Both Critics, Backers Quote Bible in Irvine : Church Split on Pastor’s Behavior

For Tim Timmons, pastor of South Coast Community Church in Irvine, the Bible is a double-edged sword these days.

His critics, wielding a worn copy of the Scriptures, question whether he is qualified to lead a church as set forth in 1 Timothy 3:1-7, which says, “A bishop then must be blameless. . . .”

His supporters say his actions are “above reproach” and that the criticism is “much like (that) our Lord” received for “being seen with publicans and sinners” (Matthew 11:19).

Two Focal Points

The complaints, which first surfaced last year, center on two things: Timmons’ relationship with his longtime personal assistant and the financial management of Maximum Life Communications, a nonprofit corporation formed to promote some of Timmons’ outside activities.

They have caused a rift within the church, which claims to have a congregation of about 10,000. Many of the church’s most active members have left, including a dozen elders or former elders.

Church members questioned Timmons’ regular meetings with his assistant at local hotels and the nonchalant handling of Maximum Life’s finances. Almost 200 bad checks were written in one year, resulting in more than $2,000 in bank charges, they said. The corporation’s funds were used to pay for trips for his assistant and her relatives, and to buy concert tickets for church secretaries, Timmons concedes. The assistant received about $4,000 a month in salary and a Mercedes-Benz leased for about $700 a month, he conceded.

Some church members supported the corporation with donations, but there have been no complaints of misuse of actual church funds.

A nationally known speaker and author of several books, including “Maximum Marriage,” “Loneliness Is Not a Disease” and “Hooked on Life,” Timmons, 40, says he feels like he has counseled “half of Orange County.” California Angels pitcher Don Sutton and his wife, Patti, both of whom Timmons has counseled, are now among his biggest supporters. They credit Timmons with saving their marriage, and Don Sutton has contributed thousands of dollars to Timmons’ projects. He once called the pastor “the wisest person I know.”

Timmons categorically denies any “immorality with relationships or immorality with funds.”

The hotel rooms were the only place he could go to write his books, Timmons said. And he met with his assistant to work on the books only in the hotel coffee shops and never in the rooms, he says.

Rooms Used to Write

“I’m not good in an office, with the phones and visitors going. I used to have an apartment where I’d write my books, but that got expensive, so my wife suggested renting a hotel room when I needed one. I made a deal with a couple of hotels in town--I got a great rate.”

The assistant’s high salary and car allowance were to compensate for her low salary the previous two years when the corporation was getting started, Timmons said. “She made about $9,000 in 1983 and $17,000 in 1984. I made a contract with her that her salary for the three years would average $36,000, and she could take it any way she wanted to,” he said.

The costs of the trips by the assistant or her relatives either have been paid back or were given as payment for work done for the corporation, he said. The concert tickets were given to church secretaries who had done unpaid work for Maximum Life.

Timmons said he has never paid much attention to numbers, but he will now. An audit of the corporation’s books by Peat, Marwick & Mitchell will show there has been no wrongdoing, and the accounting firm is helping him set up new bookkeeping systems, he says.

His mistake was allowing “appearances of evil in relationships” and being irresponsible in managing non-church funds, he says, problems that would not disqualify him from being the congregation’s spiritual leader.

An investigation by the Board of Elders last fall found no evidence to support the most serious accusations. But the subsequent departure of many prominent congregation members and church staff--some of whom want Timmons removed as pastor--have kept the questions from completely disappearing. When half of the lay elders--including Harold Ezell, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service regional commissioner--resigned last January, Timmons brought the matter to the church as a whole for the first time. In a highly unusual sermon, he addressed--and dismissed--most of the accusations.

“Five months ago and over the last five months, I have been accused of lots of things,” Timmons said to a hushed congregation on Jan. 19, according to a tape of the sermon sold in the church bookstore. “There was no immorality with relationships or no immorality with funds, but I was accused of both of those. That’s why no one has proven with two or three witnesses or even one witness any immorality whatsoever. . . . No one can prove anything like that and no one has. But, boy, the talk is there.

“When people don’t know the truth, goodness, they make up the truth,” an emotion-choked Timmons said from the pulpit. “It’s like the very suspicious woman of her husband. She decided she was going to check out his clothes, she knew he was involved with some woman. She checked out his jacket when he came home late one night looking for hairs around the shoulders. She came into him and said, ‘I knew it, you’ve been meeting a bald woman.’

“We need to drink from the fountain of truth--not just gargle.”

Elders Express Confidence

The church’s Board of Elders recently issued a letter expressing their “confidence and trust in Tim Timmons as pastor” and pronouncing his actions as “above reproach” according to Scripture.

“He made a few mistakes,” said George Hedley, 36, chairman of the Board of Elders and the owner of a Newport Beach construction company. “He did a few things that were possibly inappropriate. But he has done nothing illegal, immoral or unethical.”

Timmons, who lives in Newport Beach with his wife, Carol, and their three children, says it has been hard for him to adjust to the stricter standards demanded of a pastor after so many years in the secular world--”where I was a happy man, and making money”--but he says he is changing his ways.

His assistant is now his former assistant. He is paying closer attention to his own finances, he says.

“I think I did some unwise and naive things,” Timmons said in an interview last week in the church’s sanctuary. “In the secular world, this wouldn’t have been a problem. . . . But here, I’m a target, and I’m a target for people who want to discredit my message.”

Many of his detractors, he says, are “Holy Huddlers” who object to his down-to-earth ministering style aimed at the “unchurched masses.”

But those who have left the church over the past year did not leave lightly. Many claim to have donated hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to the church, helping it grow from a Bible study group at a Newport Beach junior high school to one of Orange County’s largest congregations in just five years.

Among those who left are a dozen former elders, the music pastor, the coordinator of the church’s elementary school program, the chairman of the worship committee, two secretaries and “100, maybe 150” regular worshipers, Timmons said.

And 10,000 have stayed, he said, offering evidence that the church is not split or even badly damaged. “Offerings are up $11,000 a week over last year. This ministry will continue to go forward. I may bleed a little bit, but in the long run, my message goes further.”

Timmons’ message, often a humorous, everyday interpretation of Scripture, is “a breath of fresh air,” one follower said.

“I put it in English,” Timmons said. “I’ve had 7 1/2 years of Greek and three of Hebrew, and I do all the exegesis. But if I teach it that way, it would be boring. I give the masses the concept. The Holy Huddlers don’t like that. They say it was too easy, that people enjoyed it. You’re not supposed to enjoy it, they say.”

One pastor from a nearby church called him “a Christian entertainer--the Jonathan Winters (whom Timmons resembles) of the pulpit.”

But Timmons says he is much more than a comedian. “I make them laugh--and while they’re laughing, I slip them the raw truth about themselves.”