Hi everybody, this is Pastor Jonathan Shelley from Steadfast Baptist Church, and I wanted to make a
video today to explain our eviction situation in detail, just to make it clear what's actually
been going on. Now some people may be confused as to why I would make a video like this, but there's
a lot of misinformation, there's a lot of lies that have been said about our church, and a lot
of people are confused about our church or what's been happening, and so I just want to make it
abundantly clear what's actually been happening and how we've been treated throughout this
process, because a lot of people want to demonize our church and our church family, but our church
is some of the most loving, kind-hearted, generous people that I've ever met in my entire life,
and we have been severely malaligned and mistreated in this process, and I just want
to expose that today with a lot of clear evidence of what the true motives are and what's been
happening to our church. Now again, Steadfast Baptist Church is a Baptist church. We're
independent, fundamental. We believe the Bible to be the word of God literally. We believe
salvation is by faith. It's a free gift, and that's our main purpose is to go out and preach
the gospel and try to get people saved, but the church also is going to meet regularly, have
services where we preach through the Bible, and I preach from Genesis Revelation. We do Bible
studies every single week on Wednesday nights. In fact, I preach four sermons every single week,
and there are usually about an hour-long sermon each, so there's a lot of preaching out there.
We try to put everything online just so that anybody that wants to hear anything about our
church can find it. In fact, we also have a very detailed doctrinal statement that we put on our
website that's always been there. It hasn't changed, and so we try to be very upfront and
honest about who we are and what we believe, and we believe the Bible, and we're not ashamed
of believing the Bible. Now in this video, I'm going to call out a lot of different people and
make it clear what they've done to us, and some people would be mad about the fact that I would
call someone's name out, but the Bible has a lot of names in it, and a lot of the ministers,
prophets, and evangelists, and apostles called people out by name. In fact, in 2 Timothy 4,
the apostle Paul says, Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil. The Lord reward him according
to his works, of whom be thou where also, for he hath greatly withstood our words.
The apostle John calls out diatrophes in 3 John. The Bible has the apostle Paul calling out people
like Hermogenes and Phygelus. The Bible has the Lord Jesus Christ giving instructions to John in
the book of Revelation, who ends up calling out a woman, Jezebel, by name, and sometimes it's
important to just expose what people are really doing and what people are really like. Jesus
called a lot of people out for being hypocrites, for putting forth a public image that's not
accurate as far as what they do in private, and so my goal in this video is just to clearly just
illustrate the facts of what's happened to us in this eviction situation, just so people can have
a better understanding, and maybe they don't judge us based on what some news article may say,
but rather just on some cold hard facts. Now, I'm going to try and start at the beginning,
and then go through a timeline, a general timeline, a rough timeline of what's happened
to us, but in 2020, we signed a lease with a company called Fellowship of the Sword,
and its owner is Richard Henderson. I believe there's other owners potentially or other board
members involved in this, but he is the primary owner or the face of the company,
and this company is a parachurch ministry that does spiritual retreats. Their information online
is very vague as far as what they actually do or what they teach or anything like that, but
we signed a five-year lease with them to rent a space in Hearst, and the space was a distressed
property. It was in very rough condition, and what attracted me to the property was the fact
that the landlord is going to give me a really attractive rental rate, a really low rental rate,
because we'd have to put a lot of money into the property, and so we agreed that I would take the
property as is with the fact that I'd have to put a lot of money into the property and that we would
get a pretty attractive rental rate, and so that's what we did. We took several months. We didn't get
to move in when we signed the lease. We took several months just basically renovating and
putting tens of thousands of dollars. In fact, if you include all the labor materials, it's probably
well over $100,000 worth of money that we had to put in this space. We had to hire architects
to change the use of space. We had to get a certificate of occupancy with the city of Hearst,
which caused us to have to have a lot of expensive remodeling. We added new bathrooms.
We updated the entire space. We painted the entire space. We redid the flooring, and we made the
space very nice. This is a great property. We love the location, and we were very excited about this
location. We were anticipating being here for five years, and even our lease contract had a five-year
extension, so we anticipated we could be here for a very long time. We designed the space specifically
for our church, and so we were real excited. It worked well, and it was business as a user for
a long time. Now, we did this in August of 2020. In June of 2021, during what's considered Pride
Month in our nation, I happened to be preaching through the book of Genesis. Our church just
simply picks a book of the Bible and just does every single chapter every single week. It just
happened to be that I was going through Genesis 17, 18, and 19 during June. During those sermons,
I preached a lot of statements that were very clear from the Bible about homosexuality.
Specifically, our church believes that Leviticus 20, 13, which says,
if a man also lie with mankind as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.
They shall surely be put to death. We believe that verse is true. We believe that God's law
clearly condemns homosexuality and even puts a capital punishment on that, which is the death
penalty. Now, in human history, that has been a law for thousands of years across all kinds
of nations, countries, and areas. In fact, in America, that was the law of the land in the 1600s,
1700s, and in the 1800s, even well after the Declaration of Independence was signed and
ratified. This is not a minority view. In fact, it's been a prevailing view for a long period
of history. It's only in recent modern times that these statutes and these laws have actually
changed and really declined to the point where they're no longer enforceable. The opposite is
almost what the law is in America today. Some people are even unaware of the fact that
there was, according to the Texas Penal Code, criminal punishment for being a homosexual in
the state of Texas all the way until 2003. It wasn't until 2003 that being a homosexual
was finally no longer illegal in the state of Texas. Now, I was in high school at the time,
and so growing up and going to high school, I'd always been around people who believed that
homosexuality was a crime and that it was illegal, and that's what the Bible clearly teaches. Now,
just because the Supreme Court deemed that law unconstitutional due to the 14th Amendment,
which was a technicality, does not mean that the Bible changed or the law of God changed.
