(OPINION) In April, Florida’s Celebration Church released a bombshell report on its founding pastor, claiming he was a “narcissist” who belittled staff and treated them like servants while he and his wife enjoyed a luxurious, jet-setting lifestyle and multiple mansions.
Now the embattled former megachurch leader, Stovall Weems, is waging a legal brawl against the organization he founded in 1998, claiming its board of trustees staged a “nefarious coup” to make him and his wife Kerri “pariahs” to their flock and destroy their ability to form ministries elsewhere. The non-denominational church, based in Jacksonville, has locations as far-flung as the Netherlands and Paris, and boasts about 20,000 members.
The 52-year-old Weems, who for months has denied any wrongdoing, filed a defamation suit against Celebration, some of its trustees, and the church’s lawyer last weekend in the latest salvo of a months-long clash in the courts and in the press.
“This case presents an egregious example of what happens when a group of people decide to weaponize false information to inflict harm and advance their personal and economic agendas, demonize someone they target as an adversary, and deceive the public into believing salacious lies are true,” opens the complaint, which was first reported by local TV station News4JAX.
Celebration’s damning report on Weems was posted on the church’s website, about two months after Weems filed for a temporary injunction to be reinstated into his job.
The document also accused Weems of making improper financial transactions, including flipping a house and selling it to the church for a $430,000 profit—and using $500,000 in federal COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds to invest in TurnCoin, an illiquid digital security that could be used by fans to buy or sell NFTs. (Weems denies these claims and also argues half the church’s board and others in church leadership invested in TurnCoin, too.)
“Many witnesses explained that the first rule to survive at the Church was ‘We don’t say no to Pastor.’ In this way, he was able to impose his will on others to force their compliance with his demands,” reads Celebration Church’s narrative. “Neither Stovall nor Kerri Weems served anyone at the Church. Instead, they demanded others to serve them—the antithesis of Christ-like personal sacrifice and service to others.” READ MORE
