“Celebration is praying for a decision for all events concerned,” an announcement from the church mentioned. “We stay targeted on advancing the dominion of God.”
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The founders of the 12,000-member Celebration Church are suing the Jacksonville megachurch’s hand-picked trustees to keep away from being ousted over claims of economic irregularities.
World Senior Pastor Stovall Weems and his spouse, Kerri, say of their lawsuit that Weems was wrongly suspended from his submit in January after a trustee “falsely claimed that Pastor Stovall was improperly manipulating and misdirecting the church’s funds.”
In actuality, the go well with argues, Weems had confronted the trustee after discovering “fraud on the church” and the trustee reacted by “feeding the opposite trustees and senior church members lies and misinformation.”
The go well with and a response from a church lawyer commerce dueling claims of improprieties, together with:
- $700,000 in improper billing by the trustee;
- misuse of greater than $1 million from the federal authorities’s pandemic-era Paycheck Safety Program;
- and a 50-percent markup over 4 months on the value of a house a Weems firm offered the church as a parsonage.
Weems and his spouse are asking Circuit Choose Marianne Aho for a court docket order that, amongst different issues, would restore Weems to his lead function on the church the couple based in 1998; restart his wage with again pay since January; and discard modifications to church bylaws the trustees permitted then that created a path to droop him.
The couple wish to “permit for a full and thorough investigation of any and all wrongdoing involving the church’s board of trustees, current and former officers, staff, and different events and organizations that contributed to the dispute,” mentioned a go well with filed final month by the Weemses’ lawyer, Christopher J. Greene.
However a lawyer representing the trustees says the dispute is not one of the court docket’s enterprise, and that having a choose determine a struggle about church management would violate protections within the U.S. Structure’s First and 14th Amendments.
“At stake is management of the church — the essence of a spiritual controversy into which this court docket is prohibited from intervening,” lawyer Lee Wedekind III wrote final week when he requested Aho to dismiss the case.
A listening to on the dismissal movement is scheduled for Might 20.
The dispute’s impact on church operations has been restricted as a result of the lead pastor function switched final yr to Senior Pastor Tim Timberlake, who conducts companies and is the face of the church for a lot of.
Headquartered off Baymeadows Highway close to Interstate 295, Celebration has grown exponentially to incorporate places in Amelia Island, Orlando, South Florida, North Carolina and Washington, D.C., plus operations in Europe and Africa. A spokeswoman for Weems mentioned the church has about 300 staff.
Church officers mentioned Weems is in ‘not good standing’ throughout investigation
Church officers haven’t publicly introduced the rift with Weems however ready an announcement for members who inquired that mentioned trustees had positioned Weems in “not good standing” whereas an inside investigation was accomplished. That was almost accomplished when the lawsuit was filed, the assertion mentioned.
“Our want was for this inside battle to stay a personal matter, and we’re saddened for the ache this case has induced for therefore many,” the assertion mentioned. “…Our investigation is ongoing and won’t be impeded. We’re assured in God’s plan for Celebration and that in the end reality will prevail.”
The church’s govt pastor, Wayland Wiseman, mentioned in written remarks Tuesday that Celebration has thrived below Timberlake and the church doesn’t plan to remark whereas its investigation continues.
“Celebration is praying for a decision for all events concerned,” the assertion mentioned. “We stay targeted on advancing the dominion of God.”
Particulars haven’t been launched about monetary preparations talked about within the go well with, however parts of court docket filings point out them ominously.
Included as an exhibit to the trustees movement to dismiss, a Jan. 4 electronic mail apparently despatched from Weems to trustee Kevin Cormier and copied to different church leaders speaks of “habits associated to fraudulent billing, legal usury and potential embezzlement.
“That is critical 2nd diploma and third levels [sic] legal felony habits,” added the e-mail, which mentioned the message was discover to Cormier of “me dismissing you instantly” from the trustees.
Wedekind’s movement to dismiss mentioned that, in December, the trustees had discovered of worrisome monetary transactions together with the church’s buy of a parsonage from an organization that Weems managed.
The church paid just below $1.3 million for the house on Black Hammock Island in June 2021, about 50 p.c greater than Weems’ firm paid for the house in February 2021, in accordance with property information. Throughout that very same four-month interval, the median gross sales value for a Jacksonville-area single-family house rose 17 p.c, to $330,000, in accordance with the Northeast Florida Affiliation of Realtors.
In written solutions to Instances-Union questions, Weems’s spokeswoman mentioned Tuesday that the house wanted updates when it was purchased in February and that these had been “contemplated all alongside by all events concerned.” Metropolis constructing inspection information do not mirror any permits issued on the home final yr.
Movement claims PPP mortgage funded ‘Weems-managed entity’
The movement to dismiss additionally asserted that greater than $1 million the church acquired as a mortgage by way of the federal Paycheck Safety Program was used to fund a “Weems-managed entity” and to spend money on a digital foreign money system.
Not one of the questionable transactions have been permitted by the trustees, Wedekind wrote, though the Weemses’ lawsuit mentioned the parsonage was permitted by the church’s compensation committee, which included trustees.
The spokeswoman for Weems mentioned the church’s audited monetary stories licensed that the PPP cash was used for functions the regulation allowed. She mentioned Weems invested $100,000 within the digital safety platform TurnCoin to create a retirement fund for longtime church staff and that the funding is price $1.5 million now, however that none of that was accomplished with PPP cash. The spokeswoman mentioned the Weemses by no means supposed to get any cash for themselves from that retirement fund.
The “Weems-managed entity,” Honey Lake Farms LLC, seems to be a part of an internet of equally named organizations surrounding a behavioral well being clinic in Madison County created by way of Celebration 5 years in the past.
Honey Lake Clinic advertises providing “a Christ-centered program that virtually heals previous wounds and equips individuals with Godly decision-making expertise to remodel their lives.” It’s a nonprofit that operates alongside Honey Lake Farms, based in 2017 because the nonprofit Celebration Care Ministries Inc. and nonetheless partially funded by the church.
The Weemses’ lawsuit says Cormier, the president of an organization that installs underground fueling techniques, pledged to donate $1 million price of in-kind companies to Honey Lake Farms, the place corporations that Cormier controls have been contracted for development and land-management work starting in 2018, earlier than he was a trustee.
As an alternative of working without cost, the go well with says, Cormier billed the church about $700,000 early final yr by way of a string of invoices with “imprecise descriptions of the work carried out and included requests for vital funds for work carried out on Kevin Cormier’s private property.”
The couple’s go well with says the church was billed $18,000 per 30 days as hire for a house Cormier owned that was being renovated and wasn’t liveable. Cormier additionally rented the church one other home, however billed the church $137,871 for renovations, the go well with mentioned.
“The church shouldn’t have been funding renovations to a house that was owned by Kevin and never by the church,” the lawsuit provides.
Cormier mentioned by electronic mail Tuesday that the claims in opposition to him are baseless.
“I’ve and can proceed to cooperate with the church’s investigation which has included the gathering of documentation” in regards to the declare, Cormier mentioned. “Celebration Church has been mine and my household’s church house for shut to 10 years. I sit up for an answer that honors God above all else.”