Exiles From Ruptured Church Sift Through the Ashes

Today two friends from my old church, North Miami’s New Dawn Ministries, came by to visit. They’re a married couple. I will call them Pepe and Lourdes. Pepe is the uncle of the pastor’s wife.

If you read my blog regularly, you know the pastor was charged with several counts of child molestation. He started molesting his sister’s daughter when she was 5 or 6, and it continued until she was in her teens. He confessed in front of the church. It’s not like his guilt is in doubt.

I am told it happened like this: a friend of the victim told the pastor’s sister, and she went after the pastor. She told him she would keep it quiet if he resigned and stopped preaching. He continued preaching, so she called the police. She hit Facebook and exposed everything, and she accused the pastor’s wife of turning a blind eye.

Today I learned something new: the pastor is still preaching. My friends say he even preached in jail. Is that commendable? You tell me. A truly repentant rapist could tell other prisoners about his filthy deeds, and he could talk about how he failed God and how God was helping him go forward. Is that what’s happening? Doubtful. Based on the pastor’s past behavior, it would surprise me.

Anyone can repent. Anyone can change. People have to be permitted to change. They have to be forgiven. None of this means we have to take them back or restore them to their former positions.

He killed his church, so if he is preaching outside of jail, some idiot who runs a church must be allowing him to speak. I hope he’s not receiving offerings. God will only stand for so much.

I learned something else, about a branch the church tried to open while I was a member. The branch was in Winter Haven. People from the church supported the place with offerings. New Dawn Winter Haven closed, and no one informed the members in Miami. The pastors kept the branch’s Facebook page open. I wondered why they didn’t inform us and take the page down. I think I know the answer. Today my friends said they continued accepting offerings after the branch closed. A cynical person would say they kept quiet about the branch’s collapse so they could continue taking money from donors.

Pepe was eating with the pastors, and a relative who didn’t know the church’s failure was a secret mentioned what had happened. The pastor’s wife’s eyes opened wide. She knew they had been busted. Pepe had been supporting the dead church. He asked where his donations had been going.

Sounds a lot like wire fraud, but it looks like it was par for the course. It was not the first allegation of financial corruption.

I don’t know what to make of my former pastors. People who deal with addicts say they reform only when they hit rock bottom. My pastors don’t seem to be that teachable. Rock bottom is when you’re sitting in jail charged with numerous counts of molestation. If you’re still trying to hold services after that, there is probably no hope for you.

The pastor’s wife is dying from a brain tumor. Their petty criminal son is keeping Twitter hot with crazy posts insulting God in profane terms. Looks like he is still not very close to the moment of repentance he needs. The whole family is crumbling.

If I had to guess, I would say the pastor is preaching in order to make money. He had a government job as an inspector, but he quit to preach full-time. That job is gone forever, so he has to preach or start mowing yards. Maybe he is preaching because he doesn’t want a minimum-wage job that requires exertion. He’s a very lazy man, and his pride makes him a poor fit for a zero-turn mower.

On September 12, he is expected to take a plea. Pepe says he was looking at 25 years. He was eligible for more time than that, but maybe the prosecutors told him to expect 25. The clerk’s website mentions a plea, so maybe he’ll do better. If he’s certain he’s going to prison, he has no motivation to develop a new career right now. He could still pick up some offerings while he awaits sentencing, however.

He’s not going to get probation. He can forget that. He’s going away. You can’t confess to raping a 6-year-old or even a 14-year-old and get probation.

Maybe when he preached in jail, he was sounding other prisoners out to find out if preaching can protect him from beatings. Maybe he hopes prison inmates will overlook the nature of his crimes if he preaches convincingly and develops a following.

His continued preaching is a mystery to me. I don’t know what the explanation is. I very much doubt he has turned a corner, so I’m looking for other motives.

Pepe and Lourdes got pushed out of the church. It didn’t matter that they were the pastor’s wife’s uncle and aunt. We had several positions in the church. Armorbearer, deacon, and minister were positions. Pepe was a minister. This was as high up as one could get without running the place.

Pepe got upset because the pastor’s wife booted people off the prayer team. We had a team that prayed together over the phone. A lady named Daisy had a mentally impaired daughter named Bianca, and they were on the team. They left the church, and the pastor’s wife said they had to leave the team. A friend of mine in another city also got kicked off. She got the boot because she was my friend. That’s my impression, anyway. Pepe was not happy, and he said so. The pastors drove him out.

Pepe is retired. He worked for the government, fixing diesel equipment. He somehow ended up with a double pension at a relatively early age. He left Miami last year and moved to Kissimmee. He loves it up here. He and I were extracted from the snakepit of Dade County, and our lives are very pleasant now. The pastors are still down there, and you can see how things worked out for them.

It’s almost as if being persecuted by these people is an indication that your life will go well.

Maybe it is.

I’m not better off than the pastor because I’m a good person. I am far from good. My hope is that God is helping me because I keep confessing and repenting. Today Pepe said the pastor once told him he thought the grace the church was experiencing was so great, there was no need to confess. It appears that he was wrong about that.

Human beings impress me, for good or bad. Some people do unselfish things I can’t imagine doing. Some people behave so stupidly, I can’t comprehend it.

In a few days, the pastor will either plead guilty or go to trial. If he pleads, his sentence will be on the clerk’s site shortly thereafter.

I never thought I would see something like this happen to him. It has to be the power of pride.