The Church's Recent History

On May 14, 2011  Rev. Ed Crabtree announced that he was stepping down as CEO of the church and his board of advisers were ready to close the doors of the Church of Interfaith Christians.  Due to the desire of the membership to continue, several people stepped forward and offered to pick up the reigns within the church.  Rev. Crabtree chose Dr. Lisa Morris and announced her as his successor May 15, 2010.  

Dr. Morris was in the hospital at the time Rev. Crabtree announced her.  Her heart had flat lined and she was having difficulty with some of her medications.  After her near death experience, she felt this must be a wakeup call for her and leading this church was something God wanted her to do.  She got to work on May 24 and she was changing things very fast.  Since the membership of the church did not know her, many questions arose about who she was and what direction she would take the church.  Initially, things looked good although many people were having difficulty reconciling the fact that the church was changing.  For roughly a week, people watched and sometimes questioned Rev. Morris while she created a website and began taking control of the church.

Some members were getting very irate.  Dr. Morris was receiving what could only be called 'hate' mail to her personal email and on the Yahoo group.  She was in poor health and could not handle direct conflict well.  She was taking everything very personally.  She did well in the world of academia but this was different.   In the early morning hours June 2nd, 2010 Dr. Morris sent what can only be described as an angry email to all members of the church that she was dissolving the church. She then deleted the Yahoo group which had been created by the founder Rev. Steadman and had been in existence since 2003.  Rev. Crabtree also deleted the Church website.  During her one week 'reign' Dr. Morris had appointed Rev. Sharra McDearmont   as her Associate Senior Pastor and Rev. Shawn Malloy as her Executive Associate Senior Pastor.  Both Associate Pastors scrambled to try and recover as much of the church as they could.  Dr. McDearmont consulted Yahoo Groups to get the group reinstated and also sought legal advice for the church to see where we stood.

It turns out that in an unincorporated church without bylaws that the leader could legally do most anything. Dr. Morris legally instated Rev. McDearmont and Rev. Malloy  to take over in the event anything happened to her. That did not change.  The one thing Dr. Morris could not legally do was dissolve the church.  Only the membership could do that. On the same June 2. Pastor Oran Gibson in an effort  to 'save the church' created a new Yahoo Group and appointed himself as pro temp Senior Pastor.  There were problems in the new group and on June 5, Pastor Shawn and Dr. Sharra asked Rev. Oran to 'step down' which he did. Pastor Shawn and Dr. Sharra were legally forced to denounce Dr. Morris and ban her from the COIC for her rash actions.  It was a very sad time all around.

The church exists and we believe it does so because God wanted it too.  The very fact that the membership has stayed together shows that the church is in fact very much alive. Dr. Sharra had started the process of registration June 1, 2010. It went well  securing the name of the church so no one else can use it.  The church is  legal.  The records are intact. We have the church seal.  All ordinations are valid.  We have a Board of Directors and a set of Bylaws.  The COIC has been Incorporated and we have our own EIN number.  We are applying for tax exemption.  We have a  new Statement of Faith and a Mission Statement. Our main Yahoo Group has been restored.  This new website is in the process of being built.  We are working on setting up church forums and automatic prayer request  and member forms as well as seeking a way to automatically send out  the services every week through email and having it automatically post to a webpage. Weekly messages are going out to the Yahoo Group for now and being published here on the website after the fact..  We have worked on updating the membership records,we have added three new members, 2 new ministers and one minister in training.  We are in the process of sending out new ordinatino certificates and ID cards with our new address on them. This is where we stand today.