On Blue Hill Avenue, a legal quagmire over the future of a Black church
Nowadays, the Spirit and Truth Baptist Church sits quietly across from the Franklin Park Zoo. There is no preaching or singing of hymns inside the hulking building. The Dorchester church has not hosted a Sunday service for more than a year.
It was sold at auction last year for $1.1 million after it was placed in receivership by a housing court judge following the failure of church leadership to make structural repairs ordered by city inspectors.
But a contentious legal battle rages on over a litany of issues, including whether the sale was valid and, if it was, who should control the congregation as it mulls its uncertain future, and who should receive the windfall from the sale.
The litigation has pitted some congregation members against its pastor of two decades. At stake is the future of the small, Black congregation that has called Blue Hill Avenue home since the early 1990s.
The sale, to its neighbor, Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center, was finalized Nov. 17, according to state records. The center has long-term plans to develop dozens of affordable housing units on the site, as well as space for the health center’s needs.
The pastor, Stanley Deas, said he’s resigned to the idea of moving his congregation, and he has asked a Suffolk Superior Court judge to determine that he has the right to act on behalf of the church. That case is pending. However, congregant Pamela King has spearheaded a movement to claw back ownership of the church, which was dealt a blow recently when a housing court judge rejected her petition to rescind the auction sale. King wants to keep the small congregation where it is and would also like for the congregation itself to be able to develop affordable housing and pro
gramming there.
King and Deas continue to trade barbs and accusations of wrongdoing. Fundamentally, they disagree over who was supposed to be calling the shots at the church.
King charges in court filings that the pastor, Deas, violated the church’s bylaws by unlawfully hiring attorneys to represent himself and the church’s corporation. King argues that only the elected board of trustees have the authority to make decisions about the church’s day-to-day operation or sale of the property. King claims she is the president and chairman of the board of trustees and that the church was swindled from its members.
Removing the church from its home of 30 years in the heart of Black Boston would represent “a crime against the public,” said King.
“It’s a crime because we are giving a public benefit,” she said.
Deas, on the other hand, said recently that King has used misinformation and the help of community advocates who are not congregation members to attempt to stage a coup of church leadership. Deas, who has been pastor at the church since 2002, said King is after the church’s money.
“She tried to establish herself as a person who is in charge of everything and now we are litigating because of that,” he said during a phone interview.
Both King and Deas cite church membership votes as evidence of what the congregation wanted to happen to the building. One cites a vote they say approved the sale of the building, the other cites a different vote they say rejected such a sale. Both are at loggerheads over the outcome of some of the meetings.
“There has been controversy and confusion as to what persons are authorized to act on behalf of the Church and bind the Church to any legal obligations including, but not limited to, agreeing to the sale of the property,” according to a 2022 civil complaint filed in Suffolk Superior Court by attorneys hired by Deas. That case is ongoing.
The housing court case that led to the church’s receivership and sale is also pending.
To date, King’s attempts to wrest control of the property have been unsuccessful. Through a recent filing in Boston housing court, King, a retired speech language pathologist, attempted to rescind the auction sale. She also urged the housing court to order the receiver to end the receivership and require attorneys that have represented the church corporation to withdraw from the case. She argued that Deas lacked authority to hire them. Her motion was rejected by the court. King appealed, but that too was denied.
“She has no standing,” in the case, Housing Court Judge Irene Bagdoian said during a hearing in early December. “She has never had standing.”
If the church had made necessary repairs, said Bagdoian, she would never have had to appoint a receiver. King asserted that appointing a receiver was unnecessary because the church had the money for the repairs, which included fixing cracks that had inspectors worried about the structural integrity of the building.
Attorneys hired by Deas said the appointment of the receiver renders any claims related to whether Deas had authority to engage in discussions about the sale of the property moot.
“[T]he reason the Housing Court allowed the receiver to sell the property at auction was because there were title issues which would have made a conventional sale unworkable and title would not have been insurable by a title insurance company,” wrote Michael Van Dam, an attorney hired by Deas, in a recent email.
The church, which was formed under a different name in late 1992, is tucked into a block that features a pizza shop that has recently faced its own legal troubles, a printing shop, a chiropractor’s office, and a Caribbean fast food joint. The Blue Hill Avenue church was once home to a theater, a space that for years acted as the building’s sanctuary. A fire damaged the space in 2009. Parts of the building are still uninhabitable. In recent years, the congregation held services in a small upstairs room next to the sanctuary.
Since the fire at Spirit and Truth Baptist Church, the congregation’s membership plummeted, according to King, from 250 to about a dozen. Deas puts the number of members slightly higher, in the 20 to 25 range. He points to the damage from the fire as the catalyst in the membership’s downturn.
King has plans of her own for the property. She envisions a site that has low-income housing, workforce training, a theater highlighting Black performance, and a school, all operating under the auspices of the church. But it’s unclear how she will achieve those aims. She is adamant that she has an agreement with Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation to develop the property.
But last month, Kimberly Lyle, the CEO of Dorchester Bay, said the development of the property is not under consideration by her organization, given that it does not own the property and has not been asked by the current owner to develop it.
For his part, Deas appears to be at peace with finding another location for his flock.
“After the confusion started we figured we would sell the church and get the money and look for a new building,” he said.
And there is the fact that the church doesn’t own the space anymore. Charles A. Murphy, president of Harvard Street, the building’s new owner, recently said preliminary plans for the site are to help with a crucial need: more affordable housing in Boston.
“You don’t have to go very far to see that that’s an issue,” he said. “There’s a need. The demand is there.”