A supporter tries to hide the Rev. Juan McFarland, left, from the cameras as they leave the Montgomery County Courthouse during a break in the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church hearing in Montgomery, Ala., on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2014. A judge temporarily removed McFarland as pastor of the church.
(Photo: Mickey Welsh, Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser)
An Alabama pastor with AIDS who admitted to having sex with female church members was temporarily banned as pastor Thursday.
Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Charles Price issued a preliminary injunction, sought by deacons and trustees of Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Montgomery. Price ruled that the Rev. Juan D. McFarland must turn in his church keys and his church Mercedes-Benz and then stay away from the church he has led for 24 years.
Members were jubilant after the ruling.
Shiloh board of trustees Chairman Lee Sanford said it is time for the church to begin healing.
“We have to move to repair the damage,” Sanford said.
He said church leaders now will begin reaching out to any other churches that might have had to deal with similar rifts.
McFarland, 47, admitted during a church service in September that he had sex with female church members inside the church building while knowing he had AIDS and also that he had used drugs and misused church funds.
The board of deacons of the church had filed a lawsuit against McFarland after he refused to step down as pastor.
The deacons have said that McFarland and church member Marc Anthoni Peacock changed the locks on the church to prevent them from entering and have changed the names on the church bank account.
The lawsuit states Peacock threatened to use “castle law” to keep the deacons out of the church. The attorney representing the deacons said that reference was a threat to shoot the deacons should they try to enter the church.
Peacock, who originally was named in the lawsuit, has resigned his membership of the church, and the case against him has been dismissed.
The plaintiffs agreed to release a statement that they did not mean to imply that Peacock “is anything less than a gentleman of integrity and character.”
McFarland walked out of the courthouse Thursday without commenting. He attended without an attorney.
The judge set a second hearing for Dec. 1 to decide whether to issue a permanent injunction.
Julian McPhillips, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said that by then it will “probably be a moot point,” and that McFarland will have moved on.
The only reason McPhillips could think of for a second hearing would be if it is discovered that money had been siphoned out of church accounts. He said that does not appear likely.
“I think we stopped it at the last moment,” McPhillips said.
A case involving Wells Fargo Bank remains unresolved for the time being. The bank sent a check for the more than $52,000 in a church account to Montgomery Circuit Court and asked that the court decide who should have access to it.
Nathan Williams, chairman of the church’s board of deacons before McFarland dismissed him, testified during the earlier hearing that on Oct. 5, the church members voted to terminate McFarland as pastor.
Williams said that McFarland admitted to being HIV positive during a service Aug. 31. Then, on Sept. 14, he confessed to having sex with female church members inside the church, using drugs and misusing church funds. On Sept. 21, he admitted that he had full-blown AIDS.
On Sept. 28, Williams said, he “started dismissing folks.”
Williams and Sanford said McFarland told the congregation that God directed him to make a public confession.
Peacock testified that after McFarland had made his confessions, he started to make revelations about the deacons themselves.
Peacock mentioned one deacon who McFarland accused of improprieties of his own.
All of these revelations came out during Sunday church services, according to people on both sides of the dispute.
Peacock testified that there was no dispute about McFarland’s power until he began dismissing deacons.
At the Oct. 5 service, there was an 80-1 vote to remove McFarland as pastor. Peacock testified that the vote to remove McFarland was “during worship” and should not have been conducted at that time.
The following week, McFarland changed the locks on the church and changed who could access the church’s bank accounts, Williams said.
At the most recent service, there were guards at the doors of the church to ensure that no unauthorized people could enter, Williams said.
Charles Anderson, who represented Peacock, said that his client “does not approve or condone what the pastor confessed to” but felt there was another way of going about making changes at the church.
SOURCE: Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser – Scott Johnson