Even in Romans, chapter number one, the Bible still articulates that men with men
are worthy of death, and so our church has always believed that. It's always taught that. In fact,
on our website, we have a doctrinal statement that clearly says even though society deems this
acceptable and believes that it's okay, we still believe that it's wrong and the death penalty
should be applied in that area. In the state of Texas, the death penalty, in fact, is enforced
against certain types of homicide and against child molesters, and here's the thing. I believe
that the Bible clearly teaches that those that are the LGBTQ are pedophiles in waiting,
and they would love to harm and hurt children, and so for the better interest of society,
they should be punished according to God's Word no more or no less. But regardless of my personal
beliefs or personal opinions, we're talking about, in this context, a commercial lease,
and the commercial lease we had signed with Fellowship of the Sword clearly indicates that
we have the church here for the purposes of being a church. The use of property is a church. We are
a Baptist church, and in no way did I anticipate, believe, or would ever think that us actually
having church services or preaching anything that we believe would somehow be in violation of the
lease itself. Now, in June, when I was preaching through my series of Genesis, some people that
don't like our church took snippets out of my sermon and posted them on other social media
platforms like TikTok specifically to try and demonize our church and try to take what I said
out of context and suggest that I'm advocating violence towards the LGBT community. Now,
that is not true. I do not believe that we should ever be violent. In fact, I've preached very
clearly that we should never be violent or take the law into our own hands. And as much as I would
love the idea of America bringing back Leviticus 2013, you know, it's really just a pipe dream.
We have to wait until the morning of rain, okay? But I still think it's profitable to teach that,
and I still think it's profitable to believe that and, you know, to explain our position on that,
even though understanding that we're going to have to deal with these type of people.
So we should have the right doctrine, but then we want to have the right attitude and realize
we're going to have to exist around these people and tolerate them. And here's the best way to
tolerate them. Ignore them. Ignore them. You don't want to rile them up. And people always
throw out this idea of, well, but Jesus didn't stone the woman caught in adultery or the woman
taken at adultery. That's true. He did not. Now, if you actually study the law, the only people
that are allowed to throw the first stone are those that are eyewitnesses. Jesus was not an
eyewitness. So there you go. That's not lawful for him to do, number one. Number two, it wasn't
lawful for the Jews to stone anybody at that time because they were under Roman law and the Romans
were not allowing them to execute the death penalty. Just like in America, we're under a
pseudo Roman law and we don't have biblical laws. And Jesus and the Jews submitted themselves to
those laws, meaning that we also submit ourselves to the law of the land. And we don't try to take
the law into our hands. We never will. We never have. Okay. In fact, I've made it abundantly clear
to our church, but no one from our church should have any interaction with these type of
individuals. Now, of course, people want to take certain statements that I've made out of my
sermons out of context and suggest that I'm advocating for violence. But everything that
I've ever preached is always in the clear context of legal, lawful punishment for criminals,
not anything more, not anything less. But of course, people want to twist what I said for
their own purposes. And so these clips were uploaded. It went viral, so to speak, in the
sense that millions of people had viewed just a small snippet of one of my sermons. But again,
like I said, I preach four times a week, every single week virtually. And to take just one
minute of my preaching to use to your advantage is very misleading. It's very deceitful. And
it's very misrepresentative of what we actually believe. But because of these videos going viral,
protesters started showing up at our church and they started coming on 6-27-21. And there was a
big protest at our church. I was actually out of town. I was scheduled to preach at another church.
But when I came back that late night and then woke up early in the morning, someone had thrown a
brick through the window of our church. Now, we don't know exactly who that was. It was not during
the time of the protest. So we can only speculate as to exactly who or when that happened. But we
did catch it on video recording. So we have clear video evidence of the person who did it,
when they did it. Additionally, we have a strong idea of who that probably is.
And we gave all that information to the police and I believe there is an investigation.
But no one has been arrested or no other information has been given to us at that time.
But what was really interesting is that the same day, the first day there was ever protests
against our church, one of the protesters made a video
and he made a comment about a fellow tenant at our building, Embrace Grace.
Fun fact, the company or the building next door helps women who have just recently had children
and it helps support single mothers be able to like keep their children.
That's awesome. They don't like each other very much.
And they said that Embrace Grace and us don't like each other, which I was kind of surprised
why this protester would be saying something about some other tenant that really has nothing to do
with our church. In fact, I had never spoken to Embrace Grace or their owner, Amy Ford,
at any time, nor did I have any feelings of animosity or resentment or I couldn't make
a statement that I didn't like them because I didn't even know anything about them. I
completely left them alone. And really, we'd had very minimal interaction, if any.
And I do not have any recollection of ever speaking to her or talking to her at that
point in time. So I really don't know where that was coming from, but it definitely made
me suspicious of why he had information like that or why he was suggesting information like that.
