JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Once touted by Southern Baptist leaders as the nation’s next great African-American preacher, Darrell Gilyard has resigned from his fifth church over charges of sexual misconduct — this time with underage girls.
Dogged for 20 years by dozens of allegations of extramarital sex with parishioners, Gilyard, 45, resigned Jan. 4 after 15 years as pastor of Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church, a 7,000-member megachurch in Jacksonville, Fla. Police are investigating a Nov. 29 complaint filed by a member of the church claiming Gilyard sent sexually explicit text messages to her middle-school daughter.
A native of Palatka, Fla., Gilyard rose to sudden fame in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in the late 1980s under the mentorship of former SBC presidents Jerry Vines and Paige Patterson.
Beginning in 1985, Gilyard was hired and then forced out of positions at three Dallas-area churches — Victory Baptist Church in Richardson, Concord Missionary Baptist Church in Dallas, and Shiloh Baptist Church in Garland. He was similarly hired and forced to resign at Hilltop Baptist Church in Norman, Okla.
At least 25 women in the Dallas church publicly accused him of sexual misconduct, according to a church spokesperson. Some of the women alleged he raped them, the Dallas Morning News said in 1991. The public allegations subsided after Gilyard, who is married, moved to the Florida church in 1993, but new allegations resurfaced last year. Church leaders confronted him after the most recent police complaint was filed, according to several Jacksonville media reports.
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