Bob Selph is pictured above, but not on the list.
Editors Note: I was informed today (7/31/2018) that the 2001 Administrative Council was not voted in until March of 2001, therefore, may not have known about the report on Chantry which took place in December of 2000.
A friend provided me with the list of the Administrative Council in 2000, which I have included above. The only change was Tedd Tripp replaced Larry Vincent. -TW
Thomas Chantry fled Prescott, AZ in November 2000 in response to multiple families from Miller Valley Baptist Church confronting him about abusing their children. Miller Valley Baptist Church was a member of ARBCA. In December 2000 ARBCA sent a three-man investigative committee to Miller Valley Baptist Church to investigate the abuse alleged by these families.
Pictured above are the men who served on the Administrative Council in 2001. The men on the Administrative Council are the leaders of the ARBCA denomination.
Mike McKnight and Tedd Tripp, two men pictured above, were also members of the three-man investigative team. The report compiled by the three-man team was thorough. I heard testimony in court last week concerning letters written to this committee by victims and their family members that clearly showed abuse was taking place. I will be able to access these letters after the trial, but one letter contained the report of Victim 5, twelve years old, being punched in the face by Chantry. Another letter, written by Victim 2 told of abusive spankings and the incident where Chantry told the victim to pull his pants down because he was going to spank him and wanted to see his butt turn red.
Dale Smith is the pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Rockford, IL. This is the church Tom Chantry attended while teaching 5th grade at Christian Liberty Academy in the Chicago area. It is also where he met and married his wife Karen. Karen’s father is Al Huber, the assistant pastor at Grace Reformed Baptist Church and a current member of the Administrative Council. Grace Reformed Baptist Church sent Chantry to Milwaukee to plant the Christ Reformed Baptist Church. Think about this for a minute – in all likelihood both pastor Smith and Huber knew of Chantry’s past deeds at Miller Valley Baptist Church in Prescott, yet they sent him out to plant a church and, in the case of Huber, apparently had no issues with Chantry marrying his daughter! Al Huber has been present in court every day of the trial. I would guess he is also the one bankrolling the defense of Chantry. Huber owned a successful machine shop in Rockford, he may still own it, I am not sure.
Don Lindblad, pictured below with Chantry, is a close friend of Chantry. He will be a witness for the defense in the trial. He participated in a three-way phone call with Victim 2 and Tom Chantry.
Administrative Council member David Dykstra is also a friend of Tom Chantry. Pictured below is the book co-authored by the two men.
Administrative Council member Bob Selph was the well respected and loved pastor at Miller Valley Baptist Church. Tom Chantry was selected to replace Selph based at least partially on Selph’s recommendation.
Administrative Council members Earl Blackburn and John Giarrizzo are virtual fixtures on the Administrative Council.
Chantry’s lawyer, in a motion he filed, claimed the men on the three-man investigative committee knew of the abuse Chantry committed and failed to report it to Law Enforcement as required by Arizona law. (You can read about that here.)
I believe all men on the Administrative Council pictured above read the findings of the three-man committee and either actively chose to cover the report up, or complied with the wishes of those wanting to cover it up. By remaining silent, they are complicit, sharing in the guilt of not reporting Chantry to Law Enforcement or to ARBCA church members at large.
Allowing Chantry’s action to remain largely unknown has undoubtedly, in my opinion, allowed Chantry to continue his perverted, pedophilic life. Although I have heard of no other victims of Chantry’s abuse, I am of the opinion that more victims are out there, they just have not yet found their voices.
It’s well-known that there is no cure for pedophiles. Read the brief screenshot below to verify that fact.
The screenshot below is from a blog written by Phil Johnson, Dan Phillips, and Frank Turk. Chantry was a frequent commenter and occasionally wrote articles such as the one below. Shortly after Chantry was arrested his articles were purged from the website, but most can still be found on the Way Back Machine.
Below are some quotes from this article. Knowing what we now know, the quotes are chilling and hypocritical. The article can be found here.
“You see, I write to you not only from the perspective of a small-church pastor, but also from that of a veteran of Christian education. I spent four years of the interim between my pastorates teaching in a Christian school well-known to you. A large-ish school run by a small-ish church provides an opportunity to observe an intriguing cross-section of evangelicalism. At our school, while there were students from many small churches around the northwest suburbs, by far the largest group was from Harvest Bible Chapel. I mainly taught older elementary students, but since I also spoke weekly in high school chapel I had ample opportunity to interact with teenagers as well.