But immediately following this protest and the brick being thrown through our window,
I went to the church and that morning I cleaned up the mess. And in the process of cleaning up
this mess, though, a woman came and came to the front of our door and it appeared that she worked
for Embrace Grace. I didn't know who it was at the time. And she said, hey, what happened? And
I said, oh, someone threw a brick through our window. And she said, well, you should stop
preaching mean things. And I thought, I didn't even know what to say. I was just kind of taking
it back. And I just said, well, I'm going to preach the Bible. And then she kind of walked
away. And that was kind of it. There was no real conversation. That was just pretty much
just she said I shouldn't preach mean things. It was over. So then maybe an hour or a little
bit later, a person comes up to our church and this young man says, hey, I noticed your church
door window smashed this morning. I called the cops. That's why they showed up. And so we started
discussing the details and he was telling me what he'd seen and what he'd noticed. And I was really
interested in the information he had for us. He came specifically to talk to me. But after giving
me all the relevant information about the crime that had been committed against us, I basically
just said, hey, do you go to church? He said no. And so then I offered to give him an invite to
our church and I just said, hey, more important than going to church, though, is are you sure
you're going to go to heaven? And I tried to take that as an opportunity to preach him the gospel.
And he was very interested. He wanted to hear. And so I started preaching the gospel.
Well, while I was preaching the gospel, a couple of ladies from the Embrace Grace suite were walking
around the building as they do on a regular basis, just kind of a morning exercise routine.
And they noticed I was talking to this individual and they walked around us.
But then maybe the second or third time they came around, they started eavesdropping on my
conversation with this individual. And when they started eavesdropping on this conversation,
I was clearly expounding on Romans three twenty eight, where the Bible says, therefore,
we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. And I was making
it clear to this young man that salvation was a free gift, that it's just believing in the Lord
Jesus Christ. And after this woman eavesdropped on her conversation, she interrupted and started
yelling at me and started raising her voice and saying that I was a hate preacher and was trying
to verbally assault me and trying to get this young man that came to talk to me away from me.
And she did not care that I was preaching the gospel. I told that very clearly. I said,
ma'am, I'm not I'm not talking about, you know, what happened to our church or any of our other
beliefs. I said, I'm just trying to explain to him salvation is a free gift. And she did not
care. She continually over talked me, was shaking her way, wagging her finger at me and getting in
her face and saying a lot of horrible things about me that weren't true. Well, there was another lady
that was there with her. And at the time, I didn't know who this was, but it was actually Amy Ford,
the owner of Embrace Grace. And she eventually butted in the conversation and said to the other
lady said, oh, don't worry, don't bother this guy. He hates all women. And, you know, I've never
met these ladies before in my life. I've never spoken to them outside of the the few minute
conversation I'd had with Amy just prior where she said I preached mean things. And so I didn't know
where any of this was coming from. But that's a pure lie. I love women. I'm married to a woman.
I love my wife. I love my daughters. I love my my mother. I love all the family members I have. I
love the women in our church. And frankly speaking, that was just a railing accusation
that was coming out of nowhere. And I was talking to this individual in front of my
door of my suite. We weren't bothering them or doing anything that was harassment to them. They
came and purposely harassed us and attacked me. And we're trying to stop this gentleman from
hearing the gospel and want him to go away. They made it abundantly clear. They said get away from
this guy, leave. They're trying to interrupt our business operations, which our operations is a
church to preach the gospel to people. And they were trying to actively subvert this man from
hearing the gospel and trying to get him away from me. And fortunately, praise the Lord, it didn't
work. Because after they decided to finally walk away, the man looked at me and he was still willing
to hear the gospel. And I said, I apologize. I don't know, you know, those ladies and they're
mad at me for something else. I don't know exactly what they're mad at me for. And he said, no
problem. I just figured they're a bunch of Karens. And so I then was able to continue preaching the
gospel. And he got saved. He called upon the name of the Lord. He believed in the Lord Jesus Christ
that day. And in fact, there's other witnesses that saw these ladies harassing us, the people that
fixed our door and repaired the window and said they couldn't understand why these women were
verbally assaulting me. And really, it's now in hindsight, a lot of this makes sense why
certain individuals like Kevin Day may have said statements like, oh, they don't like each other.
I wasn't aware that that, you know, they didn't like me and I didn't have any bad feelings towards
them whatsoever. It was really a one way disliking. And so after that incident, I ended up going to
the Embrace Grace Suite and tried to talk with Miss Ford and try to resolve whatever conflict
was there, because I don't want to be in conflict with my neighbors or have animosity
towards one another. I wanted to have peace. But she refused to talk to me. Her husband was there,
refused to let me talk to her or to try and resolve any kind of issue. And in fact,
he just yelled at me and told me to get the hell out of there. We were just offering, you know,
if we could, you know, either value lunch or send y'all something or just try to, you know,
basically make peace with you guys as best as possible. Make sure that you're not
upset with anything that we could fix. Well, I mean, I mean, what you guys are doing is causing
a major disturbance for us. Can you be specific as to like what you mean by that? Did you see
what was out here this weekend? I mean, I didn't ask anybody to come and protest my church or
something. You definitely asked for it. What you said was definitely asking for it. It was
completely inappropriate. You don't. I mean, who does that? Why, why, why are you even here?
Like I said, you should go get your own building and get the hell out of here.
