Again I will ask the question – what does it take to disqualify a pastor these days?
I received a message on my Facebook page from someone who was concerned that a former pastor and college professor was preaching in churches again. When I looked this guy up, I immediately remembered this story. Lo and behold, he committed a voyeuristic crime.
In 2013 Cedarville University Alumni Jeremy Grinnell was a teaching pastor at Bella Vista Church in Rockford, MI and an assistant professor of systematic theology at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary (a division of Cornerstone University) in Grand Rapids, MI. He was arrested on November 8, 2013 for peeping on his former assistant and her boyfriend as they engaged in sexual intercourse in her home. According to this article from Michigan Live:
“Grinnell said he climbed a ladder to the second floor of the home and saw the pair having sex. Grinnell left and then returned the next night, when he was apprehended by Kyle Baker, who resided at the home with his fiancé.
“After the first incident, Baker said he and the woman were pretty sure it was Grinnell who had spied on them. The next night Baker waited outside the home to see if the peeper would return. “We kind of set him up,” Baker said. “There was no way this idiot was going to show up again.” Baker said Grinnell had sent his fiancé love letters telling her that he wanted to be with her.
“He was a stalker,” Baker said.”
In June 2014 Grinnell pleaded guilty to the crime of ‘Surveilling an Unclothed Person’ and was given 5 years probation.
Things That Predators Say
- It was a ‘momentary’ mistake. “Myself (Grinnell) and the elders, we would do on-site prayer walks on her property. That’s why I was on the property,” he says. There was a “stepladder leaning against the house, and I broke the law, and it was a mistake, and it was wrong.”
- Initially had good motives. “Grinnell says he didn’t set out to sin when he went to the 40-year-old woman’s home last November. Bella Vista Church was trying to help the woman avoid foreclosure on her house, he said.”
- He later blamed ‘depression’ for his bad decisions and eventual loss of his pastorate & teaching job. (podcast from Frontline Church)
Do you notice anything familiar here? People who engage in these type of crimes ALWAYS try to minimize the details. Jeremy Grinnell would have us believe that this was just a crime of opportunity. He just happened to be at his former assistant’s house AT NIGHT, when her boyfriend was there, AND when a ladder was against the house. He just happened to go by her house two nights in a row. His ‘depression’ somehow caused him to devolve into voyeuristic crimes. The hardest to believe, of course, is that all of this was couched in an altruistic spirit – he just really wanted to help his former assistant avoid foreclosure on her house!
What was really going on?
According to the victim, Jeremy Grinnell had been stalking her and sending her love letters, claiming he would leave his wife for her.
“Baker (victim’s fiance’) says Grinnell wrote a five-part love letter to his assistant, saying he would leave his wife for her, “and she told him multiple times, ‘You’ve got this awesome opportunity. You are throwing this all away. What are you doing?’ and he would just not let up.”
“Baker simply says he believes Grinnell’s a stalker who was caught.”
Don't Throw It All Away
Jeremy Grinnell is a highly educated man. He graduated from Cedarville University in 1995 with a BA, an MA from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary and a PhD from Calvin College’s theological seminary in 2011. More than likely he had every resource at his disposal to help him with his depression, so why would he fall into criminal sexual behavior as a way to cope? Is this a chicken-egg argument? We saw the same scenario with Anthony Moore at The Village Church. He engaged in abusive behavior with his victim prior to and during his voyueristic crimes. (read about that here on Todd Wilhelm’s blog Thou Art The Man)
Don’t forget about Rick Trotter
Rick was the popular voice of the Memphis Grizzlies and was employed by Downtown Church in Memphis as a worship leader. In 2018, he was sentenced to 60 days in jail & 4 years probation for unlawfully photographing women under their skirts at the church. He is also registered as a sex offender. While this seems like a cut & dried case, Trotter’s crimes went further back and were covered up by his brother-in-law, Bryan Lorritts, former pastor of Fellowship Church, Memphis.
According to this article in The Christian Post, Trotter was accused of recording women in the bathrooms at Fellowship Church when he was employed there from 2005-2010. When the crimes were discovered, Trotter was immediately terminated.
