Standing up to Superior Court, local pastor challenges church lockdown order

Sticking to the First Amendment and an unwavering belief that church is “essential,” easy-going and gentle-spirited Rob McCoy is turning into a political firebrand by defying a Superior Court temporary restraining order to shut down his indoor services this Sunday.

“We’re going to worship the Lord,” McCoy says on a video on Godspeak, Calvary Chapel’s YouTube channel. “Our community desperately needs this. It’s critical to us. We are essential. This means the world to us.”

Pointing out that not one person from his church has gotten Covid, McCoy encouraged congregants and visitors to continue attending, even under the threat of receiving a misdemeanor citation under Judge Matthew Guasco’s Friday order.

“I will be at the 9 a.m service,” says one congregant. “I will take a bullet for the team.”

Newbury Park’s Godspeak Calvary Church has been holding indoor services since May 31, a fact that Ventura County officials were aware of. But all of a sudden, the county board had an emergency meeting behind closed doors to halt those services, voting 3-2 to sue Godspeak in court.

In siding with the county, Judge Guasco stated that First Amendment rights are paramount but health concerns and the jeopardy of the entire county due to outbreak risk bore greater weight. He said on a scale of 1 -10, the danger was a 10, the Ventura County Star reported.

“There is no exercise of a right unless people are alive to exercise it,” the judge said.

Disputing such a bleak assessment of health risk, McCoy says just 80 residents of the county have died from Covid, 0.01% of the population — “tragic” but hardly deserving of such “Draconian” restrictions.

The cost of the cure has been a devastating and irreversible toll on the community, McCoy says. Of restaurants, 65% aren’t surviving. Family businesses are hobbled. Children are shuttered out of school and cut off from human interaction, causing psychological damage. People in recovery form substance abuse have been cut off from support networks and many have relapsed. Suicide rates have sky-rocketed.

The church is supposed to provide spiritual guidance, consolation, encouragement and strengthening to people who need help, but liberal politicians have largely discredited such public services, following alarmist sentiment fanned by the mainstream media.

While churches are shut down, marijuana dispensaries, liquor stores and abortion clinics remain open under many states’ and counties’ rules that leave many Christians scratching their heads and doubting their governing authorities’ priorities. Read the rest: pastors refuse to shut down, Rob McCoy at Godspeak Calvary Chapel

‘Ghost mode’ for street hood turned pastor/rapper

Thirteen-year-old Markell Taylor wanted to be just like his stepdad, who was a pimp, a rapper, a womanizer and a drunk.

“I idolized him,” Markell says. “People thought he was cool. My own father was not in the picture and my mom was in and out of prison. He was the one male figure in my life. He had money, so he would buy expensive cars and expensive clothes. He would buy them for me. You’re a little kid and you’re getting hooked up. I thought he had something going on.”

In response to this role modeling, Markell became a runner for a drug dealer. He dropped out of school. He used methamphetamines and he took advantage of girls. “I had all these insecurities because I was hurting and lonely and I didn’t know why I wasn’t worth it for my real dad to stick around,” he said. “But I put on a mask of confidence to get in girls’ pants.”

From middle school onward, Markell was the life of the party. He had the drugs, so he got it started.

But while he was admired for his swagger and brazenness, his future began to dim. He variously lived with his stepdad in Wendover, Nevada, his grandmother in Las Vegas — and homeless shelters. He was arrested for domestic violence against his mother and police were investigating crimes he had participated in.

“I was out of control,” he recalls. “One time I told my mom I was going to kill the guy who sold me some bad drugs. I wasn’t really going to do it, but I acted like it. She tried to take me to the police, but I jumped out of the car while she was driving.”

At age 14, his mom and stepdad wanted to escape their reputation at Wendover and move to Salt Lake City to get a fresh start in life. Markell didn’t last one day there without his arrest.

Again it was a case of domestic violence. He hit his mom with a pillow, he says, and she freaked out and called the cops. When the police handcuffed him, they asked if there was a gun. Markell stood up to show them his arm, but the police thought he was going to attempt a fight, so they tackled him again.

The cops hauled him off to jail.

“As soon as I got into the back of the patrol car, I started crying like a little baby,” Markell says. “Up until then, I had pretty much gotten away with everything I did.” Read the rest of Markell Taylor, street hood pastor rap artist.

Raised in a crack house, rescued by God

Sana Cotten was only four years old when police raided her home.

“We literally lived in a crack house. My mother was addicted to drugs, and she was in and out of incarceration. There was a lot of people that were around, trying to help her raise me coming up, so I really didn’t have much of a relationship with her. To this day, I still do not even know who my birth father is.”

After the police raid, a malnourished and abused Sana, along with her twin, was placed in foster care and eventually adopted by Christians.

“I was always taught about God. I was always told that we needed to go to church. I was always told that there was a Higher Power, someone that we were striving to be like. But I never really had a relationship with Christ for myself.”

Still, the wounds from her early childhood took a toll as she grew up. At 18, she got involved with an older man for affection and got pregnant.

“I was still trying to find out who I was, and I was still trying to find someone that was going to love me. I was trying to still kind of heal and trying to find a way to get the love from a man, really, that I was lacking from my birth mother and my birth father.”

After two years, the couple separated. At one point Sana got into a fight with her ex and lost control.

“He brought a young woman with him,” Sana says. “Although we were not together anymore, something in me just kind of snapped. And I remember when the altercation was over, I found myself in the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror, tears running down my face, and I remember thinking, ‘There has to be more than this.’”

She realized her life was careening out of control.

“Before I went to sleep that night, I literally got down on my knees for the first time in years, and I just cried out to God and I asked God to really show me someone who was going to love me the way I deserved to be loved.” Read the rest of Sana Cotten, raised in a crack house, rescued by God.