You have no business being here. I'm just, look, sir, I'm not trying to be confrontational. If you
don't want me here, I'll leave. And so, you know, even me trying to attempt at some kind of level
of peace, these people were just already hook, line and sinker against me and want nothing to
do with our church. And I don't even know why exactly. That would be for them to explain why
they dislike me. But there had been one other interaction that our church specifically had
with them. And it was prior to this. And, you know, I wasn't there. So the only thing I can
base on is the testimony of my church member. And this church members are very honest church member,
but one of our church members was out in the parking lot, noticed a person in the parking lot,
didn't know if they were coming to our church or not, invited them to our church and asked them
if they wanted to hear the gospel. The lady agreed. After giving her the gospel for a few
minutes, someone from the Embrace Grace Suite came out, a lady did. And the lady interrupted
their conversation, told them that the lady needed to come into their suite. And my church
member said, well, she wanted to hear the gospel. Can you do you want to hear? Let me finish. And
the lady had said yes. And then the employee interrupted again and said, no, she needs to
come in now. And so my church member just said, OK, and then that was it. So there really wasn't,
you know, much of an interaction from from my perspective. I don't see it as being a big issue,
but apparently it greatly offended the Embrace Grace people. And so after hearing about the
incident, what me and my employee did is we bought some pastries and delivered them to Embrace Grace
and just said sorry for any inconvenience. But, you know, from our perspective, we were
disappointed that a person was interested in hearing how to be saved and was drug away in
the middle of that conversation, even though they admitted that they were willing to hear it.
But nevertheless, you know, I wasn't there. So I'm just basing this on the testimony of
my church member. But I believe it sounds very true what happened. But nevertheless,
no matter what, we just tried to make peace. And that's really the only interactions I'd ever had.
I'd never spoken to Miss Ford or to their employees. We just simply dropped off a basket
with a note. That was the only interaction I'd had prior to her coming to our door,
telling me I preached mean things, interrupting me from preaching the gospel. And really the only
two interactions that our church has had with these people has been them interrupting us
preaching the gospel to people that were willing participants. Since then, she's sent letters to
the landlord stating that we're causing her all kinds of problems and issues. But the reality is,
this is fabricated on a lot of false information about our church specifically. And I do want to
address a few more things. And I'm kind of breaking from my timeline here just to make
sure that it's coherent. But when it comes to Embrace Grace and Miss Ford, not only did she
have negative things to say about me in person, she said a lot of negative things about me online.
So in fact, there was a protest group that was organized by these protesters called No Hate
and Hurst. And she is a member of that protest group against us. So she has been in that group,
she's made comments. In fact, one of the protesters was trying to organize some of the
people in that group to go to her suite and help them with some kind of event they had.
And then she communicated back with them, told them that they didn't need any more volunteers
at this time, but thanks for thinking about them. There's been other individuals who have said a
lot of negative things about us online, and she's commented and coordinated with them and said,
I can't believe this church has any congregants. Some of our posts that we've put on our Facebook
page and other places, she's gone on and commented and made negative comments about us. Now since
then, she's deleted some of them, but we still have some of the screenshots from her comments
specifically about our church. And from my perspective, I try to leave them alone.
I don't go and comment on their business page. I'm not commenting on Facebook, social media about
them. They're the ones that have been publicly saying negative things about us and making it
clear that they're strongly against us and suggesting that these protesters are somehow
a nuisance to them. But I find it ironic that they find them a nuisance when they're protesting
me, but they're not a nuisance when they're invited to help volunteer at their business.
And to me, that seems very inconsistent. Either they're going to be a nuisance at all times,
or they're not a nuisance, but I don't see how you can invite the same people that are, quote,
protesting and a nuisance into your own suite, and then claim that they're a nuisance harassing
you. So I find that to be very inconsistent with the situation. It seems like they don't have a
negative relationship based on the comments that they've made about each other. And I believe that
Miss Ford is angry at statements that I've made suggesting that I'm advocating violence towards
anyone. But these people are very clearly the protesters against our church, let me make this
clear, are advocating serious physical harm towards me and my family. I hope that your
children are. I hate you. I hope that you die. I hope that you brought in hell. You're a stupid
bitch. I hope that your wife is raped. I hope that your wife gets the bullet to the head
like she deserves, just like you deserve, just like your children deserve. Because if you're
going to sit there and talk about LGBTQ, you fucking deserve that. Jonathan Shelley,
I hope that you rot in fucking hell. You stupid fucking bitch. And you better hope that I don't
fly to fucking Texas, you dumb fucking bitch. You stupid fucking bitch. Fuck you. Fuck your family,
and fuck your fucking life, you dumb ass bitch. All of you guys can take a bullet to the head.
They've made statements about how they want me to die and my family to die, and they want to kill me
and they make it very clear, very specific. So if Mrs. Ford is just against people advocating
for violence, I find it very hypocritical that she would support, praise, or be in a group
that is literally targeted against me wanting to cause violence against me specifically,
yet at the same time condemning me for supposedly advocating for violence. Which again, I don't
advocate for violence, and I do not believe anybody should ever be violent for any reason.
So really, this is just hypocrisy at its finest in the sense that she condemns me for quote unquote
being hateful or being suggesting violence when this group that she is inviting into her suite
is the ones that are actually advocating for violence against me and my church members
and saying really the worst things you could imagine about me and my family and our church
members. And they've been very vitriolic towards us. I know their group's called No Hate and Hearse,
but it's easily one of the most hateful groups I've ever seen, specifically towards me,
my family, my church members, and the Bible, the Lord Jesus Christ, all of these things.
So I just want to make it abundantly clear that the interactions I've had with Embrace Grace
have been anything but graceful. They have never extended grace to me or any kind of empathy or
shown any love. It has only been slander, lies, and hatred towards me and my church. And I find
that very inconsistent with the name of their company, what they claim to be in support of.
