The story of this Florida church's ouster shows the pitfalls facing the SBC on abuse reform

Depending where someone was on June 14, New Orleans or Vero Beach, Florida, a different story about Freedom Church prevailed.

In New Orleans, nearly 10,000 delegates at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting voted to uphold the ouster of Freedom Church over concerns about clergy sexual abuse.

But parishioners sitting in the pews of Freedom Church in Vero Beach heard a different message that day.

“Whenever you forget who you are and who your authority is, you start meddling in low kingdoms,” guest preacher Jeremi Clanton said during a special prayer service, according to a Facebook video.

Clanton portrayed Freedom Church as innocent, an underdog now free of an overbearing denomination that hindered the church’s potential. Some Freedom Church members believe a counter-narrative that SBC leaders cooked up charges against the church’s pastor as a ploy to lay claim to the church’s property.

“You were born for such a time as this, for such a place as this," Clanton said. "God is not bothered by the condition and the social climate that is surrounding you."

Despite 96% of SBC delegates, called messengers, decisively saying otherwise, Freedom Church’s counter-narrative has found footing in an information void left by SBC leaders.

The outcome of the Freedom Church case — the first time the entire convention decided on the ouster of a church over concerns about abuse — showed the system at work. After repeatedly failing to draw a line on churches that covered up abuse, the full convention kicked out a church for abuse and potentially dealt it financial penalties.

But SBC leaders have poorly communicated key details about the case, highlighting the challenges still ahead for the nation's largest Protestant denomination as it works to implement abuse reform. The latest issues surround a process led by the SBC Credentials Committee, a volunteer-led group that evaluates reports about churches accused of mishandling abuse and potentially recommends a church’s ouster.

The credentials committee recommended Freedom Church's ouster for noncooperation with an inquiry. But delegates at the SBC annual meeting, called messengers, decided on the church's status for additional reasons while the church itself presented its counter-narrative.

"Freedom Church is facing rumors, innuendo and gossip without any authentic evidence to place us in a position of suffering massive losses," Freedom Church elder Tim Payne said in a statement. "We hope to be able to speak more openly after our matters are resolved."

Procedural issues with the credentials committee have long frustrated abuse survivors.

“I believe that many of the people on the credentials committee have good intentions but lack knowledge and or authority to act swiftly and fairly in every instance,” Jules Woodson, an abuse survivor who leads a nonprofit to provide survivors with counseling resources, said in an interview.

Drawing from personal experience, Woodson and other advocates see changes to the credentials committee as an essential part of larger abuse reform in the SBC.

Messengers at the 2019 SBC annual meeting voted to establish the credentials committee with widespread support. But the approval followed a debate about the need for clearer guidelines for the credentials committee, which ended in a dissatisfactory way for many.

The Freedom Church case, though a best-case scenario in many ways, still illustrates that indecision.

“There must be clear policies and procedures and guidelines to follow,” Woodson said. “Good intentions will only go so far.”

How the case of Freedom Church missed the mark

The turning point for Freedom Church — from stability to the scrutiny of thousands of Southern Baptists’ and the potential to lose its property — was November 2021.

Longtime lead pastor Roger Ball, who had been in his role since 1999 and was beloved by most, unexpectedly died that month, immediately creating questions about a successor. Some members looked to the church’s director of discipleship, Richard Demsick, who started just a few months before.

When Demsick came to Freedom Church, congregants might have known about his recent 1.5-year hiatus from ministry during which he created viral videos featuring himself running while discussing racism.

Initially, Freedom Church congregants likely didn’t know about Demsick’s background with the Anglican Church of North America, a denomination that ordained Demsick and later disciplined him.

Demsick is “no longer a priest and in good standing,” ACNA Gulf Atlantic Diocese spokesperson Jessica Jones said in a statement. Jones declined to provide most details about Demsick’s case but said he violated a church policy that includes 12 areas of discipline. Those range from heresy and false doctrine to sexual immorality and habitual neglect of public worship.

Demsick spent about a decade with the ACNA-affiliated Christ Church Vero Beach but left in 2019, about two years after his ordination. During that time, he and his wife of seven years got divorced, according to court records.

Freedom Church members were divided over Demsick’s potential appointment as pastor following Ball’s death, though it’s unclear why. Payne, the Freedom Church elder, said in a statement Demsick was still in good standing with the ACNA upon his hiring at Freedom Church.

“I felt bitterness and resentment within the church,” said a congregant on Facebook in December 2021. “God sent Roger to be the shepherd… I can’t see anyone that can fill his shoes.”

Ultimately, the congregation voted to appoint Demsick as pastor in March 2022.

Whether the church knew about Demsick’s background at that point, local and state SBC leaders did. Shortly after Demsick’s appointment, the local Treasure Cove Baptist Association and Florida Baptist Convention took early steps in a process to ultimately disfellowship Freedom Church.

Both the local association and state convention declined to further comment on information that led to such swift action.

