The year 2019 marked some dramatic change for several East Cobb faith communities, including one of its best known. Johnson Ferry Baptist Church has a new pastor, only the second its history.
Rev. Clay Smith was called from First Baptist Church in Matthews, N.C., to succeed founding pastor Rev. Bryant Wright.
Wright, who initially ministered to a tiny congregation in vacant office space in the early 1980s, shepherded the church into one with more than 8,000 members, with a sprawling campus on Johnson Ferry Road that now includes a large activities center, ball fields and a K-12 school.
In addition, Wright began the non-denominational Wright From the Heart Ministries, reaching radio and multimedia audiences, and was president of the Southern Baptist Convention as it welcomed historically black congregations.
At the end of 2018 Wright indicated his desire to step away from his Johnson Ferry duties, and will continue with Wright From the Heart.
Another long-time spiritual leader in East Cobb announced this year he will be retiring in 2020. Steven Lebow of Temple Kol Emeth became the Reform synagogue’s first full-time rabbi in 1986 and took part in community protests against an anti-gay resolution by the Cobb Board of Commissioners in the early 1990s.
Rabbi Steven Lebow of Temple Kol Emeth is retiring at the end of June 2020.
Later he took up the cause of working to exonerate Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager who was lynched near what is now Frey’s Gin Road in 1915. In the wake of 9/11, Lebow started an annual Ecumenical service the week before Thanksgiving, inviting faith leaders and worshippers from around the north metro Atlanta for music, humor and interfaith messages of unity.
Earlier this year, Eastside Baptist Church made the news when the Southern Baptist Convention had listed it for possible “defellowshipping” related to a 2017 sexual abuse case.
Newspapers in Texas had reported on allegations of abuse in the SBC, but Eastside Pastor John Hull was publicly critical of the SBC for the listing, saying the congregation on Lower Roswell Road had addressed the matter promptly.
A former Eastside youth ministry volunteer was convicted of two counts of sexual battery in 2016 and is in prison; the church took actions to improve security, strengthen background checks and increase safety as Hull was coming on board.
The SBC later removed Eastside from the list, saying no further investigation was warranted.
In September, a longtime East Cobb church announced it was closing its doors, due to declining an aging membership and financial issues.
Members of Powers Ferry United Methodist Church gathered in early December for “homecoming” as the 65-year-old congregation prepares for its final service on Dec. 29.
Also as the holidays approached, two East Cobb churches became one. Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which had been sharing space with Hope Presbyterian Church on Sandy Plains Road, merged with Christ Presbyterian.
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The senior pastor at Eastside Baptist Church is upset over what he calls “very capricious leadership” by the leader of the Southern Baptist Convention after learning that the East Cobb congregation has been put on a list for possible “defellowshipping” for a 2017 sex abuse case.
Rev. John Hull, Eastside Baptist Church senior pastor
Rev. John Hull told East Cobb News Friday afternoon that he is tentatively scheduled to talk via telephone on Monday with J.D. Greear, the president of the SBC, who identified Eastside as among the churches being examined for how it handled allegations of sexual abuse by workers and volunteers.
Hull also said SBC officials will be visiting the church on Lower Roswell Road on Tuesday, not to investigate, he said, but to give Eastside leaders a chance to “express concerns” about being on the list.
In 2017, Alexander Edwards, a former youth ministry volunteer at Eastside, was convicted of two counts of sexual battery involving an 11-year-old boy and was sentenced to three years in prison.
Edwards’ arrest in 2016 came just after Hull was hired to lead the East Cobb church, which he said acted quickly and publicly to improve security, strengthen background checks and assure its members that it was protecting young people from sexual abuse.
“There are people who think this is outrageous that we’re on the list,” Hull said. “We’re not looking for a fight, but our East Cobb church has taken a body blow. We’re hurting because this came from within the family.”