I had no bad feelings towards them because I thought they were helping women not have an
abortion, giving them alternatives. And I thought that was great. But I just want to make it
abundantly clear that even to this point, I don't hold animosity or ill will towards these
individuals. I just simply want to make it clear what they've done to us and ask them to please
reevaluate their position. I don't see why it's acceptable for them to support or advocate for a
group of people that want to commit violent acts towards me and my family, that are trying to
disrupt our business operations, and want us to stop preaching the gospel to people that are
willing to hear. This seems very anti-Christian. It seems very unbiblical. And frankly, I'm just
horrified by their actions. But hopefully, they can reevaluate and decide that that's not the way
that they want to behave themselves. Now, I want to go back to where the protests began.
And the protests were happening on a regular basis as far as almost every one of our church services.
They were coming out. And so I ended up getting a notice from our landlord saying that I had
our lease. And in the document that they sent me, they claimed that I had caused violent protests
to occur on the property. And here's the thing, I've never asked anybody to ever do anything
to the property or harm it or hurt it in any way. And additionally, this violent act, we don't know
exactly who did it or when it happened or what was the real cause because it's still an open
investigation. But they also stated that my violent words, I'm sorry, your violent and
inciting words and behavior while stated, while speaking to the Steadfast Baptist congregation
was a violation of the lease. And so they're claiming that just my simple preaching and
teaching of the Bible is a violation of lease, which to me, I don't understand how that can
make sense when we are designated to be a church and to preach the Bible. Now, whether people like
what we preach or not, I didn't sign up for someone to evaluate our doctrine or to decide
what's acceptable in the Bible or not. That's for a church to decide. A landlord is simply
responsible for the property and what's going on with the building, not telling businesses how to
run their business or their business model. This is inappropriate and outside the boundaries of
what a commercial lease would actually suggest or do. Now, the part of the lease that they're
claiming that I'm in violation of is the fact that I'm causing a nuisance or offensive activity,
or I'm disrupting the other tenant's activities. But first of all, the protests themselves,
that has nothing to do with me personally, because I don't want the protest there,
and I'm not a protester, nor did the protesters sign a commercial lease with the landlord. Now,
if you allow protesters to be a nuisance for a commercial lease, that puts every business
in jeopardy, because anybody could protest any business for any reason at any time,
and if that caused them to lose their business, you would actually encourage people to protest
or commit crimes against someone. This is called heckler's veto from a legal term.
And this is very dangerous litigation if you can have enemies of a particular business
essentially shut it down by either committing crimes or harassing patrons from that particular
business. There's been a lot of cases where this has been litigated, and in all those previous
cases, it was found that a tenant cannot be in violation of the nuisance clause for protesters.
Additionally, my speech should be clearly covered within First Amendment protections,
and additionally, because our church is designated to be a church, it should be obvious
that I'm going to preach sermons from the Bible. Now, the things that they are mad about came out
later in evidence of a trial against us, but at this point in time, it was just so vague,
it wasn't even clear what they were articulating, just as simply suggesting that us preaching the
Bible was somehow a violation of the lease. We did hire an attorney who responded.
After responding immediately, they never gave us another response for several days,
then went out of town, they sent me a second notice of default, suggesting that I needed to,
number one, hire a private security company 24 hours a day and seven days a week to protect the
building, and two, provide a plan to cease the nuisance. Well, neither of those are found in
the lease agreement whatsoever. Additionally, they gave me less than 24 hours to actually
satisfy these demands, which was a complete unreasonable request, and they threatened us
by saying they were going to hire it themselves at $40 an hour, which depending on what month
we're talking about, this could be anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000 that they're threatening to
use against us if we don't hire a private security company for perceived threats from these
protesters. Now, the reason why this is being sent is because prior to this, right before,
there was a big protest where the protesters were coming in the parking lot and screaming and
yelling at our church members while they were simply just trying to exit and go to their homes.
And it was really confusing to us why that was happening because the police had told us that the
protesters weren't allowed to come and harass us in the parking lot. Now, this is extremely
confusing to us because, according to the police, they're not allowed to come into the parking lot,
but after talking with the police officers, and we have the video of this, the police told us
that the owner of the building had given the protesters access to the property
and
was making it difficult on the police to do their job and causing our church a lot of harassment
and basically making it very difficult for us to even just enter and exit the building.
Now, a man by the name of Jeff Duncan, who was saying that he was the maintenance worker
for our building and was working with the landlord, is the one that was giving this
information to us and to the police officers and making it clear that, you know, these protesters
have access to the property, they can use the bathrooms there and everything like this, making
it to where these protesters can get all the way into our face and come up on the sidewalk if they
want to, and so it was making a very difficult situation for our church, not something that we
wanted or whatever desire, and really, from my perspective, causing a violation of lease to us
in the sense that they're trying to cause harassment and making it difficult for us
to even have our church services. Well, again, this was not something that we desired, wished,
or wanted. We were trying to work with the police and the police were very pleased with our
performance, but they felt very hamstrung by the access of the property given to these protesters.
Subsequently, the police had talked with the owner of the building and they had suggested
signing some document that would make it where if we didn't want unwanted visitors,
they would have to leave and make it a little bit easier for us to have our church service.
