A church pastor called deputies to remove 16 congregants who refused to stop singing as he tried to begin his sermon, according to a sheriff\u2019s report.<\/p>\n
Pastor David Noel reported a disturbance at the Bethanie Seventh-Day Adventist Church to the Charlotte County [Florida] Sheriff\u2019s Office when the group would not allow the Saturday morning service to continue. All 16 church members were issued trespass warnings and left the property without incident, according to a sheriff\u2019s report.<\/p>\n
One congregant who received a warning said the group was protesting Noel\u2019s leadership and alleged misuse of insurance money for damage to the church caused by Hurricane Charley. \u201cWe received $364,000, but he told us we only got $264,000 because he wanted to give $100,000 to another church in Fort Myers,\u201d Monique Robert said Monday. \u201cBut this money is for Bethanie. We want all the money for our church.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another congregant, Edourd A. Pierrelus, alleged that Noel struck his chest and twisted his left earlobe during an Oct. 1 meeting to elect new church board members. \u201cMany things are wrong in the church,\u201d Pierrelus told deputies Saturday. \u201cWe don\u2019t want him to be the pastor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noel declined to comment to reporters Monday. \u201cI don\u2019t have much to tell you, just that we are preaching the word here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Robert said she and the other 15 congregants who received warnings will attend a different church service this Saturday.<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
AP, via Alabama.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A church pastor called deputies to remove 16 congregants who refused to stop singing as he tried to begin his sermon, according to a sheriff\u2019s report. Pastor David Noel reported a disturbance at the Bethanie Seventh-Day Adventist Church to the Charlotte County [Florida] Sheriff\u2019s Office when the group would not allow the Saturday morning service […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2619,3497],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5393"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}