Hostile Takeover

The hostile takeover of 2023, or the coup d’etat, was orchestrated by primarily one person: Chris Otis. A curious character, Chris Otis has always been an infinitely ambitious person and being an assistant pastor was not enough, so he was promoted to associate pastor. But that was not enough, so in that role as associate pastor he spent the last 10 years of ministry at Lakeview Church as the highly-promoted, premier pastor in the church, putting Norman James, II in his place constantly and being the lead in almost every public situation, especially important and critical church matters and doctrinal positions.  But even that was not enough – he wanted the throne!

 Chris Otis spent years building followers among the people, and then in the last few years before 2023 began to slowly build the key players for his coup: he needed loyal followers from the elders in the church. First one, then two, then a few more; carefully and artfully and discreetly working in secret and building his party. 

 A essential part of the success of this hostile takeover was going to be getting the cooperation and buy-in of most of the elders, and this would take some skilled politicking by Elder Chris Otis.  He had to go to various elders and persuade them to join this venture of his and support it. There had to be enough benefit to these elders, so they were promised increase authority, increased preaching, expanded ministry opportunities, and a voice in spending this large pile of excess cash that was now the largest assets Wellspring had ever owned.  And a few of them were also promised compensated positions in this new venture.

 Even the Wednesday morning Men’s Prayer Meeting, although most who attended expected it to be a good time with their brothers in Christ and in prayer, turned into the nerve center of this rebellion. Followers of Chris Otis were constantly reminded of how superior they were to the other men in the church and how important it was that all the men went there. But there was a secondary intent for the Men’s Prayer Meeting: building support for Chris Otis and his team.

 Of course, one essential thing had to be done and with the utmost care: the bylaws of the church had to be modified and made so that a majority of the elders would be adequate to demand the resignation of a pastor or apostle and allow them to take over. This is what Chris Otis did in 2020-2021, and Norman II was not interested in reading these or really understanding them, so now all Chris Otis had to do was wait and continue building followers.

 When the time was right, he now had the votes and the support for his coup. His patience and cunning would pay off.  He put his plan, or his plot, into action. 

 The elders, other than David James and Norman James, II, were all assembled and they brought Norman James, II in and read him a list of faults and crimes which they put into a letter.  They gave him 24 hours to make a decision: accept a hefty payoff and step down and sign all the church over to Chris Otis and his elders or face a legal battle with these newly assembled opponents. 

 The ABSURD thing that is shared at Wellspring is that people describe this as “miraculous!”  What ridiculous conclusion!  There was nothing miraculous about this.  Miracles are brought about by God and involve supernatural events happening by the hand of God.  This was the careful and calculated work of man.

 There are three reasons why this was a coup and NOT miraculous event:

1.      This plot was formed over several years of careful, secretive, and cunning planning. Much time, church money, effort, and plotting was put into this.

2.      Norman James, II was threatened with legal action against him and his family and was told “you do not want to put your family through the hardship and embarrassment of a legal battle.” This was intimidation and coercion.

3.      Norman James, II was given a sizable bribe to go away quietly.  The range of possible bribery money given to Norman was anywhere from $200,000 to $750,000. Though the most credible witness says $750,000 was the amount paid. Yes, they told everyone that this was “severance” money and they documented this as such, but no company, especially a church, gives severance to an employee who has committed alleged financial crimes (in Norman’s case, financial malfeasement). And an amount this large far exceeds even a normal severance for a loved and respected member of any organization. One year’s pay is considered very generous in a good circumstance. But this was a BRIBE, defined as “to persuade someone to act in one's favor, typically illegally or dishonestly, by a gift of money or other inducement.”  Many of the elders from this meeting quite carelessly shared (and bragged) to many in the church by saying, “good thing he took the money – if he had not taken the money we would have been in an impossible situation.”  The elders of Wellspring offered a very sizable, almost ludicrous, sum of money to Norman James, II to persuade and entice him to go away quietly and give away the church to Chris Otis and his new team. What’s more is they used the tithe money of God’s people to pay this bribe to give them control of the church. 

 To sum up: this was a cunning plot, not a miracle, because it was done after years of careful planning, used intimidation and coercion to get the result, and a large financial bribe was given to ensure the deal could not fall through. The sad thing is he took it – it was like he sold his soul and all his family and all their life and all their reputation for a big pile of money, and he did so for an amount that was not really that great in the long-term. What is more sad is all those elders who agreed to take God’s money, given through the tithing of hundreds of people, to pay a bribe to someone they despised. 

 “He who profit illicitly troubles his own house, but he who hates bribes will live.” Proverbs 15:27

 Another interesting observation of this whole event – it demonstrated how loyal the people of the church were to the organization first, not any one person or family, but the loyalty was to the organization and that particular building. It is really interesting, this key cult-like trait of a “loyalty culture”, where loyalty to the organization is lifted up as of the utmost importance and blinds people from making sound, godly decisions.