Most details about the case remained undisclosed until the SBC annual meeting last month, when SBC Executive Committee member Dean Inserra addressed the convention to argue against Freedom Church. Inserra said Freedom Church “took zero action” against Demsick for “an admitted pattern of sexual misconduct with women under his pastoral care and supervision.”

Inserra’s remarks not only contradicted an earlier speech by a Freedom Church elder, it was hard distinguishing the sourcing behind different information — from local and state SBC leaders versus the credentials committee, which recommended the church’s ouster for different reasons — and the relevance of information for the messengers’ decision.

Amid this confusion, Demsick and Freedom Church members had already begun championing a different narrative.

“I have been lied about, betrayed, beaten down, mocked, and bullied by the church,” Demsick said in a Facebook post. “When money, comfort, and ultimately the power goes one way few stand even for what they believe is right.”

Demsick did not respond to a request for comment.

Some Freedom Church members have claimed SBC leaders manufactured allegations against Demsick to trigger a reverter clause in the deed that says the church loses its property “should (it) fail or refuse to follow, or should renounce the doctrines, faith and practices” of the SBC. The property’s estimated value is $1.8 million, according to county property records.

How other cases missed the mark

A year before Freedom Church's credentials committee saga began, another involving Woodson and a Texas church came to a disappointing end.

“At this time, we do not have any information that causes us to conclude that the church does not have a faith and practice which closely identifies with the Convention’s adopted statement of faith,” the credentials committee said in a Nov. 16, 2020 email to Woodson.

The note marked the end of an inquiry into StoneBridge Church in Texas, formerly named Woodlands Parkway Baptist Church, where Woodson’s abuse occurred 22 years before.

After Woodson went public with her story in 2018, former Woodlands youth pastor Andy Savage admitted to Woodson’s allegations of sexual abuse. Also, a former Woodlands associate pastor resigned from his present-day church in response to revelations about Woodlands leadership failing to report Savage’s abuse to law enforcement.

But not everyone adopted the same posture, specifically current StoneBridge leadership. The church denied any serious wrongdoing in public statements, a sign to Woodson the church sought to evade accountability for past actions.

In just the past few weeks, a former StoneBridge member provided new records to Woodson, including emails and notes from conversations with StoneBridge pastors, that further exhibits the church’s defensiveness.

“To suggest that anyone at Stonebridge participated in a conspiracy to silence Jules, or ignored the misconduct, is simply not accurate,” StoneBridge leaders said in a Jan. 2018 email to members, according to a copy The Tennessean obtained.

After launching an inquiry into StoneBridge, the credentials committee ultimately decided against recommending the church’s ouster because it had implemented new policies.

But to Woodson, that’s not addressing the problem. “If you want to show genuine repentance, which requires restitution and action, then you have to get it right,” she said in an interview.

Guidepost Solutions, a third-party firm, reached a similar conclusion through an audit into the credentials committee as part of a larger abuse investigation into the SBC.

“Even if a church had mishandled sexual abuse allegations in the past, the CC’s (credentials committee) focus was on…present leadership and policies,” Guidepost said in a May 2022 report.

StoneBridge is one of 12 churches the credentials committee launched inquiries into and closed without recommending the church’s ouster, Guidepost found. But those outcomes could have been different if the credentials committee’s approach was different.

Guidepost said the credentials committee lacks investigatory power, creating a disproportionate reliance on information from local or state SBC leaders rather than reaching its own conclusions through a fully independent evaluation.

How to not miss the mark

The case of Freedom Church reached levels previous ones hadn’t.

“It affirmed the process at several different levels,” said former SBC President J.D. Greear, a North Carolina pastor.

In the Freedom Church case, Greear said the credentials committee’s “burden of proof” was showing Freedom Church wasn’t trustworthy, which it did.

The SBC has disfellowshipped only three other churches for abuse since 2019 and all of them for employing registered sex offenders. The SBC Executive Committee, which manages denomination business outside the annual meeting, decided on all three ousters.

The credentials committee was a solution to a conflict between Greear, who publicly denounced 10 churches for mishandling abuse, and some SBC Executive Committee staff and members who resisted discipline against those 10 churches. Those same executive committee leaders, though they ultimately supported the idea of establishing a credentials committee, fought attempts to refine the credentials committee.

Messengers at the 2019 SBC annual meeting sought to clarify guidelines for the credentials committee — one proposal disqualified churches that “demonstrated, without repentance, indifference in addressing sexual abuse” and another, churches that “condone, dismiss or leave unaddressed sexual abuse” — but to no avail.

“You’ve got nine volunteers and you’re basically trying to build a plane in the air as you fly it,” Greear said. “It was the right first step and I think they’re taking a lot of the steps necessary to go where they need to.”

The SBC Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force plans to address some of the issues with the credentials committee by hiring new staff liaisons and drafting clearer guidelines.

A volunteer-led committee can only do so much to enforce best practices for dealing with abuse, Woodson said. “When you are dealing with a serious issue like sexual abuse, it deserves some serious commitment.”

Related: How key SBC decisions on abuse, women pastors raise fundamental questions on church identity

Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on Twitter @liamsadams.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Southern Baptists and Freedom Church: The challenges on abuse reform