A Pastor Wants to Own His Church’s Land Himself. His Own Denomination Is Suing to Stop Him

• The Tarrant Baptist Church property is worth an estimated $50 million
• Pastor Shuttleworth tried to register it under his own name
• The JBU cites a 1969 Act vesting church property in the union
• Doctrinal disagreement over LGBTQ inclusion sits behind the dispute

Pastor Jeffrey Shuttleworth of Tarrant Baptist Church on Molynes Road, St Andrew, and the Jamaica Baptist Union are locked in a Supreme Court battle over ownership of the church property, after Shuttleworth signalled his intent to register the land under his own name through the National Land Agency, a move the JBU took directly to court to block.

The JBU’s legal claim rests on a specific statute: the Jamaica Baptist Union Incorporation and Vesting Act of 1969, which the union says vested ownership of Baptist church properties across Jamaica in the organisation itself, not in individual congregations or pastors. The JBU is seeking a declaration that it is the legal executor of all Baptist churches and holds legal ownership and control over all real property, lands and buildings of affiliated churches, including 51 Molynes Road specifically, plus an order confirming its authority to survey the property as part of a wider programme to register Baptist church properties under the Registration of Titles Act.

The dispute did not arise over property alone. Shuttleworth has alleged he has had to move from under the union’s control because of its alleged embrace of alien principles and what he calls a sympathetic posture toward the LGBTQ community, framing his attempt to secure independent title as inseparable from a genuine doctrinal break with the denomination he was originally ordained under.

The court granted the JBU an injunction in January 2025 blocking Shuttleworth from pursuing his own title application until the underlying lawsuit is resolved, later extending his own filing deadline for further affidavits, with the matter now set for case management in February 2027. The case sits at a genuinely unusual intersection this publication has not previously covered: a doctrinal split within a single denomination becoming, in practice, a property title dispute governed by a decades-old vesting statute, where the outcome will determine not just who controls Tarrant Baptist Church’s future direction, but who legally owns the $50 million building it meets in.

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