In other words, I spent four years among kids whose religious background was in your church – a position that was both challenging and distressing. I came to realize that your church’s youth, most of whom would classify themselves as “Christians,” actually comprised the greatest Unreached People Group I have encountered in my years of ministry. This was a conclusion that I reached quite reluctantly, and one which I hope you will seriously consider. Many of those kids had no more idea of the basic facts of the gospel or of its implications for sinners than do the members of the remotest tribes in places American Christians still think of as “mission fields.”
“This experience sent me back to the pastorate with a sober appreciation of what it means to be accountable for souls – particularly for the young souls who are brought to my church and raised under my pastoral care. Is it not my business to be certain that they have at the very least been confronted with the realities of sin and its only cure? I realize that they have parents and Sunday School teachers, but -under Christ – I am a minister of the gospel, and I have a responsibility to them. ”
“Now admittedly, here is where I have the advantage on you – the advantage of the small-church pastor. It is an easy thing for me to know the children in my congregation – children whom I see and with whom I interact on a regular basis. I understand my advantages, and it is my business to make something of them. I also understand that you are at a considerable handicap. The demands on your time are far greater than the demands on mine. I wonder, though, does that change anything? You – like me – are a minister of the gospel, and you – like me – have had young souls entrusted to your care.”
“Every pastor ought to hope for better fruit than this. Remember, both you and I will give an account of our stewardship of souls. Perhaps you will continue to build your ministry until it eclipses that of every great preacher in history. Perhaps your next book will be acclaimed by all as a timeless best-seller. Perhaps your ministry on next spring’s conference tour will draw rave reviews for its broadness of mind and heart. But if the children of your congregation are just another Unreached People Group, what exactly are you building? Do you want to be saved as if through a fire when all else – including the families in your care – are burned up like what’s left over after the harvest?”
Below is a comment Chantry wrote to this article.
Tom Chantry said…
Aaron,
I believe this is already known to some of my critics, but if it helps:
I first worked at this school (as a substitute) in the spring of 2002. I taught there from the fall of 2002 through the spring of 2006.
I spent one year teaching sixth graders and three years teaching fifth. My lengthiest interactions were with those children. I also preached weekly in the high school chapel, thus my additional interaction with high school students.
Below are some back and forth comments found in this article. The last sentence of Tom Chantry’s final comment is breathtaking. He speaks from experience when he says unrepentant sinners placed in a responsible position can do tremendous harm.
Here’s an interesting comment found on this blog. Tom reveals that he is a Scout leader. He sure seems to like being around young boys.
Finally, in what I find to be the creepiest thing I have read of Chantry’s, is the quote below. This quote was taken from Chantry’s blog. Access to the blog has been restricted, but the information was found on this blog.
“The Most Creepiest Time of the Year – from the Chantry Notes blog
Excerpts:
Nov 2014
…Baby It’s Cold Outside is a light-hearted, amusing, light-jazz treatment of sexual coercion. The song is a conversation between an obviously unmarried young woman (she’s worried about her father and mother waiting up for her at home) who finds herself in some difficulty attempting to leave a man’s apartment.
He pleads the cold as a reason for her to stay, pours her a stiff drink, puts on romantic records, and begs her not to “hold out.” Although foolish enough to be at his apartment in the first place, the victim at least has the sense to want to go home. In the end, though, she gives in, joining him in singing about the cold. The implied ending is that she remains in his embrace…and in his bed?
…This is one of those odd spots where I find myself nodding my head in agreement with the feminists. They see it for what it is: the anthem of date-rape. The girl actually says, “The answer is no,” at the opening of the second verse, and we all know what “no” means! But the wolf still pursues, and in the end he gets his prey. The line “Say what’s in this drink?” takes on a particularly creepy meaning in our decade; has the girl been drugged? Critics from the left have insisted that the song must go, and frankly, every thinking Christian ought to agree.
…I suppose part of the problem is that we use the same word – “cute” – to describe puppies, kittens, small children, and the objects of our sexual desire. More fundamentally, we need to realize that the same arbiters of pop-morality who have pushed homosexual marriage on us are not going to one day push other forms of sexual expression; they have already done so!”
“Chantry asked this of some guy in the comment box:
Before I call you naive, let me ask you this: how did you feel about little Harry singing “Gosh your lips look delicious” to little Emily?
Chantry also says this in the comment box:
I can appreciate that. I think, though, that what bugs me is, as I watch this as a man, I have the impression that they are trying to get me to contemplate whether the little girl is, in fact, kissable. Or perhaps they are trying to get a man of another ‘orientation’ to wish that the little boy would say that to him.
These are kids, and this is sexual innuendo. It bugs me tremendously that someone went through the song to make it “kid-friendly” and decided that the lines about alcohol and drugs had to go, but the sexual innuendo could stay!”
—(end quote)—
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