“After getting caught by the staff, Rick’s brother in-law, Bryan Loritts, and lead pastor and elder, John Bryson (ACTS29 Board), claimed to have destroyed the evidence (Rick Trotter’s iPhone) after watching the footage. They told all the women that they had consulted an officer and attorney and if we pressed charges it would ruin Rick Trotter’s life and the video would be played in court,”
According to this blog post by Bruce Gerencser, in 2011, Fellowship Church consulted with Downtown Church prior to hiring Trotter in 2011, and determined he was no longer a a risk.
Sound familiar? (maybe it’s because Trotter had connections, like Anthony Moore)
After working as a part-time contract employee for 3 years, he was hired full-time in 2014, following ‘years of service with no problems.’
(FYI – sex offenders are remarkably compliant and will follow any rules necessary to gain the trust of the community & access to victims.)
Rick Trotter went on to reoffend and then eventually got caught. Trotter’s victims, however, felt he only got a slap on the wrist and that the Memphis police did not give other victims a chance to come forward.
“While we are pleased that a verdict is final and we can move on with some sense of closure, we do not believe that our laws deal with voyeurs seriously enough,” reads a portion of the one-page statement released to The Commercial Appeal.
“The amount of videos found on Trotter’s laptop and phone are worthy of more significant jail time, but no efforts were made by the Memphis Sex Crimes Unit to identify other women in those videos and give them the opportunity to press charges as well.”
Slinking Back Into The Pulpit
The person who reached out to me about Jeremy Grinnell said he has preached recently at Frontline Church in Grand Rapids, MI. She sent me the link to the last sermon he preached on January 5, 2020. (video below) I discovered that he has preached several times at Frontline, and I was able to locate the podcast sermon (link in paragraph above), this one from after Thanksgiving and this sermon from 2018. There are others, but I think you get my point.
The lead pastor of Frontline Church is Brian Blum. Brian is also a leader in the ministry Zero Collective. The congregation of Frontline Church are very much aware of Jeremy’s past, since he’s made no effort to hide it. Grinnell stated in a sermon that he has a podcast/blog, but I was unable to locate it. If anyone has a real listening ear, please try to decipher the name of it in the audio clip I embedded earlier in the post. He references it in the very beginning.
With that being said – I have to wonder how people are comfortable with this guy preaching and teaching while having a criminal record? Well technically he may have had his record expunged recently (I’m in the process of trying to verify), but he’s been teaching for years at Frontline. How does a pastor convince his congregation that it’s ok to let a guy who is guilty of voyeuristic crimes get up in front of them and preach? I need answers!
Not only is Jeremy preaching at Frontline Church…….he’s also preaching and teaching at the church he stepped down from – Bella Vista Church in Rockford, MI.
What we have here are a lot of pastors allowing their buddies who are guilty of sex crimes back into the pulpit. This has to stop. Jeremy Grinnell may have created a new platform for himself by playing the ‘oh I was depressed, stressed, etc‘ card, but the bottom line is, this pastor stalked a woman and then criminally viewed her & her boyfriend in a sexual situation. That was not an oopsie. It was a premeditated crime and Grinnell’s friends are doing him a great disservice by allowing him to preach and teach, thus giving him the same access to power over women that he had before.
Paraphilia
Voyeurism is a paraphilic disorder in the same category as pedophilia. Yes, it’s serious, and people who engage in this behavior need specialized psychiatric care and monitoring. I can’t find anything that indicates Grinnell has gone through this therapeutic process, but given he’s part of the YRR, it’s doubtful. They rely heavily on church discipline and ‘biblical’ counseling, not modern psychological methods which are needed to treat these disorders. My guess is there is a big snow job being pulled here, and I hope the people at Frontline Church and Bella Vista church wise up and tell those pastors to yank Grinnell out of the teaching/preaching schedule.
Something I find very predictable is these guys almost always have a very limited social media presence. They hide in plain sight.
The Industry
I was shocked to find out that as a blogger who writes about church abuse, I am part of an ‘industry’ that apparently makes money off of the suffering of poor fallen pastors.
I love what my fellow ‘industry’ blogger said,
This outrageous claim comes from none other than Bryan Lorritts, in an Instagram video that he posted a couple of days ago in response to the death of pastor Darrin Patrick. In this video, he says that Patrick had told him he wanted to be the lead pastor of a church again, but because of what showed up on Google searches about him – he couldn’t ‘get past his past‘. I wasn’t blogging when all of this happened with Patrick when he was at Journey Church, but I spent some time catching up on what happened, and it wasn’t good. I don’t want to speak ill of someone who has passed away. What’s there is there. What I want to address is how Lorritts tried to say that bloggers and those who write about fallen pastors and church abuse are somehow to blame for Patrick’s inability to move forward, implying that may have been a factor in all of this. Shame on him.
