Former members of Anaheim’s Vineyard Church—now The Dwelling Place—are suing the church’s senior leaders for fraud, claiming they split the church from the Vineyard network and took control over the church and its $62 million assets under false pretenses.
For more than 40 years, Vineyard Anaheim Church had been a pillar of the Orange County community and the birthplace of the Vineyard charismatic movement, which has spawned more than 2,400 churches in 95 countries since its founding in the late 1970s.
In March, married pastors Alan and Kathryn Scott, who took over in 2018, announced that the church would split from Vineyard USA, the national association of Vineyard churches, out of “a desire to say yes to the Holy Spirit.”
The complaint claims that the Scotts “explicitly promised to the search committee and the board that they were committed to Vineyard USA and the Vineyard Movement” in their job interview but planned to leave the Vineyard network all along.
“Plaintiffs allege that the Scott defendants always intended to remove Anaheim Vineyard and its $62,000,000 in assets from the worldwide Vineyard Movement,” the complaint stated.
The complaint alleges that Alan Scott told Phil Strout, Vineyard USA’s national director, in a letter he intended to leave the Vineyard movement in a May 2017 letter, before his interview for senior pastor.
“As I mentioned when we were together, we love each of the leaders, we just wished they loved each other well,” Scott’s letter allegedly states. “Since that isn’t the story at the moment, it’s not an environment where we would want to plant our lives or raise our girls. And so after 29 years of connection with the tribe, we have arrived at the painful conclusion that we won’t be part of a local vineyard church in the next part of our journey.”
Plaintiffs are asking the county to return control of the church—which is still officially registered as Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Anaheim Inc.—to its former board members and to keep the church within the national Vineyard association.
“We understand that our disassociation from [Vineyard USA] has caused strong emotions, but we didn’t expect individuals to attribute evil intent in the hearts of Alan and Kathryn Scott during their 2018 appointment process, or to deem the board’s decision to disassociate from [Vineyard USA] four years later improper,” the statement said.
In the video, Alan Scott said he had been a part of the network since 1991 and the idea of leaving the Vineyard network didn’t occur to them until they sensed that was what the Lord wanted them to do.
“We love Vineyard. It’s in our DNA. It’s who we are,” he said. “We were simply doing what we’ve been taught to do, which is to listen to the Lord and respond when he speaks.”
The Scotts, along with other senior leaders at The Dwelling Place, declined The Epoch Times’ request for an interview for this article.
“We want to be clear that while we are not a part of this lawsuit, all the named plaintiffs of the lawsuit are former members of Anaheim Vineyard who are acting of their own accord,” the statement read. “Our commitment to every individual and all ongoing communication between Vineyard USA and Dwelling Place related to our care has been clearly and exclusively articulated as a ‘pastoral matter,’ not a legal one.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs did not respond to requests for comment by press deadline.
