Death of Megachurch Pastor Darrin Patrick Officially Ruled a Suicide
Written by Sunlight Radio America on July 3, 2020
Megachurch pastor Darrin Patrick’s cause of death has officially been ruled a suicide, according to the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department.
Patrick died May 7 in Pacific, Missouri, just outside of St. Louis. The cause of death was a gunshot wound and the medical examiner ruled it a suicide, Franklin County Sheriff Steve Pelton told Religion News Service.
Patrick was a teaching pastor at Seacoast Church, a multisite megachurch based in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, and the founding pastor of the Journey Church in St. Louis, where he lived.
Seacoast Church announced in a May 8 statement that Patrick had died of what appeared to be a “self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
His death came as a shock to friends and colleagues.
Patrick, who was known for helping people grow and overcome adversity, was remembered as being “passionate about the Lord.”
He had been a rising star in Reformed evangelical circles and served as vice president of the Acts 29 church planting network. He was later fired from Journey for what church elders called misconduct, including “inappropriate meetings, conversations, and phone calls with two women” and an abuse of power.
Patrick received counseling and went through a restoration process that lasted 26 months, according to a 2019 blog interview posted at Christianity Today. He returned to the ministry as a preacher but not as a senior pastor of a church.
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Source: Religion News Service
