The Dumb Ass South of Dallas
Context only matters if you’re willing to support the result, even if it contradicts your position — this is especially true if you’re a Bible-believing Christian, let alone an in-name Baptist pastor.
Pastor Jonathan Shelley currently oversees Stedfast Baptist Church in Cedar Hill, Texas just south of the Dallas-Fort Worth area and has been there for half a decade. Due to a lack of true independence as a church body, Pastor Jonathan Shelley was illegitimately installed by Pastor Steven Anderson following the resignation of Pastor Donnie Romero.
Allegations against Pastor Romero were, among other things, that he was using the church funds for inappropriate activities including soliciting prostitutes and casino activity. Prior to this, Pastor Romero had been serving as part of Texan expansion of the New Independent Fundamental Baptist movement.
In his own words, according to an article from the Southern Poverty Law Center on the issue, Brother Romero said:
“I went to a casino, and I was drinking, and there were girls there that were prostitutes, and I committed adultery on my wife multiple times. I drank and gambled multiple times. And I even smoked weed.”
These behaviors resulted in his disqualification from the service of pastor, but did not disqualify him as a brother in Christ. During his resignation announcement to the congregation at Stedfast Baptist Church, he was open about his intent to stay in the congregation, to get right with his family, and to continue his service to the Lord as a brother.
As unfortunate as the situation was, Brother Romero showed two things that neither Pastor Anderson nor Pastor Shelley have that can’t be taken away from him with regard to he handled his resignation — dignity and accountability.
Believe it or not, Pastor Steven Anderson initially preached grace for Romero instead of judgment and even announced that he was there “as a friend” — but if you’ve spent any amount of time with him, you understand that this is part of his act.
False promises and false accusations soon followed from the pulpit at Stedfast Baptist Church, with questions surrounding the financial health of the operation and jabs at the congregation’s loyalty to the Lord — but it wasn’t coming from anyone that had legitimate legal or biblical authority.
Within Faithful Word Baptist Church and regarding the business and affairs of that church body is the only place where the pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church has any legal or biblical authority. Even within the homes of his own congregants, Pastor Steven Anderson does not have the biblical authority to rule someone else’s home.
The reason that Pastor Anderson was actually in Texas was to get the legal authority (Mr. and Mrs. Romero) out of the equation as soon as possible because he saw a golden opportunity to install the ultimate copycat. It wasn’t that Romero’s devotion to Anderson was leaning one way or the other, but a person who arrived to their position illegitimately is only going to seek more of the same.
According to a video from Adam Fannin, a member of Stedfast Baptist Church, 90% of the congregation was against the installation of Jonathan Shelley and were vocal about not returning if that went forward.
Bro. Benjamin Naim then posted a response which supposedly showed the “wholehearted support” for Jonathan Shelley, refusing to acknowledge the position of the majority of the independent church and intentionally presenting the minority as the majority.
Bro. Benjamin Naim (black hoodie)
Structuring sister churches this way, Anderson would be able to establish a stronger presence of identical — not like-minded— churches who did and did not at his sole discretion. It was also around this time that First Works Baptist Church was continuing to grow and facing protests of their own — so Texas gave Anderson a church in his back pocket if everything went south in Los Angeles.
Once installed through a non-independent process, Pastor Jonathan Shelley wasted no time publicly attacking those in the church that called out the unbiblical transition. Namely, anyone who asked for a vote on pastoral direction, asked for transparency as it relates to the church finances, or those who separated afterwards to attend somewhere else were all publicly marked as heretical.
In like manner to Steven Anderson and Bruce Mejia, anyone who was willing to stand up to Shelley with a Bible verse correcting their behavior was not addressed biblically. By default, two of the three steps prescribed in Matthew 18 for dealing with a dispute between brothers or sisters in Christ were skipped so as to not require the establishing of witnesses and a legitimate timeline.
The first step would be to go to them privately and deal directly with them — they avoided this to workaround facing scripture that spoke for itself.
The second step would be to take two or three witnesses to the brother or sister who was at fault — they refused to do this because it would require them being truthful about what took place.
Instead, in unison they aired issues within the congregation directly to their infidel fan club on the internet. Both Anderson and Mejia understand the power that come from being the loudest dogs in the room — with Shelley joining arms with them, they could create their unilateral three-headed monster.
