[MACON] Chairs were toppled and punches were thrown inside Greater Bellevue Baptist Church in Macon on Monday night after a disagreement about the pastor’s future escalated in to a full-on brawl.A Bibb County sheriff’s deputy in the church was standing by as the congregation prepared to vote on whether or not pastor David Stephens would stay, but the deputy had to call for back up when things started getting heated.
"I can’t handle this. This is church, though. They overdoing it, though," one man said on a video he took with his phone that night.
A woman came on the microphone and said, "Us not having a pastor at all, is that going to make this a better church or worser?"
"Worser!" the man taking the video said. "We want Pastor Stephens. He a big help to the community, though. They trippin.’ "
A deputy waved people away from the podium saying, "One at a time!"
"If you keep talking you won’t be able to vote," a man at the podium told about 150 people in the church. "If y’all don’t vote, y’all just don’t vote."
A little more than 20 minutes into the 35 minute video, church decorum decayed in a matter of seconds.
Young men threw punches and folks shoved each other among chairs that had been knocked over.
At the blow of a whistle, everyone left the church and the fight dissipated.