North Valley Baptist Church in Santa Clara, California
Posted on 09/20/2020 7:59:31 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The pastor of a 3,000-seat California church said he will stop fighting Santa Clara County and hold services in the church parking lot as per local COVID-19 guidelines after fines rose to over $112,000. The county said it will not forgive the fines.
Jack Trieber, the pastor of North Valley Baptist Church in Santa Clara, has chosen to obey the county’s directives banning indoor services, according to ABC7News.
The church was being fined $5,000 for every service it held as well as fines for other violations such as singing.
ABC7News reports that Trieber told his congregation in an outdoor meeting this week that senators told him they had given President Donald Trump the pastor's personal phone number and if he would be willing to receive a call from the White House. But the pastor said he didn’t want to take that course of action.
Trieber also reportedly said he has put on hold a campaign that was aimed at flooding local government offices with one million emails from supporters. “I don’t wish anything evil to happen with authorities. Tonight was the right decision to move out here,” he was quoted as saying.
County counsel James Williams told The Mercury News that banning indoor services was "essential" to the community's safety. “The reality that churches and other religious institutions across our county were successfully holding outdoor services, drive-in services, remote services — and have been — just completely undermines the notion that they needed to have an indoor gathering and create that huge risk of danger,” he said.
The county had filed a lawsuit against the church for its ongoing violations of COVID-19 orders, according to Trieber. After prayer, fasting and counsel, the pastor said, "I have felt led of God not to resist the lawsuit."
"The county has dropped their lawsuit based upon us moving our service outdoors," he told the congregation last weekend. "To me, that’s a victory."
While he has faced reactions that he is a coward for backing down and doesn't know how long he will have to hold services outdoors, he said he will continue to preach outside and "do what God commanded me to do just like I did inside that building."
Despite the restrictions on services and fines, he encouraged the congregation not to send any "vicious" email or be unkind to county health officials, arguing, "That’s not your purpose as a Christian."
In an earlier video message shared on Facebook, the pastor resisted the bans, warning, “If we don’t stop it here ... it’s going to sweep all over the United States of America. Government cannot take away our freedom. You cannot take our right to assemble.”
He had also asked the county to remove all fines and refrain from imposing future fines on the church. “To do this to a church ... California preachers, we have rendered unto Caesar the things that are Caesar, and we have rendered unto God through our tithes and offerings, which is His.”
The pastor revealed that when Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a total prohibition on religious worship services in some counties in March, his church ceased its in-person worship services, K4 through 12 Christian school, college, bus ministry, jail ministry, public school ministry, nursing home ministry, door-to-door visitation, hospital visitation, children’s ministries and Sunday School.
“But I’m in charge of the spiritual health of the people in this city and in this area,” he said. “I’ve been trying to do it for 45 years. Though health is [of the] utmost importance, spiritual health is supreme. Because we’ve been locked out in this county of churches, suicide is up, domestic violence, addiction is up, homelessness is up, alcoholism is up. We need to get back to worshiping God. I am commanded to worship God.”
1st Amendment is a joke in that county.
I am offended that this local government calls itself “Santa Clara County”. “Hillary County” would be much more appropriate for a location controlled by Pharisees.
It’s an outpost of America in that wasteland North of the airport.
The County hates them and wants them to cease to exist.
Meanwhile, organized rioters go on their merry way doing whatever they feel like and Williams does nothing.
A week or two ago a Federal judge struck down at least some of the orders issued by the Trump hating Governor of Pennsylvania...again stating that they violated basic Constitutional rights.
The only purpose of most local government is to take money from people. Some agencies may provide some service, but I question whether the service is worth the cost.
Take them to the Supreme Court and watch the county pay MUCH MUCH more (in legal fees alone).
If a government cannot tax a church, how can they fine one?
Looting Nike or Apple stores is fine, especially if you stay below $950, the Prop 47 threshold for a felony.
Liberals are developing a taste for persecuting churches. It will grow.
Acts 5:41
“So they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.”
Romans 2:1-6
“Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.
But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things.
And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?
Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?
But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God;
Who will render to every man according to his deeds...”
RE: Take them to the Supreme Court and watch the county pay MUCH MUCH more (in legal fees alone).
Jay Sekulow’s team at ACLJ will be glad to be their lawyers before the courts, the legal fees paid for by tens of thousands of Christian and Jewish supporters.
43%+ of the residents of Santa Clara are foreign born.
Is it any surprise they care little for American ‘rights’?
The real crime is what the local governments have done to this once beautiful area.
It’s become ‘the golden shower state’...
Since RBG was an ACLU lawyer who sat on the Supreme Court, Trump should find time to nominate Jay Sekulow to the bench in the next 4 years.
I listen to their program most nights.
Church bad but but riots good. Sounds reasonable.
“Is it any surprise they care little for American ‘rights’?”
Not at all. I watched the whole thing happen over the last 35 years.
It was astonishing to move here in the ‘80s and listen to Chinese people bitching about their status as ‘bananas’.
Was raised to believe that all these “immigrants” would assimilate.
NONE of them did. Even the ones who aren’t particularly political still see themselves as “victims” and that white people are the foreigners.
The buildings they live in, the streets they drive on, the companies they work at, the schools they took over, the courts they rely on were all built by those evil whiteys that they hate so much.
And the garbage gangsters of Santa Clara County “government”? One hundred percent anti-American.
It’s no longer an American place. It’s an Occupied Zone, working furiously every day to stamp out any trace of American occupation and culture lest the lie that they promote be revealed: they weren’t here, it’s not their land, it’s not their country and they are nothing but thieves stealing that which they could not make.
California has become Satan’s home away from home.
Jay Sekulow?
The screeching from the left would be heard from one end of the country to the next - and it would be a hoot to hear.
“Take them to the Supreme Court and watch the county pay MUCH MUCH more (in legal fees alone).”
“Supreme Court again rejects church challenge to virus restriction”
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