Pastor sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to stealing $500K from church

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Wednesday, March 05, 2025

A former Assemblies of God pastor who pleaded responsible to stealing greater than $500,000 from Harrison Religion Church in Arkansas has been sentenced to 17 years of probation, 800 hours of neighborhood service and ordered to pay $100,000 of restitution to the church for his crimes.

The previous pastor, recognized as Brian Keith Herring, 49, can be a former metropolis councilman in Harrison. Court docket information cited by KTLO stated Herring was accused of stealing almost $525,000 from the church in 2021 and was charged with felony counts of theft of property, second diploma forgery and tampering with bodily proof.

A consultant of the church informed investigators in 2021 that greater than  $333,594 was lacking from a number of church accounts and so they had been unable to entry the church’s bank card account or statements related to the account.

Prosecutors additionally famous that Herring returned two church telephones, a laptop computer and an iPad which had been all manufacturing unit reset. An audit later revealed that Herring had taken $524,634.24 in bank card purchases and different account transactions. When authorities initially tried contacting Herring at his residence, they discovered it empty and listed on the market.

Greater than a yr in the past, whereas working as a employees pastor on the multi-site Model New Church in Arkansas, Herring claimed the investigation of his bank card use at Harrison Religion Church was instigated by a former shut good friend who “had some sin in his life.”

“I keep in mind when all of it modified. I keep in mind it was a board assembly. It was concerning the time the board was on the brink of elect its new members and I had … a detailed good friend, in truth, that had some sin in his life and I sat down and I stated, ‘We have to discuss some issues,’” he alleged.

Herring claimed the good friend denied his allegation of sin and was finally elected to the church’s board.

“He was elected to be on the board and his coronary heart modified towards me,” Herring recalled.

“At that time, and I will always remember strolling as much as my shut good friend at one time with a clipboard as he was making an attempt to get me recalled for an election and he went round to board members, he went to church members, and he was making an attempt to do all the things he [could] to have me recalled because the pastor. And I used to be identical to, what’s going on,” he stated.

When his former good friend could not get the assist he wanted from the board or the congregation to oust him from management, Herring stated he went to the denominational management who eliminated him on the good friend’s testimony alone.

“They by no means known as me. They by no means requested my aspect of issues; they by no means requested something. I used to be … known as to our denominational management the place I used to be requested to step down because the lead pastor. We had been destroyed,” he stated of his household.

“I keep in mind going to my youngsters, and I keep in mind telling them with tears streaming down my face that we’re having to depart the church that they cherished, the one church that they ever knew, they grew up in,” he stated.

“I keep in mind sitting down and saying issues that had been being stated about our household. … They’re saying we mishandled info. What they did is that they principally took each cost on their church bank card that we ever spent and stated that it was by no means accepted. And so, they took all that and stated that is what he has stolen from the church.”

Court docket recordsdata reviewed by The Christian Submit present that previous to his newest prison fees, Herring filed three separate chapter instances in Virginia and Missouri starting in 1995. The final one was in 2008.