The owner of the building did satisfy that demand, but in the letter that they sent us right after
this, they said that the police suggested the 24-7 security, armed security, and that, you know, that
was something that we needed to do absolutely, so I contacted the police and I spoke with the primary
detective and he made it abundantly clear that's not something they suggested. Now, I don't know
that he's going to do this, but there was conversation that he might even hire a security
guard for at night or during the week when we can't be there to protect the property.
Is that a conversation that y'all had with them or is that? That's one he brought up to me. Okay,
so he brought that up to you guys. Yeah, you know, we didn't recommend, I mean, we don't recommend
those things. It's not something we bring up, but if somebody wants to do it, that's up to them.
So, that means that their letter sent to me was a complete lie.
Additionally, we sent correspondence in regards to this particular notice asking for clarification
on what they want as providing this detailed plan considering the fact that the lease has nothing
to do with that particular proposal and they did not respond to us. So, landlords become completely
unresponsive, not talking to us, and from our perspective and from legal counsel, they said
they're just doing the necessary documentation for the eviction trial. They're not
interested in actually working with you and that was very clear.
So, shortly after this, the building owner ended up contacting me and demanding an in-person meeting
and he demanded on the day that my fifth daughter was born, which was very difficult for us. You
know, I'm trying to deal with my wife and help her. She's postpartum. I ended up just
leaving the day after my fifth child was born to meet with him on such an extreme demand and
he basically just threatened me. He just threatened me and said, if you don't leave,
I'm suing you. And I tried to explain to him why I didn't feel like we'd violated the lease,
but he didn't want to listen. He didn't want to hear. And just for you to understand,
you know, whenever someone has a nuisance or offensive clause in a lease contract,
this is not carte blanche, anything that could be deemed offensive or nuisance. Otherwise,
no one would ever sign a commercial lease. This has a very clear and defined context
of an activity that's being done on the property and specifically outside of normal business use.
So, if our church was, you know, screaming or yelling or having loud noises coming out
from our church services that was truly interrupting our fellow tenants during
their normal business hours, then that would be why we could be evicted for being offensive.
You know, if a weird smell or a weird sound, then that would be a violation of the lease.
But during our church services, none of these other businesses are even open.
The protesters themselves have nothing to do with us. They're private citizens on adjacent property
peacefully protesting. So, that has nothing to do with us and cannot be attached to us.
So, therefore, we hadn't violated the lease. You know, I wasn't blasting my sermon through the
walls or forcing any of these businesses to hear anything that I had ever preached or believed.
They were purposely going online and finding clips and snippets of my preaching to be taken
out of context to use against me. And that's not a violation of the lease. Because we put so much
money into this property, leaving would have been a financial detriment to us on top of the fact
that it would be very difficult to find a new space, especially considering the fact that some
of the more prolific leasing companies in this area had been alerted of this conflict. And our
landlord was communicating with the broker that brokered our deal. And so the leasing agent and
broker were definitely alerted to the situation. And the broker made comments to protesters online
about us being a clown and that the landlord is aggressively seeking to evict us. What you're
about to hear is a conversation that I had with a real estate broker who worked on behalf of the
owner of the strip mall for the church in Hearst, Texas, that they were renting out.
He does not share the same views and same hateful views that the tenant does and they're dealing with it very swiftly.
It's just going to seem like we're not dealing with, he's not dealing with it
swiftly because the legal process takes time. And unfortunately these two other Christian
organization nonprofits get lumped into this cloud. I mean the moment that the information from the
owner is it's a pending legal matter. He is aware and he is aggressively seeking legal ways to get
this guy out of there. The one thing I need to communicate that I hope gets out there
is there unanimously every single tenant has had discussions with the owner and they do not agree
with these views. Additionally this caused me even more issues I believe down the road
because when looking for other properties I contacted a completely different leasing agency
and the leasing agent was Jake Burns of Structure Commercial and he ended up showing me a property.
I looked at it, I texted him and then he sent me a text out of the blue calling my wife fat
and suggesting that I was a false prophet and telling me to shove the bible up my you know what.
And really it just seemed like my name was just being smeared everywhere based on just simply
believing the bible. This individual obviously doesn't have any respect for the bible. Who in
their right mind would have any respect for the bible would tell someone to you know shove it up
their rear or say such wicked things about the word of God regardless of how you feel about me.
