One day after Pastor Riva Tims declared in a press conference that she is the “real mother” of the New Destiny Christian Center (NDCC), and that a lawsuit had been filed to block the installation of Senior Pastor Paula White as the successor to the late Pastor Zachery Tims, the board has fired back indicating that the suit is “completely without merit.”
“..We are saddened by the course of action Pastor Riva Tims has chosen to pursue,” a statement on NDCC’s website states. “Her lawsuit is completely without merit and we are extremely confident in our legal standing.”
The statement goes on to indicate that after her divorce from Pastor Zachery Tims in 2009, “Pastor Riva willingly signed legal documents releasing all claims over New Destiny Christian Center and left our church to begin her own ministry, literally just a few miles away.”
NDCC also confirmed on Friday that Pastor Paula White is now the new leader of the church and will succeed the late Pastor Zachery Tims, who died suddenly last August, in what many speculate might have been from a drug overdose.
In a separate statement, NDCC also stated that an exhaustive process was conducted to identify a successor and after much prayer, White had been viewed as the most suitable.
“We prayed fervently for guidance during our search for a new senior pastor and this led us to ask Pastor Paula to serve as our new Senior Pastor,” the statement said. “We were searching for someone who could understand the history of our ministry, someone who had a close relationship with our members and our staff and someone who knew the heart of our senior founder. We earnestly know that the Lord led us to select Pastor Paula. We know she will honor the vision and the legacy on which our church is built.”
In 1996, Pastor Riva and the late Pastor Zachery Tims co-founded NDCC as a non-denominational church with a multi-cultural mission. Beginning with four members, NDCC has grown into a mega-church in Orlando with hundreds of thousands of followers.
Asked directly at the press conference last Thursday by West Orlando News Online whether the concern is that Pastor White might not share the vision of NDCC, Pastor Riva said, she didn’t know what her (Pastor White’s) vision is.
For her part, White said she would come to her new assignment with “a servant’s heart” and felt “humbled by this great responsibility and grateful for the confidence the board has shown” in naming her as the senior pastor. White is expected to be introduced to NDCC’s congregation later today when New Year’s services are held.
With the installation of Pastor White, it is unclear what the next move will be for Pastor Riva and her many supporters.
Its so unfortunate that Riva Tims is pursuing her chosen course of action. The church is not the inheritance of her children or any man. It belongs to God. If she truly believed the church was their inheritance she would not have signed away her rights. These types of battles often take place when families put their belief that the church is theirs over the bodies. Truth be told, Zachery Tims should have been out of the pulpit and dealing with his personal issues so that their was nothing for him to rightfully pass.
The parties differed as ti whether trust law or corporate would apply to NDCC. Stricter fiduciary duty requirements of the trust law is wanted; The board is bound only by the dictates of corporate law.