Disgraced Megachurch Pastor Launches New Church Months After Being Kicked Out of His Own
The church suspended Weems over what they viewed as financial irregularities AND debilitating personality flaws.
Four months after being disqualified and suspended by his church, while currently embroiled in litigation with that church in three separate lawsuits, ‘Pastor’ Stovall Weems has announced that he’s back in business, and will be launching a new church called “Awakening Ecclesia.” There is no set date for when it will have its first service.
Earlier in the year, Weems resigned from the Jacksonville megachurch he founded nearly 25 years ago, leaving his position of Senior Pastor, CEO, and chair and member of the board of trustees, the result of an ongoing lawsuit with the 12,000-member multisite Celebration church that he’s been embroiled in and publicly feuding with.
The church suspended Weems over what they viewed as financial irregularities AND debilitating personality flaws. They claim he’s misappropriated over a million dollars and that he and his wife acted like divas, outlining their insane staff demands.
In a report that was commissioned by the church and prepared by the law firm Nelson Mullins, which specializes in internal ecclesiastical investigations, they summarize.
“The Weemses…leadership is inconsistent and unbiblical (and) marked by rampant spiritual and emotional abuse, including manipulation, a profound sense of self-importance and selfishness, superiority and entitlement, overbearing and unreasonable demands on employees’ time, a lack of accountability or humility, and demands of absolute loyalty….Spiritually, the Weemses have acted with arrogance, pride, deception, manipulation, selfishness, dishonesty, greed, entitlement, conceit, and unrepentance. In short, the antithesis of biblical leadership as described in scripture. REPORT OF INVESTIGATION to CELEBRATION CHURCH OF JACKSONVILLE, INC. April 24, 2022
In a video posted to YouTube titled “Are you ready for a comeback?” Weems reveals that “comebacks” are a major theme of the bible, that Moses, Job, and Joseph all had comebacks, and that like them, he was poised for his own. It’s awful theology, and it tracks with Weems’s narcissism.
His former church has not issued a statement.