And so you know from our perspective even if we wanted to leave there wasn't an obvious place
to go. The landlord suggested that they would try to work with us if we found a space somewhere
else but at the same time you know you can't just uproot a business and find another commercial
space in a very short period of time and the landlord is only giving me a week to even do that
which again we hadn't violated our lease and we spent all this money and we had an attractive
rent rate which from my perspective was going to only benefit the landlord because the landlord
would benefit from all the tenant improvements we put in the property which again is almost
over a hundred thousand dollars. The rental rates in our area had dramatically increased and
inflation was was escalating so he could probably charge double or triple for this space that we're
using right now if he decided to get another tenant. And so from my perspective you know is
a very grievous situation. We sought legal counsel and and you know our lawyers told us look this is
a clear-cut case where you know you haven't violated the terms of the lease. Churches have
the freedom to preach what the bible says and and that makes perfect sense to me or any reasonable
person. But again because people are trying to twist what I've said or suggest I'm saying things
that I didn't that's being used as a pretext to call me a hate preacher or vilify me and my church
but it's very clear that what's happening is there's just a lot of religious discrimination
against us and and our church. Now I wanted to address some of the online situation during these
protests and during these situations. The man by the name of Jeff Duncan who was identified as
a maintenance worker who had association with the building owner. He made all kinds of online
posts negative about our church inviting people to protest our church. He would show up and give
water and and food to the protesters and from my perspective I don't understand how I'm encouraging
protesters to come to the property and the maintenance worker Jeff Duncan is not because
he's clearly inviting them encouraging them giving them water and food. I don't see how that can be
used against me that the protesters are showing up when tenants are encouraging and supporting them
or in their groups fellow tenants when the maintenance worker is encouraging them inviting
them there and in fact even the landlord's own son is making comments Riley Henderson
was making comments online suggesting that he wanted to protest our church if he was in the area
so I don't understand how the landlord's son and and associates and fellow tenants
encouraging these people to be there wanting to be there protesting us
is somehow me encouraging them to be there not only that Jeff Duncan is the one that was
communicating with the police telling them that the building owner was giving them access to the
property. I asked Mr. Henderson if he had communicated to the protesters through Jeff
Duncan and he admitted that yes he had communicated through Jeff Duncan to the protesters. Did you
give messages to Jeff Duncan to give to protesters at any point in time? No. So then why would he
give lots of messages to protesters on your behalf saying that you gave him that message?
Because. Is he lying again? Because Jeff is Jeff. But I'm just saying so that would be a lie.
Would it be a lie if Jeff said that you gave him messages to give to the protesters? Messages to
give to the protesters. I'm not even going to comment on that. Okay. Because anything I say
you're going to miss. But here's how am I twisting anything? I'm asking you straightforward questions.
I did send a message to the protesters. This is what I said. Wait wait. I'm going to answer your
question. I did give a message for Jeff to send to the protesters and it was this. We love you guys
because we love all people because Jesus is love. There's the deal.
We don't have to agree on everything. We don't have to do. But we love you guys and please don't
burn my building down. We love you guys. Please don't spray the building with bullets. We love
you guys. Please don't suck the other tenants into this act you've got to grind here.
And I did that. Absolutely did. And I would do it again.
And we have a lot of evidence of all their interactions. In fact the protesters themselves
had made comments online saying that the building owner had come and contacted them and talked with
them. Then because we were being sued not just our church but me even personally
we had a hearing and a trial where they presented evidence against us and we got an adverse ruling.
Now in this hearing the owner Mr. Henderson testified under oath under penalty of perjury
that the protesters are not protesting other groups. They're not protesting Jesus.
They are only protesting me. But that is very clearly false. The people that have been protesting
me, let me make it abundantly clear, are open Satanists, witches, people that identify themselves
as atheist, sodomite, just almost anything and everything that's very anti-biblical and very
satanic they are associating themselves with. In fact many of their signs say praise Satan,
hail Satan, you need Satan. Pentagrams drawn everywhere all over. They put the seven tenets
of Satanism near our building. So these group of individuals do not like the Bible. They have
said very derogatory and negative statements about the Lord Jesus Christ. Some of them are
so blasphemous and so horrific I don't even want to repeat them. But a couple of them I just want
to give you a little sample. They said things like your magical sky daddy hates you. They said
F you Jonathan. They said God is non-binary. They say y'all make Satan look good. They say the King
James Bible is a mistranslation. They say things like Jesus had two dads which is so blasphemous
and wicked. They say things about sodomy and all kinds of grotesque pictures and they say that
they're proud reprobates. And so it's very clear that these people despise the Bible, the word of
God, Jesus Christ, not just Jonathan Shelley, not just Steadfast Baptist Church. In fact in their
groups they've even said that they want to protest people like Greg Abbott and other Christians.
And so this group is not just solely against me or something that I said. They're against everything
that our church believes and stands for. They're against everything that the Bible preaches and
stands for and these people are giant hypocrites because they claim to have no hatred yet they very
clearly hate me. They very clearly hate our church and our church members have had zero interactions
with them because they don't know them. They've never talked to them and they're just taking their
family in a church yet these people are swearing at them, yelling at them, calling them the most
evil things that you can imagine, intimidating their children, saying evil things about their
children. And this is all being encouraged by Jeff Duncan. Jeff Duncan says that these people
are doing a great work and they're wonderful. Immediately following our trial there was a
message posted by Jeff Duncan. He congratulated this group of people, these people that are open
Satanists and said that when we finally get evicted that he wants to party with them in our
suite. And I really just couldn't even believe it. How can a religious organization that claims
to be Christian want to party with open Satanists in a Baptist church after they've
successfully evicted them? This just really is just mind-boggling. In fact, Jeff Duncan had
put some strange posts online showing that he kind of has a perverted view of the scriptures,
suggesting in the book of Genesis, in Genesis chapter number 19, I'll just kind of read what
he said, but he said it's a story of rape of young beautiful men. And then he also insinuates that
what Lot did is not really an abomination after all when he committed incest with his own daughters.
And that's really just horrifying. I don't understand why anybody would believe that
those things are what the Bible teaches. Obviously that's what happened and the Bible contains
history, but not everything that happened was right. There's obviously sinners in the Bible
that commit horrible sins and that's what was recorded, but we have God's law to tell us what's
right and wrong. And Jeff Duncan has a very strange perverted view of the scriptures here.
And from my perspective, that is typically the fruit of these parachurch ministries who have
really forsaken church or want nothing to do with church or they don't like churches.
