AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL (AME) PASTORS, MINISTERS, AND OTHERS ARE GRAVELY HURT BY THE FRAUDULENT LOSS OF RETIREMENT SAVINGS. NOBODY WANTS TO SAY IT, BUT THE TRUTH IS SOMEBODY STOLE THE MONEY. THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN AT ANY CHURCH. MAY GOD HELP US.
pictured: Bishop Errenous McCloud of the African Methodist Episcopal Church addresses the quadrennial General Conference on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024, in Columbus, Ohio. (Courtesy Photo)
Instead, the Washington, D.C., native-turned-Californian is now “on loan” to the United Methodist Church, first pastoring a Fair Oaks congregation and recently appointed to one in Oakland.
“Pastoring is my ministry,” said Cain-Grizzell, whose lineage in the historically Black AME denomination traces back five generations. “It was something that I wanted to do, although I had to do it even if I didn’t want to do it.”
Cain-Grizzell is one of thousands of pastors, elders and staffers of the AME Church who lost substantial portions of their retirement savings due to an alleged mishandling of the accounts. A class action lawsuit filed in 2022 against the church calculated the total loss at $90 million. As of Wednesday, church leadership has not revealed a clear path to restore the funds.
As the AME Church opened its weeklong quadrennial General Conference on Wednesday in Columbus, Ohio, people like Cain-Grizzell questioned how the fallout from the financial crisis might be addressed at the meeting, which concludes on Aug. 28.
In the first business session of the conference, the church’s general counsel gave an update on the investigations and litigation related to the “legacy retirement plan” and there was an “intense debate” between two bishops as the Department of Retirement Services was discussed, reported The Christian Recorder, the church’s official publication.
Douglass Selby, the church’s attorney, said the church has been treated as a victim rather than a subject of investigations by the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“The AME Church is objectively in a much stronger position in liability than 12 months ago,” he said, according to The Christian Recorder.
The bishops debated how money might be restored to plan participants, with one seeking a route that did not increase the denomination’s debts and another aiming to protect its legal strategies, the newspaper reported.
A third bishop, who co-chairs the retirement services commission, said plan participants who have expressed concerns would have a first-time “full briefing” in an Aug. 30 webinar.
As of Thursday, 2,100 delegates were attending the gathering of the denomination that dates to 1816.
At the opening worship service, the litany on the meeting’s theme — “The Pandemics, The Promise, The Plan” — spoke of division in the AME Church’s ranks.
“We confess that our fellowship has been fractured,” read Bishop E. Anne Henning Byfield. “Some feel betrayed and injured, a circumstance with the potential to tear us apart, fragmented and feeble. Was the Vision given to our venerable founder merely myopic?”
The response in the litany for other worshippers was: “A thousand afflictions to vex our souls, yet we are the Church, we are called to Hope.”
“We confess that our fellowship has been fractured,” read Bishop E. Anne Henning Byfield. “Some feel betrayed and injured, a circumstance with the potential to tear us apart, fragmented and feeble. Was the Vision given to our venerable founder merely myopic?”
The response in the litany for other worshippers was: “A thousand afflictions to vex our souls, yet we are the Church, we are called to Hope.”
The Rev. J. Edgar Boyd, a leader of the group calling for accountability, spoke in an interview about the sacrifices of ministers whose sole income was from the church.
Boyd, the retired senior pastor of First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, said the clergy were “hoping that when they retired that money they put in during the green season of their ability would be now something to help them in the dry season of their retirement — and they get to retirement and it’s not there.”
The Rev. Jerome Harris, who resigned in 2021 after 21 years, was the head of the denomination’s Department of Retirement Services. Harris died suddenly in May of a heart attack, according to a church official. At the time of Harris’ death, he, along with others, remained the subject of class-action litigation filed in 2022 by retired pastors, accusing the church of mishandling the pension funds.
“Plaintiffs and the church met to mediate a potential settlement but have not yet reached agreement,” a spokesperson for AARP Foundation Litigation, which is assisting with the litigation, said on Friday.
The AME Church sued Harris after an independent investigation claimed that he and others embezzled money from the retirement accounts.
Cain-Grizzell, who retired in September 2021, said she recalled Harris speaking at the AME Church General Conference, which usually meets once every four years, of his accomplishments as he concluded his work.
“He was retiring, and at his retirement at the General Conference, he was making this glorious report about all that he had done,” she said.
Shortly before her own retirement, Cain-Grizzell, now 78, said, she received a letter from his successor announcing to annuity plan participants that a forensic audit was being conducted and distributions would be halted.
“That was my first knowledge that something was wrong,” she said.
Later, she received about 30% of the amount she had originally hoped to use in retirement.
“But, of course, I’m not satisfied with that,” said Cain-Grizzell, who continues to work, in part because she is paying down educational loans. “I’m still looking to receive the balance of that 70%.”
The Rev. James F. Miller, now the executive director of the Department of Retirement Services, has issued a report discussing how a new program is bringing an average return of 8% on current investments.
But writing in an article in The Christian Recorder, Miller acknowledged there is work to be done for restoration of the missing 70% of the old program’s funds.
