Pastor Contends AOG Officials Dismissed Him for Protesting Power Abuses
by Jim Brown
March 15, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A longtime Assemblies of God pastor says a godly district superintendent in the denomination was unjustly forced to resign his position in New York because top church officials simply did not like his style of leadership. In addition, the pastor claims that he too was dismissed for questioning the handling of the ordeal. In mid-December 2004, Assemblies of God General Superintendent Thomas Trask convened an emergency meeting of 21 New York presbyters, in which Superintendent Saied Adour was asked to agree to 14 restrictions on his ministry or else resign. When 68-year-old Adour surprised Trask by accepting the restrictions that would effectively strip him of all his duties and powers, the presbyters voted 17-3 that he resign.
In addition, Adour says he was offered a monetary bribe in the form of enhanced severance pay if he resigned. But Ray Barnett of Amsterdam (New York), a pastor in the denomination for 23 years, has called attention to the fact that no formal charges were ever leveled against Adour for moral, ethical, legal or doctrinal failure.
"It is simply incongruous with the very meaning of a voluntary resignation if 20 men are going to vote [on whether a minister must] resign," Barnett asserts. He says the action by the New York Presbytery violates the denomination's constitution and bylaws.
But after he criticized the treatment Adour received, the veteran Assemblies of God pastor says he was dismissed by the denomination. And the minister contends that similar abuses of power by the denominational leadership have occurred across the United States.
The Assemblies of God "once were a very godly organization," Barnett says. "I do not believe that is entirely the case [anymore], though it has many godly ministers and missionaries." The minister believes the church has an opportunity to correct itself, and hopes this will happen.
However, if this kind of abuse of power "goes unchecked and uncorrected," Barnett notes, "I think the Assemblies of God has no other option except to go the way [of many other denominations], which is into complete backsliding over apostasy."
Dennis Brewer, Sr., an Assemblies of God elder and attorney with the American Center for Law and Justice in Texas, says there is an "epidemic" of officials in certain Assemblies of God districts declining to accept resignations, favoring instead "a kangaroo trial and conviction to punish the local pastor that dares buck the 'Sanhedrin'" of church leadership.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
