A House Divided: Long-Time Parishioners at Friendship Baptist Church Question Its Financial Transparency

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“People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing!” exclaimed Michele Lewis Adamou, a member of Vallejo’s Friendship Missionary Baptist Church (FMBC). She and about 75 other members gathered outside the entrance to the house of worship on Sunday, January 2 for a “community prayer rally” to protest what they say is a lack of financial transparency in the church and a call for unity with church leaders whom they say have been uncommunicative about their concerns.

At least two members of the church claim that they were threatened with suspension or banishment for requesting to see financial records.

Members allege that a centralized decision-making body eschews the democratic process and makes all the decisions for the church, including financial ones. Parishioners said that they have asked to see the church’s accounting but have been barred from doing so. Nearly 150 church members signed a petition demanding to see the church’s financial records for the last five years. Requests to meet with the interim pastor Rev. Jeffrey W. Benford, Sr, to discuss their concerns have also repeatedly not been honored, they said.

“Pastor Benford has repeatedly denied members the right to bring motions to congregational meetings after saying that he would,” Member Rosemary Louissaint alleges.

But the unkindest cut arrived in their mailboxes from an attorney last week: “Effective immediately, your right to vote and right to enter FMBC property and/or occupy any part of the FMBC campus are hereby suspended for 60 days.”

According to the letter, the reverend cited the group’s “breach” of CDC guidelines by creating a “super-spreader event” at the church when they disrupted Sunday services the previous week by displaying signs, “even while I was preaching.”

I obtained a cease and desist letter from the church’s lawyer to the attorney for the protesting members, in which the parishioners are referred to as “rioters” who “caused mayhem.”

Members of the church told me that they did enter the sanctuary with protest signs, but that they put them down during his sermon. All members at the Sunday protest, many of which were seniors, were wearing masks outside. Members told me that the church requires everyone to be vaccinated.

Members allege that the trouble began with former Pastor Dante Quick, who served at the church from 2010 to 2021, and who recently moved to the First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in New Jersey. Quick was an influential voice for the Black community in Vallejo, regularly hosting town halls with City leaders to discuss issues that affect people of color. But long-time FMBC member Geri Spearman describes him as a “chameleon” who eroded trust in the church by jettisoning a democratic board of trustees for his own, hand-picked “Council of Jethro.”

The Council consists of five people who members allege make big decisions for the church with no transparency or input from parishioners. The Council of Jethro consists of former Vallejo Superintendent Dr. Ramona Bishop, “A Man And His Hat” store owner Clifford Dawson; attorney Yolanda Jackson-Thomas, Deputy Executive Director at the Bar Association of San Francisco; Edison Kelly, Ed.D, Director of Parent and School Support for the Vallejo Unified School District, and Larry Barnes, who is retired from the post office.

Spearman alleges that there was $500,000 raised for a stewardship program that has not been adequately accounted for publicly. She also alleges that Pastor Quick was making questionable expenditures that were granted by the Council of Jethro.

I spoke with Pastor Quick’s assistant in New Jersey but did not get a call back from the pastor.

Rosemary Louissaint said she couldn’t speak to any specific misuse of funds, but that the church’s lack of financial transparency breeds suspicion and rumors.

“When people can’t see the truth for themselves or get accurate data, they start trying to figure out what might be happening,” she said. “If we ask to see the books, we’re told ‘no,’ we have no rights. If you are totally transparent, showing people the books should be a no brainer.”

“It’s something about those financial reports that they are hiding. I’m convinced of it,” said member Spearman. “I was a federal investigator, and I know that this is about the money.”

Financial impropriety has indeed affected the church in the past. A member of the church allegedly stole money over a few years, something for which the woman was taken to civil court by FMBC in 2019. In its court filings, the church accused Nichelle Miller of “fraud, theft, receipt of stolen property, breach of fiduciary duty, professional negligence (accounting), and negligence.” The case was eventually settled, with Miller agreeing to a payment plan, members said.

But if the church had better checks and balances, Rosemary said, nothing like that would ever have happened.

Current and former members of the congregation spoke with me about problems they have with the church under condition of anonymity, citing concerns with retaliation. A flier created by the protestors says that they have been “afraid, bullied, threatened, silenced, and labeled as evil.” The flier outlines their demands: The financial records of the church including profit and loss for the last five years; how $400,000 in tithes and offerings has been spent and the $500,000 set aside for stewardship; why the nonprofit status for the church was dissolved in 2019; and to show the financial records for New Dawn, an adjunct of the church that focuses on community development, which has been funded by the Department of Justice and First 5 Solano.

