Following is a summary of this Brainerd Dispatch article:
A board of trustees of a Minnesota church wants a Pastor to resign because he invited a speaker to give a presentation warning about the dangers of Islam.
Church board President Dace Julifs of the Oak Street Chapel in Brainerd, Minnesota, said Friday they are planning to ask Pastor Todd Wooden to resign over inviting an anti-Islamist speaker Usama Dakdok to come to the church to speak about Islam.
“That was a pastor gone rogue. Oak Street Chapel, we are a kind and caring and open people,” Julifs said.
Wooden has been a member of the non-denominational Christian church since 2000 and has been a pastor since 2013.
Julifs said he did know about the presentation in advance, but he was under the impression that “it would be an informative meeting about the Muslim community and how non-Muslims could co-exit with them.” He said, “Wooden is supposed to represent all of the congregation, but instead he looked out for the needs of just one member: Daryl Bahma, whose ‘Defenders of the Constitution’ sponsored the event in the first place.”
Julifs said the church was forced to take down its website because of all the negative messages they received in response to the presentation. He said the church’s web administrator was “reduced to tears” after she read some of them. [This is a tactic of powerful Islamist activist groups such as CAIR who know about Dakdok.]
When contacted by the Dispatch and informed the board wanted him to resign, Wooden laughed and said he didn’t regret Dakok speaking in the Church and he wouldn’t resign.
Apparently a “screaming match” between Dakdok and several protesters broke out when he was giving his presentation [(another tactic of CAIR)], which Wooden called “unnecessary,” and he also took issue with Dakdok calling Americans “stupid” for their acquiescence to the spread of Islam.
Wooden couldn’t say for sure if Dakdok’s presentation was “Islamophobic” though. He said, “I don’t know how to answer that, really, because I really don’t understand all the elements of Islam at this point. … That would be like calling a Muslim-American America-phobi(c), wouldn’t it? Because they’re so passionate about Islam being the only way to bring peace to this world.”
The congregation will decide whether Wooden will stay on as pastor. Wooden said the board doesn’t have the authority to ask for his resignation and none of them were at the presentation, adding that the chair of the church’s ministry and several members of the church gave him positive feedback about the presentation.
Wooden said he believes the congregation will choose to act in his favor. “They have confidence in me being the spiritual leader of the Church,” he said.
_______
Usama Dakdok’s website is located at http://www.thestraightway.org/
Following is a video of Usama Dakdok speaking on Valley News Live on November 5, 2015