KENTUCKY
Christian Today
Mark Woods CHRISTIAN TODAY CONTRIBUTING EDITOR 14 April 2016
Organisers of a major preaching conference have been criticised for involving CJ Mahaney.
A major conference on preaching in Louisville, Kentucky, has been overshadowed by a row over the presence of a pastor who has faced accusations of a cover-up of child sexual abuse at his church.
The Together for the Gospel conference, which finishes today, features leading evangelical figures including Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Mark Dever, senior pastor of Washington’s Capitol Hill Baptist Church, John Piper, founder of Desiring God, and Matt Chandler, lead pastor of The Village Church in Dallas, Texas.
However, the participation of CJ Mahaney, one of its founders and now pastor of Louisville’s Sovereign Grace Church, has led to controversy because of previous accusations that he and other leaders of Covenant Life Church (CLC) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, were complicit in covering up crimes committed by its youth leader Nathaniel Morales.
Mahaney was named as a defendant in a lawsuit which alleged that he and several other leaders of Sovereign Grace Ministries conspired to “permit sexual deviants to have unfettered access to children for purposes of predation and to obstruct justice by covering up ongoing past predation”. This case was dropped due to the statute of limitations. However, the case has recently been the focus of media attention in The Washingtonian and Time magazine, which have raised fresh questions about the conduct of Mahaney and others.
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