Proverbs 22:8 “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity,
and the rod of his fury will fail”
For over a year there have been rumors floating around in LCG that Patrick and Elizabeth Scarborough were going to sue the church. The rumors surfaced big time at the LCG Winter Family Weekend in 2014 but then nothing seemed to happen so they died down again. A few Sabbaths ago the rumor started to reemerge. I called a few of my friends in the ministry but they said they hadn’t heard anything about it. Then I called a friend who is on LCG’s Counsel of Elders. He too had not heard anything about it. My source (an LCG member with family working at headquarters) was pretty confident which got me wondering so I decided to investigate further.
I started with a call to the Mecklenburg County Courthouse and much to my surprise they confirmed that LCG is being sued but they were unwilling to give me details over the phone. They suggested that the file is a matter of public record and said I could read it myself. I made the drive to Uptown Charlotte and got the gut wrenching surprise of a lifetime.
LCG is being sued for “The Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress” and both Rod Meredith and Rod McNair are being sued personally and in their official capacities for “Defamation of Character” (Slander) and for the “Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress”. The complaint made for jaw dropping reading and it went on and on and on. There were close to 150 items listed. It looks like they also tried to sue Bob League but that part of it was dismissed or withdrawn.
Mr. Meredith has clearly been hiding this information from his ministers, the Council of Elders and all of us tithe payer members who are now paying the bill for 2 lawyers (there were 2 LCG lawyers names and signatures) in a large and expensive looking Charlotte firm (Hedrick Gardner).
I guess we now know why Mr. Meredith is extra desperate for members to send in more money.
I guess we all now know why Mr. Meredith keeps alluding to the fact that the church is about to “suffer persecution”. It looks like he’s going to try to blame this lawsuit on “persecution” instead of his own harshness and unwillingness to behave in a Christian manor.
I have slowly become more and more aware of the complete lack of the fruits of the Spirit in my church leaders. I have watched as they bully and manipulate. I have seen these men that I once held in such high esteem, destroy the lives of good people I have known and loved without so much as a glance backward. I have observed the apparent and complete lack of mercy, justice and fairness in these leading men who are supposed to exemplify “Christ living in them”. It has been disappointing and heart breaking.
The lawsuit was initiated in September of 2015 and they have already gone to court once. It looked like LCG tried to get everything dismissed but was mostly unsuccessful.
I’m left wondering who will be called in to questioning when depositions start because so many of us in LCG were friends with the Scarborough’s. Many of us still wonder and talk about why our ministers treated them the way they did. Several of us have questioned but have never been given a solid answer. It makes it seem like they never really had a good reason to do what they did to these people that so many of us knew and loved. Many of us still miss them and think of them every day. If we are called in for questioning and we speak well of the Scarborough’s, will we be kicked out of church and lose all of our friends? Are we expected to lie and cover things up?
I’m also left wondering, why didn’t Mr. Meredith try to work things out with them before it got to this point? I would think it wouldn’t be worth the huge amount of money and negative publicity that it will cost LCG in the end (no matter what the verdict is).
Is Mr. Meredith’s unwillingness to be a peacmaker going to bankrupt the Living Church of God? Is the stubbornness and unfair action of one or two men going to ruin the organization that thousands of people love? How can they allow this to happen?
I am sharing this information with your readers because the LCG tithe-payers they deserve to know that their hard-earned money is lining the pockets of worldly lawyers when it could be used to preach the gospel to the world.