First of all, I think it’s just a little bit coincidental that Lorritt’s would bring up bloggers, since he himself has been mentioned recently in regards to his role in the cover up of his brother-in-law’s crimes, especially in light of Anthony Moore’s voyeuristic crimes. The fact that he covered up for similar crimes simply cannot go unnoticed.
Secondly, he says there’s not enough grace out there…that the word ‘disqualified’ in the Bible never refers to pastors. Well then no one can be disqualified, right? Grace is the standard, and grace abounds?
No, Pastor Lorritts – you are sadly mistaken. When ‘men of God’ stop feasting on the sheep & covering for those who do, then I’ll get out of the ‘industry’. But until then, we unite and we write and we warn.
My parents tried to make my siblings and I have dinner with Jeremy and his family after he was removed from his position in the church. We were quite upset with being blindsided into a dinner with an (at the time) alleged sex offender of sorts and we left. I made the point to my parents who quickly dismissed our concerns and anger. They said they were being good Christians by being there for someone who was going through something awful. My mother helped convince his wife and several young daughters to stay with him using the toxic fundamentalist mind… Read more »
I don’t know, but I just read his book (which led me on to your blog), and I think you may have gotten this one wrong. But I suppose that’s inevitable in this sort of writing–shoot hard with early info, never checking back to see what happened to any of them. The site could really benefit from some follow up stories… maybe of some successes? Without them, it leaves the reader with a more cynical view of the blogger’s agenda than you probably want. Anonymity doesn’t really ingratiate the reader either. That’s just my opinion though, do as you wish.
I believe that Mr. Grinnell is someone that I attended a private baptist high school with, in the northeastern part of Michigan. He was 3 grades behind me. I was shocked to see the articles in 2013. I too want to ask the author of this blog, what would you recommend is the way to helping this man or helping restore him? Many have sexual issues today, not just many pastors (and yes, I mean many, as I am aware of quite a few, one of them personally from a former church). We know what passages like Titus 1 say… Read more »
I believe there are disqualifiers for those who work in ministry positions. When you use your power & position to abuse others, you lose the right to hold that position ever again. It would be no different than a bank employee stealing from the bank….they would be fired, arrested and would never be able to work in a financial institution again. That is the consequence of the offense. We too often regard a calling over character, and err on the side of trying to ‘restore’ a pastor rather than follow the requirements in I Timothy 3 that clearly spell out… Read more »
I’m not advocating for or against his current status. I had him at seminary and was in his systematic theology 2 class as we were working through hamartiology when he was arrested. It’s heart breaking and gut wrenching. Baker was abused and sinned against. I pray she can find healing. I grieve for her. Both charges– whether her account or his account– are trauma. Here is my honest question for you in response to this (well written and sound) post. What would you propose be the steps of biblical healing and accountability for Dr Grinnell? How should the USA workforce… Read more »
I can only answer with the information I have. It is not clear what steps of rehabilitation Dr. Grinnell took to seek help with his paraphilia. Without that information, we are all left to assume that he simply paid his debt to society and has moved on. Paraphilia is a complex disorder. I am not a mental health professional, therefore I cannot speak into what it would take to consider someone ‘cured’ of it. In Dr. Grinnell’s case, however, I would err on the side of caution. IMO that would mean not allowing him to be in a position of… Read more »
I’m not sure if it’s just me for some reason, but it seems a lot of the radio pastors are focusing on forgiveness… but I’m not hearing a similar emphasis on repentance and justice… what is going on? am I imagining this? do pastors really think they cannot be disqualified… even if they are not above reproach? there’s some serious deception going on it seems… an interesting stat from the 2016 Barna survey on porn was that around 70% of non-clergy thought pastors should step down if they were struggling with porn compared to less than 10% of pastors thought… Read more »
This makes me think that there is complicity in the behavior among these pastors. I can’t come to any other conclusion.
Being convicted of any kind of sex crime in my state means you’ll never teach again if you possess a credential. It astounds me that pastors would think that they would be treated any differently, especially since they have souls under their care.