Redemption Church Pastor Ron Carpenter Jr. said he was promised a retirement package of $6.25 million to be made in annual payouts of $250,000 for 25 years in a failed transition agreement with fellow megachurch pastor John Gray of Relentless Church, court documents filed in South Carolina on Friday reveal.
The documents were filed in an ongoing eviction case between Carpenter and Gray over payments for the Relentless Church campus, owned by Carpenter.
Gray was given until the end of 2019 to take his church elsewhere amid allegations that he had been “shady” and “dishonest” in executing the controversial transition agreement with the Carpenters after they passed the reins of their Redemption Church campus to him in 2018. Gray had rebranded it as Relentless Church.
Carpenter and his wife Hope then moved to San Jose, California, to officially become the new pastors of the 14,000-member Jubilee Christian Center, which they renamed Redemption.
According to a copy of the transition agreement cited by Greenville News, Gray was to take the role of senior pastor and then change the name of the church allowing Carpenter to take the “Redemption” name with him.
The agreement said the church’s board agreed to pay Carpenter an annual payment of $250,000 for 25 years as part of a $6.25 million retirement package. It also noted that Redemption Church also had a mortgage obligation of more than $12 million.
Redemption Church argued that Relentless Church failed to make mortgage payments to lenders, failed to pay Redemption when a lease agreement was made and failed to vacate the property as a tenant in default.
SOURCE: Christian Post, Leonardo Blair
All Content & Images are provided by the acknowledged source