Surely there was a better way to deal with this.

The Rev. Jimmy McCants was delivering a sermon titled "Can We Mend a Broken Heart?" on Sunday morning when Chicago Police arrested the 54-year-old pastor on a misdemeanor trespassing charge, outraging some members of his congregation.

McCants, pastor of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church at 356 E. 109th, was freed in lieu of $1,000 bail at about 4:30 p.m., after spending about five hours in the Calumet District police station being processed for his arrest, which was captured by a church member's video camera.

"My church is the house of the Lord, and I had not committed a criminal act," McCants said. "We were in service. . . . We're going to see what the lawyers say. I intend to go back next Sunday."

The arrest stems from an internal dispute among members of the church, said Monique Bond, spokeswoman for the Chicago Police Department.

The church's board of directors told police that McCants was fired Dec. 24, Bond said. On Jan. 6, a woman affiliated with the church signed a police complaint saying McCants had been trespassing on church grounds, Bond said.

"There were other witnesses [Sunday] who said he should not be there," Bond said.

The woman who filed the complaint against McCants could not be reached for comment.

"It happened because he was not supposed to be on the premises," said a board member, Willie Miller, who refused further comment.

The arrest was questioned by the head of a governing authority for Lutheran churches in the Chicago area.

Police apparently took the board's word that McCants was fired, said the Rev. William H. Ameiss, president of the Northern Illinois District of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod based in west suburban Hillside.

But Ameiss said he thinks the board removed McCants in violation of the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church's constitution, which requires the board to go to the synod to resolve a dispute over a pastor.

Now I will grant that there are questions of church polity that I am not versed in – but under the circumstances, I would think it would have behooved the police to wait until the service was over to make any arrest. And I won't even get into the issue of of the unedifying, unChristian actions of those involved in having their pastor/ex-pastor hauled out of the church in cuffs during the service.

Posted by: Greg at 01:36 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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