TEXAS
Associated Baptist Press
By Bob Allen
A Southern Baptist megachurch claims it called police on a longtime church member not for questioning how church leaders handled a matter of sexual abuse two decades ago, but for posting threatening messages on Twitter.
“When it comes to protecting our people, we take that very seriously,” Ben Lovvorn, director of administration at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, said in a news story broadcast March 14 on Dallas-Fort Worth television station WFAA.
The segment showed screen shots captured from the Twitter account of Chris Tynes, a 14-year member of Prestonwood. One showed a photo of a minister’s parking spot with the words, “My target.” Another said, “I’m sitting in my perfect ambush spot.”
The WFAA story doesn’t say why the 32,000-member megachurch was monitoring Tynes’ Twitter account in the first place. Tynes said March 15 those messages appeared only briefly and were taken down before security guards ordered him off the church campus when he showed up without an appointment to try and meet with a church leader March 5.
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