Members allege that not only are they barred from seeing the church’s financial information, something as people who regularly tithe say they are entitled to, but that the church dissolved its nonprofit status and is also not registered with the IRS. The church filed for a nonprofit designation in April of 2019, but the record shows that it expired in February of 2021. A search of the IRS’s nonprofit database came up blank for the church, though the New Dawn Corporation did appear. Pastor Quick served on the board of New Dawn and the organization was voted “Nonprofit of the Year” by Senator Bill Dodd in 2020.

I obtained a letter from California Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber stating “no information is available from this office regarding the financial condition, status of licenses, if any, business activities or practices of the entity” known as Friendship Missionary Baptist Church.

Long-time members are leaning on their faith to move through what they hope is a temporary problem that can be solved. Those gathered for the prayer-in on Sunday say they came to try and spur unity and call for transparency from the church, which is run by people they “love” but they see as straying off-path.

Member Patricia Bayisden said that she has been a member of the church since 1951 and that what is occurring there is very upsetting to her.

“Lord! I am so hurt and disgusted!” she exclaimed to the crowd. “Lord, take this away from me!”

Bayisden described what was happening in her church as a “death.”

“I know death,” she said. “I lost my only son.”

Various members stepped up to share their thoughts and pray at the gathering, and the crowd regularly broke into gospel and civil rights songs.

“Ain’t gonna let nobody, turn me ’round…” they intoned, along with “Stand up! Stand up for Jesus!”

Person after person stepped forward at the prayer-in and spoke their piece.

“We just want fairness and honesty!” said one parishioner.

“Stand up for truth, righteousness, and justice!” said another.

One woman adjusted her coat in the cold wind, stepped forward, and addressed another issue some members have, that of voting in the church.

“We all as Black people died for our right to vote,” she said, distressed that a vote in her church appeared to be rigged.

Members I spoke with said that during a Zoom meeting, several things were voted on. They allege that though there were only 104 people present at the meeting, the final vote came down to 63-64 on the side of the Council of Jethro and the pastor, with over 60 people abstaining.

No one on the Council of Jethro spoke with me for this story. Dr. Ramona Bishop had no comment and said that Interim Pastor Benford was the spokesperson for the church. Calls to the church and Rev. Benford were no returned. Messages to Yolanda Jackson-Thomas and Dr. Edison Kelly were not returned. Larry Barnes could not be reached.

Charisse Anderson lives in Los Angeles and has been involved in the financial administration of churches. Though she is in no way connected with FMBC, she spoke to best practices around financial accountability for churches. She said it is customary for financial information to remain confidential as a privacy issue when it refers to specific amounts that members donate to a religious institution. However, she said, “accounting, transparency, and disclosure” should be the norm and members should be able to see the numbers.

“There should always be transparency at least of the business of the church, no matter what denomination— Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist, what have you,” she said. “General accounting should be able to say, ‘this is what the operating budget is, this is what the bills were, these are the operating costs, this is income received and what expenses are laid out…,’ like any business.”

Anderson stressed the need for “checks and balances,” something Spearman alleges are no longer being honored.

Spearman said that when she questioned financial records for the church, she was threatened with being permanently removed from the congregation and that Pastor quick preached a sermon about her.

“He said I was disruptive,” she said. “He was calling for a vote to kick me out of the church. That’s unprecedented in the Black Baptist Church.”

Spearman said that some people came to her and said, “‘Listen, you need to apologize, because he’s going to kick you out of the church. He’s going to tear the church apart.'”

Deacon Rosemond Louissaint says he represented a member at a business meeting, Tyrone Wise, who was threatened with suspension after he asked for financial information. At Sunday’s gathering, he told the crowd that what was happening in the church’s administration reminded him of the dictatorship that he grew up with in Haiti. Louissaint came to the church after it sponsored he and another young boy in Florida who had escaped the brutal Jean-Claude Duvalier regime.

One thing that is holding this group together, however, is their faith.

“Everybody understands that we love God,” said Rosemary. “And we believe that God would have us all to be transparent, honest, and true… it’s like that saying, “In God we trust… all others need to provide data.”

*This story was updated with information from the Opengovus.com page, regarding the church’s nonprofit status.

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