ELKIN, N.C. (WGHP) — A church’s dreams of building a new place of worship were put on hold after it fell victim to an email scam.
“It was shocking. We went through emotions of shock, hurt, and ultimately a sense of loss,” Stephen Robbins, associate pastor at Elkin Valley Baptist Church, said of the moment church leaders realized that hundreds of thousands of dollars were gone.
The trouble started on Nov. 4 when the church realized that $793,000 was missing. Now, the FBI is investigating to find how the money that congregants and community members helped raise in order to build a new sanctuary was stolen.
The church received two emails on the same day, back-to-back, asking for payment for the construction. Senior Pastor Johnny Blevins said church leaders paid the bill through one of those emails and even got a return email thanking them for the payment.
But the email they clicked and paid through was a scam — not the real bill — and more than half of the money raised in seven years of fundraising was gone in a flash.
“Everything from children giving us of their allowances, we had a young man who did something with pennies and put them in little packages and was selling them for a dollar towards the building fund,” he said.
Every penny was needed for the construction of the new sanctuary, which was scheduled to be ready for services in May.
“It was one of the hardest things I’ve done as a pastor, was to have that special meeting to tell them what happened,” Blevins said. “We’re a people of faith, so we will not let this knock us down. We will continue to move forward. This was an evil act, but good does overcome evil, and we’ll do that.”
There is a GoFundMe for the church as leaders work to recover some of the money. Construction on the new sanctuary will begin again next month.
