Nashville Church Settles Second Lawsuit, Agrees To Repay Lost Mission Fund
The Nashville Church of Christ in Tennessee, formerly known as the Central Church of Christ, must restore a trust fund set up by a former Central member, according to a settlement approved by a Tennessee circuit court.
The judgment resolves a lawsuit brought last year by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, which accused the Nashville church of breaching a trust left to the Central church by John R. Jones, who died in 1981. Skrmetti is a member of the Harpeth Hills Church of Christ in Brentwood.
According to Jones’ will, the trust was given “not to be entered in [the] Building Fund nor go for the construction of [a] new church, but to be invested by them for monthly or quarterly income and for the benefit of missionary endeavors according to the discretion of the elders.”
The agreement requires the Nashville church to restore $440,000 to the trust and transfer its control to the nearby Crieve Hall Church of Christ.
This settlement comes after the Nashville church and the estate of A.M. Burton, a founding member of the Central congregation, settled a much larger case involving the fate of the downtown Nashville church building.
As The Christian Chronicle previously reported, that agreement requires the sale of the property at fair market value — estimated at $11 million, according to property tax records — with 80 percent of the proceeds going to the estate and 20 percent going to the Nashville church.
Both issues stemmed from the January 2018 incorporation of the Central church as the Nashville Church of Christ, shortly after Shawn Mathis became the church’s third elder.
As part of that process, all of the Central church’s assets were transferred to the Nashville church, including money from its mission fund and more than 25 other accounts.
The court found that Mathis and Julian Earnest, another elder at the time of the incorporation, failed to take any action to administer the trust as its trustees or to designate successors. Both are named in the lawsuit alongside the Nashville church itself.
Earnest resigned from the eldership a few months after the incorporation, having served for 30 years.
Mathis, meanwhile, told the court he had not been aware of the trust fund until 2020.
In the settlement, Mathis and the Nashville church have agreed to restore the trust with interest. The final number, $440,000, includes the value of the trust in 2018 — $303,356 — plus six percent interest over seven and a half years, amounting to $136,510.
The church and attorney general have also agreed to name the elders of Crieve Hall, seven miles south of the former Nashville church building, as successor trustees. The trust will serve Crieve Hall’s missionary work. Otherwise, the trust retains the same terms as before.
The court findings acknowledge that the Crieve Hall church “is an autonomous congregation within the Churches of Christ; is overseen by a plurality of Elders; and engages in missionary endeavors in a similar manner as the former Central Church of Christ.”
This article has been republished courtesy of The Christian Chronicle.
Calvin Cockrell is Managing Editor for The Christian Chronicle and serves as the young adult minister for the North Tuscaloosa Church of Christ in Alabama. Reach him at calvin@christianchronicle.org.