MARYLAND
Associated Baptist Press
By Bob Allen
A longtime pastor at a D.C.-area evangelical church testified in court May 13 that he did not report crimes alleged in 1992 against a man standing trial this week on charges of sexual abuse, according to a one-time ministerial colleague turned whistleblower attending the weeklong trial in Montgomery County, Md.
Brent Detwiler, who writes a blog devoted to alleged cover-up of child sexual abuse in churches affiliated with Sovereign Grace Ministries, said Tuesday’s testimony by Grant Layman, who stepped down recently after 31 years as a pastor at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Md., removes any doubt that church leaders conspired to cover up crimes while treating abuse allegations as a matter for private church discipline.
Sovereign Grace Ministries, a church-planting network with Reformed and charismatic theology, is not part of the Southern Baptist Convention, but its co-founder, C.J. Mahaney, is close friends with SBC leaders in a neo-Calvinist movement that goes by names including “young, restless and Reformed.”
Mahaney, now pastor of Sovereign Grace Church in Louisville, Ky., announced last summer that he would not participate in this year’s Together for the Gospel conference that he previously co-sponsored with Southern Seminary President Albert Mohler and Washington pastor Mark Dever, though he apparently attended.
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