Church refuses to bury member because she didn’t pay her tithe

Church refuses to bury member because she didn’t pay her tithe

Church is supposed to be a place where people seek solace and comfort during times of need. But for one Houston family, they found the exact opposite at the worst possible time.

Barbara Day, the daughter of 93-year-old Olivia Blair, had always planned to bury her mother at the Fourth Missionary Baptist Church, a church she had attended for 50 years. But the pastor, Walter Houston, refused to bury Blair because she hadn’t paid her tithes.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution included excerpts from Barbara Day’s interview with KRIV in Houston, Texas.

“It was like the last insult in the world.” Day said her only wish was for her mother to be buried “in the church that she loved and worshipped all of her life, even as a little girl.”

Day said that her mother had been a church member for five decades but had been sick for the past ten years and in a coma for that past two years.

Tyrone Jacques, a preacher watchdog contacted Pastor Houston and asked him to reconsider but he would not be persuaded. Instead, he said, Blair was “no longer a member of the church because she had not supported it financially in the last 10 years.”

Jacques then offered to pay for the service but Pastor Houston said no, claiming that “membership had its privileges.”

SOURCE : TRIBUNE