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Pastor Who Secretly Listed Church for Sale Walks Back Resignation

Calvary Chapel Pastor Rodney Finch Blames Retirement Negotiation Breakdown

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Less than two months ago, Pastor Rodney Finch told his Calvary Chapel Cary congregation in Apex, North Carolina, “The time for me to go is now.”

Calvary Chapel Cary Pastor Rodney Finch from 2020 / Video screenshot

Finch’s resignation came amid an uproar over the discovery he had listed the church property for sale without telling anyone—the latest in a long string of alleged scandals, lies, secrets and financial missteps.

But on Sept. 22, Finch was back in the pulpit. And the pastors he’d tapped to replace him were gone, having announced their own resignations the previous Sunday.

In audio obtained by MinistryWatch, Finch addressed church members after the service to explain his return. He admitted that, behind closed doors, he had made a deal with the other pastors, Ralf Stores and Scott Burrell, that he would not relinquish his authority until the church agreed to a plan to fund his retirement, using profits from the future sale of the church.

Then, when the leadership offered Finch a payout amount, he refused to sign what he called “almost like blackmail,” because the contract required him to simultaneously surrender his authority rather than quit at a later time of his choosing.

“I earned my retirement. You can’t hold me hostage like that,” Finch said. “I don’t have to do anything for my retirement. I worked 30 years, so that’s mine.”

Finch also claimed that because of the church’s bylaws, the current board lacked the authority to draft legal documents. Finch did not explain why he had not formed a board with this authority prior to starting negotiations.

Singling out Stores by name, Finch railed against the former board and pastors for suspecting him of attempting to secretly form a limited liability company to steal money from the sale of the church. Their treatment of him, he claimed, had helped push him out the door.

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“I had had it,” Finch said. “I am not the guy who ever even wanted to be a pastor, to be quite honest with you. I have been serving the Lord in this church for 30 years out of total obedience to God. I don’t need it. I didn’t want it. I don’t need it.”

As previously reported by MinistryWatch, those 30 years have been mired by a host of issues, such as soliciting funds for a new church building that was never built and keeping budget information and even the church by-laws hidden from his own team. Another scandal was Finch’s long struggle with a drug addiction he hid from his congregation even as he pushed the board to cover $50,000 of a luxury rehabilitation program—which he then quit without telling the church.

Stores declined to speak with MinistryWatch, and Burrell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Tony Mator

Tony Mator is a Pittsburgh journalist, copywriter, blogger and musician who has done work for World magazine, The Imaginative Conservative and the Hendersonville Times-News, among others. Follow his work and observations at twitter.com/wise_watcher.

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