An Arkansas bishop has been accused of squatting in a historic church for years after the rent was raised.
Bishop Earnest Smith allegedly changed the locks on the small church at the heart of Crossett after failing to pay rent when it was increased from $200 to $400 four years ago.
Now, two different congregations are battling over rights to the 108-year-old property.
The church has stood at its site since 1915, originally called ‘Allison Chapel,’ but changed its name to ‘Allen Temple’ in the 1970s and remained under that name until 2023, when a new church leader changed it again to ‘Temple of Faith Ministries’, according to KATV.
The church was used by a local branch of the Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) church, who also said they own the building, but in 2019 the former pastor left and the church closed its doors to its small congregation.
It remained closed until Bishop Smith, another minister in the city, put in a request to rent the building for his own congregation.
Before Mr Smith moved into the church, he had been operating his own ministry since 2018 out of his home, then out of a storefront on Main Street in Crossett.
“Earnest asked my mother [the CME church’s secretary] to get with our head stewardess to see if they could rent our church,” Allen Temple CME member Rekandria Leach told KATV.
Mr Smith claims that the building was not owned by anyone— (Temple of Faith Ministries/Facebook)
“They was in agreement to let him rent our church. He rented our church. Didn’t have many members... He rented it for $200 for a year and after that year went by [that] we agreed, he was supposed to pay $400 rent. He didn’t want to sign another lease agreement or anything," said Ms Leach.
Ms Leach and members of the CME congregation are accusing Mr Smith of refusing to sign a new lease agreement, refusing to pay the new $400 rent, and refusing to give the building back to them.
Yet Mr Smith sees the story from a different side, and denies any allegations of squatting or that he is refusing to pay.
He told KATV that despite what Ms Leach said, he never signed a lease. Instead, his congregation paid Faye Pam, the secretary for Allen Temple Church CME and Ms Leach’s mother, $200 a month for nearly three years.
It is unclear if the $200 and $400 payments were for one month or one year, as Ms Leach and Mr Smith said different versions.
The bishop also added that he thought the money he was paying directly to Ms Pam was for an insurance policy rather than paying rent for the building.
Mr Smith said he was under the impression that the building would eventually be handed over to his ministry, the outlet said.
He claimed that Ms Pam told him that they were “probably” going to give him the building because they were not going to use it, but said she needed to talk to her “people in Little Rock,” who Mr Smith assumed to be CME, the higher-ups at the Christian denomination their congregation was a part of.
“She came back to service another Sunday, so I asked her, ‘Hey, sister Pam. Have you talked to your people? Oh yeah, we gonna Pastor don’t worry about it. We gonna take care of you. That’s what she said,” Mr Smith recalled to the news site.
Mr Smith said he was only approached last year by Ms Pam with a residential lease agreement, but refused to sign it at the advice of his attorney who said the lease needed to be a commercial one.
Yet Ms Leach said she believes her mother was taken advantage of.
“My mother and them, they was very nice to him. They bought him robes. They bought him suits, you know, thinking they was doing the right thing. But nowadays, my opinion, pastor is into the ministry just for the money," said Ms Leach.
Mr Smith explained he was under the impression he would eventually get the whole building— (KATV)
“We’re not causing trouble. We just want our church back.”
However, the bishop believes that the church never belonged to them or to anyone in the first place and claims he has a right to stay, as his attorney argued he is already “established” in the building.
This is something that the former congregation’s trustee, Claudell Smith, disputes, and said that the deeds state “Allen Temple CME Church” is the owner of the building.
The national leadership of the CME told KATV that church buildings such as this one in Crossett do not have a denominational clause in their deeds that return the property to the CME denomination if they are no longer in use.
Yet, Ms Leach argued that while they did not have a pastor, their church congregation still existed.
While the dispute over who owns the church building and what form of rent was exchanged is still ongoing, Mr Smith said he is not going down without a fight.
"Do I want to move? The flesh does because I’m tired. But the Spirit keep telling me to fight this out,” he told the outlet.
The Independent has contacted Mr Smith’s Temple of Faith Ministries church for further comment.
