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Pastor Refuses to Give Up Pulpit Despite Legal Challenges
Orginally published on Tuesday, February 27, 2007 at 6:01 AM
by Todd Rhoades
For three years, a group of deacons from the Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church has tried to oust the congregation's pastor. And three times, the church leader has taken the case to the Georgia Supreme Court. Pastor Willie Bolden simply refuses to leave...
“I’m stubborn, especially when I know I’m doing the folk right,” Bolden said during an interview in his cramped office. “I’m here for a purpose. I truly believe God sent me here for a purpose.”
All through his life, Bolden has shown the courage of his convictions. He says he was arrested dozens of times protesting segregation in the South and once led 20 wagons – drawn by a pack of obstinate mules – from Mississippi to Washington to advance the plight of the poor.
Now he’s found a new cause: Clinging to the pulpit of the tiny black church in west Georgia, a campaign that has made him a frequent visitor to the state’s highest court.
It all started, Bolden says, because of a spat with the congregation’s most powerful member.
That would be Robert Barton, who also is its next-door neighbor. Barton once oversaw the church’s finances, led its deacon board, and ran the choir and Sunday school.
When Bolden became pastor 11 years ago, he started to carve up Barton’s duties and sought more oversight over the church’s finances. Bolden said that’s when the deacons became more “hellbent” to oust him – but he wasn’t going to budge for the sake of his congregants.
“To be quite honest with you, I think for a number of years they have been taken advantage of,” Bolden said of his congregation’s members, who number 30 on a good day. “Finally the Lord got tired and said, ‘I’m going to send somebody who I trained through the civil rights movement, who won’t mind standing up, being a man, who won’t scratch when he ain’t itching and grin when he ain’t tickled.’”
A former Atlanta public school administrator, Bolden started preaching on the side in 1986 and soon he was urged to try out for a full-time gig 60 miles away in Cedartown. After a few attempts, he landed the job in September 1995.
At first, he seemed a great fit. With a gravelly delivery, he always spoke of living a sermon, not just preaching it, and his church responded. Under his watch, the membership raised enough money to buy a church steeple, carpet the cozy chapel in a lush red, install new glass doors and buy a used van.
He said the honeymoon ended when he started demanding a weekly budget statement. The deacons’ lawyer, Mark Webb, said his clients were simply tired of the pastor “running the church as a monarchy.”
Either way, the deacons started to grumble.
At one of the church’s quarterly gatherings in 2004, they tried to call a vote to dismiss the pastor. Bolden caught wind of it and quickly adjourned the meeting and, weeks later, removed Barton and the other deacons from their posts…
Read more of the article here at The Church Report...
FOR DISCUSSION: Can you take a hint? How do you know when and if it’s time to go?
Todd
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Hi... I'm Todd Rhoades. I'm a Christ-follower, husband, father and I love to connect leaders with other leaders. Hopefully you'll find something here at MMI you like and will return often. If you want, you can find out more about me or follow my every step on Twitter.
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Post Your Comments:Guess this little church doesn’t have any organizational documents like Bylaws that would address such matters. Clearly there’s no unity there, so if it were me (as a congregant), I’d be looking for the exit.
At first I thought, “Oh no not again!”
But then I read the rest of article. Granted we don’t really know both sides of the story, but let’s assume this pastor isn’t out to take advantage of the church. It sounds like a deacon usurped the pastoral authority and refused accountability.
Why did trouble start when the Pastor wanted financial accountability?
Taken at face value of the article, I am inclined to applaud the pastor if he is truly trying to bring order to a church dominated by someone who is not the God appointed leader of the church.
Granted, I don’t know the whole story. I am just responding to the facts presented in this article.
Aren’t we supposed avoid going to court?
I would like to know the answer to Todd’s question...vis a vis “When do we know when or if it is time to go?” Any thoughts?
1. The church board arranges an interview for you at another church and pays for a one-way ticket
2. The church Chairman parks a U haul in your driveway and the congregation shows up to help you pack
3. The sign on the church’s front lawn reads “Meet the New Pastor this Sunday”
4. The church Chairman (who is a real estate agent) shows your house while your gone for the Sunday morning service
5. The worship leader who normally introduces you before the sermon closes the service in prayer before you get up to preach
6. You read about your replacement in the local paper
7. Your bank teller greets you with “sorry to see you go, are you here to empty your account of its last 32 cents?”
OR SERIOUSLY…
8. Your church’s leadership asks you do something immoral.
9. Your church stands defiantly against something God has clearly called you to do
10. You sense God leading you in a different direction and it is prayerfully confirmed and blessed by the leaders who know you best.
Any organization even if it is a religious one should be accountable.
Granted we don’t really know both sides of the story, but let’s assume this pastor isn’t out to take advantage of the church. It sounds like a deacon usurped the pastoral authority and refused accountability.
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Sorry to say we got the say Situation in our home church the Leach will not leave he been vote out twice. He run and get no treapassing waring against the members. He Refuse to GO.
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