

"I'm not a real environmental activist, but I'm saddened by anyone who would take a healthy tree and remove it," said Austin, who saw crews finish off the oak this week after a cutdown that began a couple of weeks ago. "It was a beautiful tree, a really lovely tree.

"He's not been a good neighbor."

The dispute had been brewing since at least June, when Wilson publicly declared the tree a "headache" outside the former synagogue he obtained about a year and a half earlier. He offered to spare the oak if locals mustered $75,000 to save it, saying "that's more than we have to do."

City Manager Grant Kleinhenz said the city offered to lease to Wilson for a $1 a strip of city-owned land for angled parking just outside the church. Wilson balked, citing among other things maintenance costs.

The city also said Wilson might have been able to strike a deal for a nearby state-owned lot that isn't used on Sundays. The pastor also rejected that, calling the lot too far away for children, elderly or special-needs worshippers.

Kleinhenz said the city offered to vacuum up the leaves and limbs for free -- the city usually charges for that service -- if Wilson's faithful could get them to the curb. No deal. Wilson said that would do nothing about the real problem of leaves piling up on the roof.

"We made every effort we could," Kleinhenz said Thursday, saying the city paying $75,000 was never a legal option and would have set bad precedent. "If you get into that, the next person holds you up for something else."

As part of the toppled oak's legacy, he said, the community's "tree board" is inventorying the city's trees at least a century old, then seeking commitments from property owners that such trees won't be downed unless declared dead or dangerous.

While calling the oak's demise "a very difficult decision on my part," Wilson said locals had ample time to open their hearts and wallets instead of penning venomous letters.

"If you're going to write a letter, then put a check in with the letter," he said. "This tree was God's creation and everything, but God gave us the ability to make things better."

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