That’s a reference to Greear, who earlier week this publicly identified 10 churches, including Eastside, for scrutiny following news reports in Texas that have rocked the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, which has more than 15 million members and more than 47,000 affiliated churches.
While he admires Greear for trying to address allegations of sexual abuse, Hull said he acted unilaterally to compose the list and did not notify him before the names of the churches were revealed by the news media. Hull said he learned about the list late Monday night, shortly after he had gone to bed, when he got a text message from the Eastside social media manager, who had seen news reports from Texas.
UPDATED: The day after we spoke to Rev. Hull, the Southern Baptist Convention issued a response regarding the 10 churches on the list, and its executive committee bylaws working group concluded that no further investigation at Eastside is warranted:
“Based on the information provided by the president, we have no evidence that the church, as a body, violated any of the four provisions. We also note that, based on media reports and conversations with church leaders, it appears that after the events in question the church strengthened its existing policies to prevent abuse and properly respond to charges of abuse. We believe no further inquiry is warranted based on that information.”
Hull conducted an interview with the Houston Chronicle, which along with San Antonio Express-News published a series earlier this month called “Abuse of Faith,” which estimated that more than 700 people had been victimized.
Hull said Eastside also has the support of the Georgia Baptist Convention and the Noonday Baptist Association, a consortium of more than 100 churches in Cobb, Cherokee, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, Paulding and Polk counties.
The case of Edwards is among those contained in the newspapers’ database of more than 200 workers and volunteers at Southern Baptist churches who have been charged with sexual abuse or who have been convicted or pleaded guilty since 1998. He is a registered sex offender, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.
Alexander Edwards (Photo: Georgia Department of Corrections)
Eastside Baptist, which opened in 1961, has more than 5,000 members. In the 1980s it started a Christian school that currently enrolls more than 400 students K-8 and built an activities center that includes fitness facilities and offers classes to the wider community.
After Edwards’ conviction and sentencing, Hull said, Eastside took immediate action to rectify the lapses that led to the abuse. The Texas newspapers reported that Edwards had been allowed to volunteer at Eastside despite a 2013 arrest for using the Internet to find a child for sex.
Not long after Edwards’ arrest in 2016, a former part-time Eastside janitor was charged with misdemeanor sexual battery involving a girl. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year in jail, most of that on probation.
Those security measures include stronger background checks of prospective employees and volunteers. In addition, all visitors to the church or school are are required to have their driver’s license scanned for a background check.
“You can’t get in without it,” said Hull, who added that the background scanning technology will become available soon for those using the Eastside activities center that’s open to the larger public.
That center, which also has employed a full-time security guard for the last two years, will soon be hiring another one. Hull said there are also are 50 security cameras on the sprawling Lower Roswell Road campus, which stretches to the boundary of Eastvalley Elementary School.
Hull said Eastside has spent more than $500,000 on security, technology, staff training and other measures to address sexual abuse concerns.
“We are prepared to be the model, we are prepared to be a resource [for any congregation in a similar position] and to add value around what we have learned.”
In his comments to the SBC executive committee this week, Greear said he’s not in favor of “disfellowshipping” any church at this point, but “these churches must be called upon to give assurance to the SBC that they have taken the necessary steps to correct their policies and procedures with regards to abuse and care for survivors.”
The Southern Baptist allegations come a few months after another round of revelations of priest abuse by several Roman Catholic archdioceses, including Atlanta.
Last November, Atlanta Archbishop Rev. Wilton Gregory released a list of priests, workers and volunteers accused or convicted of sex abuse going back to the creation of the archdiocese in the late 1950s.
Two of those individuals worked at the Catholic Church of St. Ann and Transfiguration Catholic Church in East Cobb, including the latter’s founding priest. Nearly 200 bishops and other church officials are in Rome this weekend at a special sex-abuse summit called by Pope Francis.
Hull said he’s still working through what his sermon message will be to his Eastside congregation Sunday morning, but he is certain that “we will defend the body of Christ on Lower Roswell Road.”
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