“The responsibility for accomplishing this is in the hands of other church leadership,” he wrote. “Personally, I hope the Lord will reveal some acceptable answer to this, because my wife and I put most of our life savings into the fund and now our future, even our present, has been affected and altered by what happened.”
Other longtime AME members also are waiting.
Continue reading at https://julieroys.com/ame-churches-demand-answers-on-financial-fraud-of-retirement-savings/
IF YOU WERE TO DIE TODAY, WHERE WOULD YOU GO: HEAVEN OR HELL? IF YOU’RE NOT SURE, “BELIEVE ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AND THOU SHALT BE SAVED” FOR JESUS CHRIST SAID THE MOST IMPORTANT WORDS EVER SPOKEN IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD WHEN HE SAID, “FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD, THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON, THAT WHOSOEVER BELIEVETH IN HIM SHOULD NOT PERISH, BUT HAVE EVERLASTING LIFE.” READ FURTHER RIGHT HERE:
THE BIG QUESTION
GOSPEL LIGHT MINUTE X #447 WITH DANIEL WHYTE III
This is the “Chief of sinners,” Daniel Whyte III, president of Gospel Light Society International, with the Gospel Light Minute X Podcast #447 titled, “The Big Question” I’m here to remind you of what the Bible says, that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” like you and me.
“HAVE YOU BEEN BORN AGAIN?”
The question is not “Have you joined a church?” or “Are you trying to do your best?” or “Do you have religion?” but “Are you twice-born?” Jesus Christ said in John 3:3, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God”.
We enter the physical world by birth. Spiritual life likewise is entered with a birth. We become members of a human family by birth; we become members of the family of God by birth, by being “born again.” There is no other way to get into the human family except by birth, and there is no other way to get into God’s family except by the new birth. Neither education, nor cultivation, nor reformation, nor “turning over a new leaf,” will accomplish this. What is needed is not a new “leaf” but a new “life”! “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7).
A New Nature Needed
By physical birth we become partakers of human nature; by being born again we become “partakers of the divine nature”. A Christian is the product of a divine “begetting”. The second birth is not an improvement of the old nature; it is the imparting of an entirely new nature. The old nature is hopelessly corrupt and incapable of ever being made fit for His presence. The new birth requires a creative act of the Holy Spirit. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature”.
Not “Trying” But “Trusting”
“Trying to follow Christ” is not Christianity. Christianity is not imitation of Christ, it is the indwelling of Christ. Christianity is not trying to do anything. It is trusting Christ Who has done it all! He has “finished the work” and there is nothing left to do but simply to receive and trust Him. He shed His precious blood on the cross and the work is all done once and forever! Cease trying and begin trusting! Believers will progressively become more and more like Christ, but by His power, not their own.
What Must I Do To Be Saved?
Simply “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ”. The Bible says in 1 John 5:1, “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God”. The Bible states in John 1:12,13, “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”.
You are born again, you become a Christian by trusting a Person—receiving a Person. The very moment you do this, the Lord Jesus Christ comes in and life begins!
What Is Meant By “Believe”?
To “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” means more than simply believing the historic facts concerning Him. Intellectual belief about Christ is not sufficient. The belief that brings salvation must be “with the heart,” that is, with the whole being. This belief also includes repentance: “Repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ”. The Bible states in Acts 17:30, “God … now commandeth all men every where to repent”.
The faith which saves, then, includes the necessity to repent, and to receive Christ as Saviour and Lord, to rest upon Him alone for salvation. It means to trust Him so utterly and completely that, if He should fail, there would be no hope at all!
May I Know That I Am Born Again?
This is an important question. We know that we are born again by the testimony of God’s Word. God says in John 5:24, “He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life”. Have you believed on the Lord Jesus Christ as explained by God’s Word? If so, then you are saved, you are “born again,” you have “passed from death unto life.” God says so! Take God at His Word, and go on your way rejoicing!
One Final Word
You may “belong to a church,” you may be “trying to do the best you can,” you may be “striving to live right.” Your outward life may be the model of moral correctness, and you may be looked up to, honored, revered, and respected. Yet, if you have not been “born again” you are just as lost as if you had never heard of Christ. Yes, you may teach in the Sunday school, read the Bible, sing, shout, “feel happy,” and all the rest—but if you have never been “born again” you are still in your sins and a stranger to the Lord Jesus Christ!.
If you want to be saved from the wrath to come and from an eternity in Hell, and if you believe that Jesus Christ suffered, bled, and died on the cross for your sins, was buried, and rose again from the dead and you are willing to trust Jesus Christ with all of your heart so you can go to Heaven, please pray with me what is called the sinner’s prayer: Holy Father God, I acknowledge that I am a sinner and I admit that I have sinned against You and that I have broken Your Ten Commandments. I have lied before. I have stolen things before. I have lusted after people and things before. I have dishonored and disobeyed my parents. I have taken Your holy Name in vain. For Jesus Christ’s sake, please have mercy and grace upon my soul and forgive me of all of my sins, my failures, and my faults. As I now believe in Your Holy Son the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe that He suffered, bled, and died on the cross for my sins, was buried and rose again. Lord Jesus, please come into my heart and save my soul and change my life. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit and help me to repent of my sins past. Help me to turn from my old, evil life and follow You in the new life. For it is in Your Name I pray. Amen.
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