A Pastor Secretly Mortgaged His Church. It Came Within Three Days of Being Auctioned

• Miami’s St John Institutional Missionary Baptist Church faced auction over its former pastor’s debts
• Mortgages totalling nearly US$2.5 million had been signed without church leaders’ knowledge
• The debt reached US$2.7 million with interest and taxes
• A redevelopment agency bought the property for US$3.9 million three days before the sale

One of Miami’s oldest Black churches came within days of losing three of its buildings because of loans its former pastor took out without telling church leaders, MinistryWatch reported on 1 August 2024, drawing on Miami Herald coverage.

St John Institutional Missionary Baptist Church in Overtown was founded in 1906. Bishop James D. Adams, its senior pastor from 2010 until he was fired in 2021, signed two mortgages worth nearly US$2.5 million using church property as collateral. They included a US$1.6 million balloon loan from 2018. Much of the money went towards a US$1.3 million riverfront condo in downtown Miami intended as his parsonage. With interest and taxes, the debt grew to US$2.7 million, and a judge set a foreclosure auction for 11 September 2023.

The congregation launched a GoFundMe appeal but raised only US$13,500 of the roughly US$3 million it needed. Three days before the auction, the Southeast Overtown/Park West Community Redevelopment Agency stepped in and bought the property for US$3.9 million. The deal cleared the loans, gave the church the right to buy the property back and allowed it to lease the buildings for US$1 a year.

“Our job here is to try to revitalize the community,” the agency’s executive director, James D. McQueen, told the Miami Herald. Church board president Darryl Spence said earlier in the ordeal: “The members are still hanging on and trusting that God will bring us out of this.” The church’s 1940 cathedral, designed by McKissack & McKissack, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Miami is home to one of the largest Jamaican communities in the United States, and the lesson carries straight back to the island. When one person can sign away a church’s property, the whole congregation is exposed. Jamaican churches should make sure titles are held by trustees, that any mortgage needs a recorded congregational or board vote, and that the lender is dealing with the church, not just its leader.

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