Court documents reveal full extent of church lawsuit allegations

In the first round in a multi-million dollar lawsuit launched by the Vineyard religious movement, a judge has sided with the former head pastor of its Causeway Coast branch.

Alan Scott took over took over the Anaheim Vineyard church in California in 2018, after leaving Coleraine.

Four years later, he had changed the church’s name and broken off from the Vineyard's US umbrella body.

The Movement alleges that Scott, along with his wife Kathryn never had any intention of keeping the Church part of the Vineyard Movement.

Rather, they intended to use their leadership positions to wrest control of the Church’s $62m assets.

In a 'tentative ruling' issued in September, a judge sustained 'demurrers' or objections of the defendants that asserted the allegations were not sufficient to prompt legal action.

The court understood why the church would be upset over the fate of its Anaheim branch's assets, should everything it alleged be true.

But, the judge added, secular courts had no business attempting to right wrongs related to the hiring, firing, discipline or administration of clergy.

The Vineyard Movement was established in the late 1970s by John and Carol Wimber. He was senior pastor at Anaheim until his death in 1997 when he was succeeded by Lance Pittluck.

When Pittluck resigned in 2017 the search for a successor began. And Alan Scott, recently arrived in California with intention of promoting wife Kathryn's music career, was soon in the frame.

Having been appointed, Scott methodically reconstituted Anaheim's board of directors so that it consisted only of members loyal to him, the Movement alleges.

And on February 25, 2022, he publicly announced the church was leaving the Vineyard Movement and had been renamed the Dwelling Place.

The Plaintiffs have never alleged that old board members were illegally removed, or that new potential board members dissatisfied with the Scotts were threatened or coerced not to apply for a position.

But they do insist The Scotts’ true goal was to gain control of the assets.

Furthermore, they were able to acquire the leadership roles that enabled the move by making “knowingly false statements” during the recruitment process.

According to the Movement, on arriving in California the Scotts initially had not planned to continue affiliating with the Vineyard Movement due to “dissatisfaction with the organization”.

That changed when Alan learned of Church owned $55 million in property and had $19 million in the bank. (At the time Scott became senior pastor, this was reduced to $7 million because various Church debts had been paid off.)

The Movement drew attention to email sent to Vineyard's US director in which Scott wrote that the Movement wasn’t “an environment where we would want to plant our lives or raise our girls,” and that he and Kathryn had “arrived at the painful conclusion that we won’t be part of a local [V]ineyard church in the next part of our journey.”

None of this was known to the recruitment committee who appointed him, the plaintiffs claim.

At the time, its members had been “acutely concerned with both the importance of the [Anaheim] Church’s place in the Vineyard Movement and the Church remaining part of the Vineyard Movement

The plaintiffs state that during the interview with the committee, Alan Scott said he was “Vineyard through and through.”

The Movement also insisted Alan Scott told the committee, “Due to the historical nature of this church and out of honour to John and the Wimber family, I would never take this house out of the Vineyard Movement.”

When asked if the Scotts would ever desire to lead the Church toward another Christian movement, Alan Scott replied that John Wimber was like a spiritual father to him and Kathryn Scott.

The judge in his ruling did not consider the allegations over what Scott said ahead of recruitment process in any detail.

Instead he drew attention to the Court of Appeal which held that secular courts should not interfere in matters “where the subject matter of a dispute is purely ecclesiastical in its character.”

The alleged fraud here, he said, goes to the Scotts’ personal religious beliefs and to the Church’s affiliation with the Vineyard Movement which was “ an inherently religious question.

“The preservation of the free exercise of religion is deemed so important a principle as to overshadow the inequities which may result from its liberal application, ”said the judge.

While the judge declined to interrogate the Movement's claims, the church has since told parishioners exerts of emails were “carefully selected” by the plaintiffs to claim that Alan Scott was “expressing his dissatisfaction with the Vineyard Movement and Vineyard USA”

On its website, the Dwelling Place says the complaint contains “multiple inaccuracies, mis-statements, and falsehoods.”

The church goes on to say the couple had “loved the Vineyard Movement” while retaining concern over “the fractured nature of the movement in Orange County that made it difficult to attend church locally without causing undue upset to someone they loved.

The church said no one on the recruitment committee raised the question of the Scott’s or VA’s (Vineyard Anaheim) lifelong association to the VUSA organization.

“The twelve members of the Search Committee, each with very different perspectives, and after much prayer, all voted unanimously that the Scott’s were led to us and chosen by God to lead the church into the future.”