They violate the third step on purpose because instead of doing it in a church-only setting, the hope is to get the opposition in the room to shut up for sake of embarrassment or out of concern for something happening to them by one of the inconspicuous internet infidels.
The worst part about their strategy is that it worked.
Eventually, they wore out anyone willing to fight for the verity of the matter and it made way for Anderson to not only secure the installation of Shelley as a puppet, but it guaranteed that the pastoral fruit of Jonathan Shelley would be able to reinforce against future dissent of the group.
Zooming out for a moment, I want us to be able to see how their plan came to pass.
When the accusations of the Anderson children became viral, Pastor Shelley immediately lost the support and fellowship of now-Brother Salvador Alvarez.
Just days prior, Shelley had preached to Stedfast Baptist Church about how proud he was of Salvador Alvarez and that he couldn’t be happier to ordain his understudy at Pure Words Baptist Church in Houston.
We saw this in the previous article about Pastor Bruce Mejia, but given the plethora of independent churches who held fast to their independence as a church, the movement was left only with Anderson, Shelley, and Mejia — with Pastor Aaron Thompson and Pastor Roger Jimenez resting on the fence of the issue of domestic violence and marital rape.
From here, both Pastor Steven Anderson and Pastor Jonathan Shelley moved forward with emergency pastoral candidates to fill the gaps of the churches that left the movement. Within a very short time, Deacon Corbin Ressl was ordained by Anderson to “lead” Straight Paths Baptist Church in Tucson, Arizona.
Pastor Corbin Ressl then shortly thereafter announced a new church in Boise, Idaho (of all places) following the large amount of dissent from within the New IFB tied to agreement what Pastor Joe Jones began preaching on — this exposed the wolves for who they really were the whole time.
Under similar circumstances, Pastor Shelley announced his new protege by ordaining Dillon Awes to run Anchor Baptist Church in Oklahoma City. Pastor Awes also targeted Pastor Jones in a sermon accusing Pastor Jones of teaching that God is a communist as it relates to the rewards believers receive in heaven.
Pastor Bruce Mejia had tried multiple times at planting new churches, one in Denver and one in San Diego, to no avail — he couldn’t get the people to come.
At the beginning of this, we looked at how context only really matters if you support the truth coming to light regardless of your position. To close, I want to look with you at how these same people that throw out the context of independent churches also twist the meaning thereof — and why they do it with ease.
Inside the phrase “New Independent Fundamental Baptists” you would think that independence is of high importance to them. I mean, outside of being the “new” form of fundamental baptist ministry, being independent literally was what was supposed to differentiate their group from false faiths and wayward denominations.
By definition, to be “independent” is to be “free from outside control; not depending on another’s authority.”
In unwavering and uniform unison, the remaining pastors of the floundering movement changed this phrasing to simply mean “we’re not part of them.” They did this when comparing themselves to Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, et cetera — but never checked their own vanity or addressed elephant in the room of their perpetual loyalty test to Steven Anderson.
The dear leader mentality grew so bad in the wake of accusations against their prophet that being independent in their movement meant now being independent of the freedom to think for yourself and independent of the ability to rely solely on what scripture says.
And ultimately — an independence from Jesus Christ.
Jack Hyles managed to pull of the same stunt with his followers by being charismatic and persuasive enough to where he could boldly tell the congregation to close their Bibles and just listen to him.
Pastor Anderson, Pastor Shelley, and Pastor Mejia are just too cowardly to admit that part out loud. This is because facing the music of what their movement has become would mean losing their identity — yet it’s exactly what they want you to do.
Every place where the Bible says one thing, they want you to believe the opposite.
Where the Bible says that we enter into eternal rest through faith in what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross, Bruce Mejia wants you to be scared as a believer of the possibility of everlasting contempt applying to you.
Where the Bible says that we should have no respect of persons, Steven Anderson wants you to look at how much cruise ship soul-winning he did for a God that he’s willing to ignore.
Where the Bible says to avoid evil communication and a wicked tongue, Jonathan Shelley wants you to believe that it’s okay for him to cuss like a sailor from the pulpit.
They got you used to this by making you think it was cool to recite back to them inflammatory words like “faggot” instead of the Bible word for that person.
The deception is subtle at times and stronger at others, so why would they do this to you?
It produces obedience to them and not to God — and that’s all they ever actually cared about.
