Reprinting this because the newspaper has no website. Be sure to pay special attention about another minister bringing a gun “to kill a large rodent.” Anybody heard of DeCon?

by Brooks Franklin
Mt. Juliet News, February 12, 2003
No arraignment date has yet been schedule for Green Hill Church Music Minister Mark Lancaster, who was indicted last week on four counts of illegally possessing machine guns.
Lancaster, 42, has been free on $50,000 bond since spending more than a week in custody following his early January arrest, which came when agents of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms seized 15 machine guns from his Mt. Juliet home.
Lancaster was indicted on charges of possessing approximately 15 machine guns, manufacturing machine guns without paying the special occupation tax, possession of approximately 15 machine guns in violation of U.S. law and possession of approximately 15 unregistered machine guns.
An official in the U.S. District Court Clerk’s Office said an arraignment date will likely be scheduled sometime this week.
The arrest of Lancaster seems to have had a strong impact on the church and its congregation, with several members publicly accusing church leaders of being behind the ATF raid that resulted in the charges against him.
Lancaster’s supporters, some of whom have even established a website to establish a defense fund on his behalf, maintain he fell victim to church in-fighting which escalated over a recent budget dispute. In retaliation for his stance over the budget issue, his supporters maintain, those on the opposite side of the controversy contacted the ATF about Lancaster.
“This was done, underhanded, to get rid of Mark. I guarantee you it was,” longtime church member Rusty Roberts said recently.
Affidavits filed by an ATF agent state three confidential informants utilized by the bureau against Lancaster were associated with the music minister through the church, described as recently as last week as still in turmoil over the music minister’s arrest.
Repeated attempts to contact the church’s pastor, Lane Fordham, have been unsuccessful.
But congregation members, each of who spoke on the condition of anonymity, revealed that questions about Lancaster’s arrest led to revelations that another church official has carried a weapon on church property in the past and unlike the music minister, who has been asked to resign, will apparently face no sanctions for his actions.
And Minister of Education James Mason confirmed the allegations in a faxed statement sent in response to a reporter’s phone messages.
Mason who heads the church’s day care center, not only admitted to carrying a weapon but also said he shot it on church property in the summer of 2002 to kill a large rodent.
He said he offered his resignation to church leaders in order to spare the institution any further embarrassment but that it was refused because of the vast differnences between the incident and the charges against Lancaster.
he said the church has since passed a new policy expressly porhibiting the possession of weapons on church property.
An official with the state Department of Human Services which licenses day care centers, said state laws allows weapons within the facilities only when kept under lock and key. The Green Hill Church day are has never been investigated because oficials have received no complaints about the facility, the DHS spokesperson said.