And it's okay for people to not like me or not like my church. Everybody has their right to
believe whatever they want, but it's not right to sign a contract, sign a lease with someone
under the clear obvious evidence that it's for the purpose of a Baptist church and then evict them
for being a Baptist church, evict them for believing what the Bible actually says or
preaching doctrine. It's also a dangerous precedent that's now been set because we went
to another hearing after we appealed this and the judge ruled with the landlord again
and didn't give a detailed explanation, but essentially the only evidence that was presented
is two clips of my preaching. Immediately following our trial, Jeff Duncan posted in
the protest group against our church that they were successful in doing something that's never
been done before in this country, which is evicting a church based on what they say,
that the freedom of speech did not prevail, but rather churches can now be evicted based on what
they preach or say. And what a sad day for America when churches can't even preach the Bible anymore,
they can't preach what they are convicted or believe, but rather we're going to let judges
determine what is acceptable doctrine, what is the acceptable interpretation of the Bible or
the appropriate applications of the word of God and evaluate sermons of pastors. And again,
they don't want to actually look at any of my preaching within context or ask me to explain
my positions. They get to determine what I'm preaching, if it's right or if it's wrong.
And whether people like what I preach or not is not really the big deal here. What's the big
deal here is that our community is empowering an angry mob to essentially shut down any business
that they don't like or disagree with. If they have an unpopular opinion, they can be shut down
and the precedent is being set. You know, there's Facebook groups like Resurrecting South Hearst,
where this group from the No Hate in Hearst is also members of, and they've tried to demonize us
and say a lot of evil things about us and using platforms and groups like this to encourage the
hatred towards our church, to help try to shut down our business, to affect the financials of
our church, and essentially suggesting that people cannot believe certain doctrines,
trying to lie about them and deceive them. And from my perspective, it's one thing to
not like what I said, but why do they have to twist it into something that I didn't? Why do
they have to put forth our church as an image that's not actually true? To me, it shows an
ulterior motive. It shows someone that does not have true intentions and someone that's not really
on the side of the Bible. I don't know why people would want to coordinate and work with
people that are open Satanists when they claim to be Christian, but that's for you to decide.
In fact, in the most recent hearing and trial, two of these obvious open protesters were scheduled to
be witnesses in support of the landlord. So the landlord is, the attorney is contacting these
people or working with these people. The landlord admitted to me that he's contacted the protesters.
The maintenance worker has obviously been in contact with the protesters and sending messages
to them, supporting them, praising them. The fellow tenants, which is also another religious
organization, is supporting these open Satanists and people that hate the Bible.
I would just ask the viewer, does it make sense for Christian organizations to partner up with
and join hands with open Satanists against a church, regardless of how you feel about that
church? That's just an interesting question that I would like to put out there. The Bible says in
2 Corinthians, chapter number six, what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?
The Bible makes it clear that, you know, what agreement at the temple of God with idols,
you know, so the Bible is very clear on this issue that you shouldn't join in or have fellowship
with the evil works of darkness, but rather approve them, is what the Bible says. And
the point of this video is to just illustrate what's actually been going on.
This is, in my view, in my personal opinion, is just a satanic attack against the Bible.
And it makes sense because our church is doing so well. People are very happy. We've been growing.
We've been reaching a lot of people with the gospel. A lot of people have been baptized.
And so I believe that the devil just wants our church to stop preaching the gospel and getting
people saved. And they're trying to cherry pick the most extreme statements I've said,
taken out of context, suggesting things that I don't actually believe, to try and not just
demonize me, but even any independent funnel Baptist or any Baptist or any other church
that would actually preach the Bible. But I hope you, as a Christian, as someone that believes in
liberty or freedom, would really consider this situation and evaluate, you know, where do you
fall on this issue? You know, where do you fall on these lines? Do you think that it's right for
churches to be treated this way? And, you know, I don't know what the future beholds. I'm still
hopeful that the Lord will bless us in this situation. And I'm not discouraged because
the Bible says rejoice when men shall persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you
falsely for my name's sake. And that's what's happened here. A lot of people have said a lot of
horrible things about us that are just not true. And instead of actually putting forth what we
actually believe, they have to put an alternative narrative so as to attack our church. But if you
have any questions or if you enjoyed this video, you need to share it with people because what's
happening to us could happen to anybody. And let me warn Hearst, let me warn Texas, let me warn
America that if you're going to empower this angry mob of people that hate God and hate the Bible
to be able to throw out businesses that they don't like, here's a question, who's next? And
one of the people that's against us, that's her message. She attacked us, she said evil things
about us, and then she said, who's next? Good luck finding another space now that everybody in Texas
and America knows who you are. Who's next? And that's a scary message for those who
have an unpopular opinion. This could be Chick-fil-A, this could be Hobby Lobby, this could be
any church down the street, this could be someone that has a gun shop, this could be someone who
voted for Trump, this could be someone who did anything that could be sitting in the hot seat.
And while you may not like me or agree with my opinions, it's important that our country has the
freedom to believe and preach the Bible so as we don't allow the devil to shape the only
appropriate narrative, the only appropriate church, the only appropriate doctrine.
We need Holy Spirit-filled men of God to stand up and to preach the Bible and to not to compromise
and to believe that it's more important to stand on the truth of God's word than to compromise and
allow these evil forces to rule your church. Well, I hope that this video was a blessing
unto you. If you have any questions, you can always call or email our church,
and we'd love to hear from you. Please share this video, and God bless you. Have a great day.