The board of trustees at Second Baptist Church of Starkville still do not have access to financial information the Oktibbeha County Circuit Court ordered be turned over months ago.
Circuit Judge Jim Kitchens set a deadline for Friday for church deacons to give trustees access to bank accounts and other financial information they had previously been denied. He also ordered Pastor Joseph Stone and the deacons to provide trustees keys to the Yeates Street church building because the locks had been changed.
As of Tuesday, however, attorney Dorsey Carson — who is representing the church trustees in a circuit court civil suit against Stone and Head Deacon Terry Miller — said the defendants had still not complied.
Carson filed a lawsuit in 2015 on the trustees’ behalf claiming the pastor and deacons paid contractor Donald Crowther about $400,000 for a new sanctuary he never actually built without trustee approval. The contractor began dirt work at the site, adjacent to the current sanctuary, but no work has been done on the project since July 2015.
Crowther also faces criminal charges of fraud.
Both the pastor and deacons avoided contempt rulings in separate hearings on July 17-18 and Sept. 11. But during the latter hearing, Kitchens set the Friday deadline for deacons to turn over financial information from two bank accounts they opened after the lawsuit was filed.
Carson said the board still did not have bank statements, checkbooks, invoices and documents of “love offerings” for the pastor, as well as keys to the church and the secretary’s computer password.
“We’ll be going back to the judge to get him to enforce his order,” Carson said.
No new hearings have been scheduled in the case.
William Starks, attorney for Stone and Miller, said as far as he knew, the trustees did not have the information but added he is not the attorney for the deacons.
Meanwhile, the deacons’ effort to keep trustees from using church funds to pay Carson has failed, at least for now.
Madison attorney Matt Baldridge, who the deacons — aside from Miller — retained, filed a request in June in chancery court for an injunction on those legal fees coming from church coffers, pending an accounting of money the trustees had already spent on the circuit court suit.
Chancery Judge Kenneth Burns on Friday transferred the request to circuit court.
“The crux of it is the church body is requesting an accounting of all the money that has been spent in relation to the ongoing litigation between the board of trustees, the pastor, the deacon chair and the … general contractor,” Baldridge said. “Furthermore, the church body is asking for a temporary freeze on any additional money being spent whether by the board of trustees or the finance committee until the accounting can be had and the court can determine the authority of each committee and what the authority of the board of trustees is vis-a-vis the church body.”
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