Officials at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia would not confirm Thursday whether Elder Edward Long, a New Birth minister and the eldest child of their late senior pastor, Bishop Eddie Long, was a candidate for the job left vacant by his father that was recently awarded to controversial Baltimore megachurch Pastor Jamal Bryant.
A screenshot of an Instagram conversation shared by Larry Reid Live late Wednesday suggests that Long’s son applied for his late father’s job but was not chosen by New Birth leaders.
“I applied for the pastoral position at New Birth but was not selected. I have been at New Birth since I was 4 yrs old and have worked in nearly every auxiliary there. I don’t currently pastor a church. God knows…” a message that appears to have been posted from Edward Long’s Instagram account said in response to queries from a woman who wanted to know about his status at New Birth.
The Christian Post reached out to New Birth officials Thursday and a staff member confirmed that Long still works at the church but that he was not immediately available to respond to any questions about the post.
When asked if anyone could confirm whether Long was an applicant for the senior pastor position at New Birth, a church staffer said the information in Long’s post could not be confirmed by anyone.
“No. There is no one that can attest to that. I can’t. Nobody can,” the staff person said.
New Birth officials announced just over a week ago that Bryant, who leads the 10,000-member Empowerment Temple, was chosen from a pool of 138 candidates to take the reins of their church that once boasted 25,000 members in its heyday.
Membership at New Birth has since dropped to about 10,000 after the late Bishop Long was hit in 2010 by a series of sex scandals involving allegations from multiple young men that haunted him until his death in January 2017.
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Source: Christian Post
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