The story of Pastor Boyd Holder is a strange and quite perverse one, with more twists and turns than a mountain road.
In January, police in Kingsport, Tennessee, caught the minister having sex with another person in a van that was parked outside a vacant building. The van belonged to?Victory Apostolic Church, and police issued Pastor Holder a warning for having sex in public with an unnamed person.
After his parishioners found out about Holder’s indiscretion, they began investigating church finances and soon discovered that the minister had arranged for no one to have access to church funds other than himself. Convenient, huh?
In February, board members at Victory Apostolic realized that between $70-100,000 was missing from the church’s banking account. When they confronted Holder with this information, he promptly had them booted out of the church.
Also in February, Holder allegedly assaulted a man who showed up for a service. Reports of the incident state:
?A man told police that when he visited to worship, Holder ordered him to leave. Holder reportedly demanded the visitor do so because he, ?was not there for the right reasons.??When the complainant again refused ? offering that he only ?wanted to enjoy the service? ? Holder allegedly, ?grabbed him by his belt and attempted to lift him out of the pew.? It was after other church members ‘politely’ asked the man to leave that he complied, then called police to report the incident.”
Once authorities got involved, they found out the hidden life of Pastor Boyd Holder. And as a result of their investigation, Holder was charged with?theft over $60,000 and money laundering. He was formally indicted by a grand jury on May 20.
And what, pray tell, did Pastor Boyd Holder spend the money he stole on? Gay dating web sites. One,?Online Buddies bills itself as:
?The world’s largest gay brand, with over 10 million members around the world.”
Now I could care less what someone’s sexual orientation is. That doesn’t impact me in anyway whatsoever. But when a so-called “man of God” steals from his church to indulge in a secret life he didn’t tell his church about, that is where the line has to be drawn. Also, how much do you want to bet that Pastor Holder would have preached against anyone who was doing the same things he was?
It’s the sin of hypocrisy that eventually caught up with Boyd Holder, and that sin may just send him to prison for a very long time.
