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Report claims fraud by Celebration Church founder Stovall Weems

Celebration Church near Baymeadows Road and Interstate 295 grew dramatically after its founding in 1998, but it recently parted ways with its founding pastor, Stovall Weems.
Corey Perrine
/
Florida Times-Union
Celebration Church near Baymeadows Road and Interstate 295 grew dramatically after its founding in 1998, but it recently parted ways with its founding pastor, Stovall Weems.

Celebration Church founder Stovall Weems “violated the law by … committing fraud, [and] unjustly enriching himself at the expense of the church,” Celebration’s lawyers charged in a report released Monday.

The report said the Jacksonville minister, who was suspended by the megachurch’s trustees in January, “brought Celebration to the brink of insolvency” while coloring his leadership with arrogance, entitlement, greed and other character flaws. It said Weems also failed to follow the fiduciary duties a senior pastor like him owes to his church.

Through a spokesperson, Weems answered that the charges were “concocted by the trustees and their lawyer as a character assassination without real basis.”

Read the rest of this story at WJCT News partner The Florida Times-Union.