WE”VE taken a hit from the enemy this week, but we will rise above it and respond to the challenge …
So said Texas-based Baptist pastor Dr Jack Graham when he addressed a shocked congregation at his Prestonwood mega-church yesterday.
The “enemy” appears to be the local Bryan police, who earlier in the week carted Prestonwood minister Joe Barron, 52, off to jail after he had driven from Plano to Bryan to meet with what he thought was a 13-year-old girl he had met online, authorities say.
According to the Dallas Morning News, the “girl” turned out to be a Bryan police officer working in an ongoing Internet sex sting.
Bryan police said Barron had spent about two weeks chatting online with the officer posing as a juvenile. They said he asked her to skip school so she could meet him in a parking lot. On the way there, he chatted with her by phone.
Police say they found a webcam and condoms in Barron’s car.
Barron, one of about 40 ministers at the 26,000-member Plano megachurch, has now resigned. He had worked there for about 18 months, ministering to married adults, ages 42 to 58.
If convicted, Barron could face up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for the second-degree felony.
He was released from the Brazos County Jail Friday night on $7,000 bail.
In a three-minute address, Dr Graham said his staff worked hard to earn the trust of its congregation. He promised that the church would continue to make sure it hired ministers and staff of the “highest character”.
Graham said it was a heartbreaking week in which “you need to know that we are appalled and we are disgraced by this terrible action, an unacceptable action, by a minister on our staff.”
He said that although the church had taken “a hit from the enemy”, he was confident and certain that in the days ahead “God is preparing us for something magnificent and wonderful in the ministry of this church. …We want to put this in our rearview mirror.”
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
May 18th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
We think this only happens in the US, but when someone from a pentecostal church whose previous pastor was put away for underage sex offences was approved as a local prison chaplain I did a little more digging.
Much to my suprise I found that over the last decade almost as many clergy have entered that prison as prisoners as have worked there as chaplains.
Study your local newspapers closely over a period of, say, a year and you might be suprised at what you find.
May 19th, 2008 at 12:30 am
This brings it to a new level of, “the devil made me do it” mode of thinking by these idiots. The enemy, to whom the good Dr. Graham refers, is nothing short of the representative of the dark side, Satan himself. Surely the moral superiority that these pious clergy have over the debauched atheists, were it to be true,should have prevented minister Barron from seeking the company of a thirteen year old child. Maybe he thought his god wasn’t watching just then.
May 19th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Stuart H. makes a good point. There’s something about religion, particularly the wilder and (inevitably) more bigoted variety, that attracts these nasty types. Perhaps it’s the fact that they are already inclined to manipulate, exploit and bully weaker-willed people, so the church seems a natural career move?