New Season Church in Hiram, Georgia is hosting a leadership summit for Johnny Hunt on September 14th. Along with Hunt, the featured speakers at the summit are Steve Flockhart, the pastor of New Season, and Steven Kyle, the pastor of Hiland Park Baptist Church in Panama City. This is absolutely shameful (well, it would be if these man had any shame). Here’s why, try and keep up…
Steve Flockhart was baptized by Johnny Hunt at Longleaf Baptist Church when he was twenty years old. Five months later, Flockhart was appointed as the Associate Pastor of Evangelism at Longleaf. As a brand new convert with marital problems and recent criminal history, Flockhart had no business being a pastor in a New Testament Church. The Apostle Paul spelled out the qualifications for becoming a pastor in 1 Timothy 3:
It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money. He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?), and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil. And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
1 Timothy 3:1-7
Notice the warning about new converts becoming pastors, “so that he will not be conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.” Fast forward a few years and Flockhart had obtained correspondence degrees from a small, disreputable Bible College based in Fort Oglethorpe, GA. He became the pastor of Macedonia Baptist Church in Dawnville, Georgia. After leaving Macedonia for ]a larger pastorate in Memphis, he was sued, by the church, for taking money. Per an account published at Word & Way:
The former pastor has been accused of writing checks on a former church’s bank account and running up charges on a church-provided credit card for his personal benefit. His alleged indiscretion was acknowledged only after he had moved on and his old Georgia congregation — Macedonia Baptist in Dawnville — discovered their former shepherd apparently had fleeced them of at least $162,799.
https://wordandway.org/2006/09/08/the-other-clergy-failures/
Flockhart’s financial troubles didn’t end there. Per Word & Way:
In 1996, two years before he resigned from that church, the IRS filed a $8,617 lien against him for not paying taxes for three years. While he was in Dawnville, American Express Travel-Related Services slapped him with a $36,150 judgment, according to the Palm Beach Post. He ultimately paid both.
At worst, Flockhart is a thief. At best, he’s a terrible manger of money. Again, he was utterly unqualified for the pastorate from the beginning. He would eventually repay Macedonia Baptist and move onto become the pastor of an even bigger church in Florida. Over and against his financial scandal and with the glowing endorsement of pastor Johnny Hunt, who by then had become the famously successful pastor of the First Baptist Church of Woodstock megachurch, Flockhart was hired to be the pastor of the First Baptist Church of West Palm Beach. FBC West Palm was a 10,000 member mega church. Flockhart went from being a grocery clerk who had spent time in jail to the pastor of one of the biggest churches in the USA. However, his lucrative new job did not last long. Flockhart was forced to resign only two months into his Palm Beach pastorate, after an investigation by the Palm Beach Post revealed that Flockhart had fabricated his resume’s educational credentials:
A copy of Flockhart’s resume obtained by Baptist Press made it appear that he held a bachelor’s degree from Columbia International University in Columbia, S.C., and a master’s degree from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. But an investigation by the Palm Beach Post revealed that Flockhart actually obtained bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees through correspondence courses at Covington Theological Seminary, a Georgia school not accredited by any recognized accrediting agency.
Baptist Press
Those of us who grew up in Chattanooga are familiar with the phrase “Paul said it would be like this.” The phrase referred to the impeccable dependability of local weatherman Paul Barys’ forecast. Barys was good, but nothing is more impeccable and dependable than God’s word. The Apostle Paul predicted exactly what could happen to men like Flockhart, a new convert put into the pastorate. He became so conceited that he took money that wasn’t his and lied on his resume, to a church, to get a bigger job. Paul said it would be like this.
Perhaps no one is more conceited than Flockhart’s mentor, Johnny Hunt. It was Hunt who gave Flockhart his start in pastoral ministry and Hunt who would later put Flockhart through his “City of Refuge” pastoral rehabilitation program. Thus, Flockhart remains a pastor until this day at New Season. This bring us back to Hunt. Hunt was himself recently “restored” to ministry by Steven Kyle after a shocking an embarrassing discovery about Hunt’s conduct during his pastorate at First Baptist Woodstock:
Johnny Hunt was the pastor of First Baptist Church of Woodstock for over a quarter century. He was the “pastor emeritus” and still a member there when news of his trip to second base on another’s man’s wife came out; why do you think he wasn’t restored there? I have to think it was because the supposedly repentant Hunt didn’t inform the church at large of his disqualifying sin when he first committed it. Where other pastoral staff were fired from Woodstock for similar behavior, Hunt was merely counseled by his staff subordinate Roy Blankenship (who has since left the faith and entered into a homosexual “marriage” with another man) and given a sabbatical. Hunt kept his six-figure salary where other men would have been fired. Hunt got a rest period where other men would have been looking for new employment. What does God’s word say about such partiality in the church? The people of FBC Woodstock were told that Hunt needed a sabbatical because he was exhausted (ostensibly from doing the Lord’s work of leading his church and the Southern Baptist Convention). But was this the truth?
https://pulpitandpen.org/2022/11/30/an-open-letter-to-the-members-of-hiland-park-baptist-church/
So, if you can keep up. Johnny Hunt started Steve Flockhart in the pastorate even though he was unqualified. It turned out that Flockhart was a deceptive scoundrel. Hunt restored Flockhart to the ministry. It was discovered that Hunt was a deceptive scoundrel. Steven Kyle restored Hunt to the ministry. Now, they are selling tickets to an event where they all teach leadership at Flockhart’s church. As Don King famously said, “only in America.”
These men are reproach to Christ and a disgrace to His church. Mark and avoid them.
