Lodi Pastor Vows To Keep Assembling Amid Coronavirus Stay-At-Home Order
LODI (CBS13) — A church showdown is heating up in San Joaquin County over the coronavirus stay-at-home order.
Despite getting locked out of his building, a Lodi pastor says his congregation will continue to meet. He's also now threatening a federal lawsuit.
Members of Cross Culture Christian Church were greeted by police when they showed up for Palm Sunday services and the locks on the building they lease were changed for defying stay home orders.
The congregation went on to hold a service near the church parking lot. Pastor Jon Duncan greeted church-goers at their cars to pray and hand out the sermon for that mass on pieces of paper. It was a situation some parishioners couldn't believe.
Duncan says not the county's order, nor the new locks will stop the church from exercising God-given rights to assemble together.
An attorney for the church, Dean R. Broyles, said the county and police were "trampling of the church's precious civil rights, and will now be the subject of a federal civil rights lawsuit."