Source: Dayton Daily News
Author: Staff

MONROE, Ohio — The co-pastor of an Ohio megachurch where a 62-foot-tall Jesus statue was struck by lightning said she will turn her brother’s estate over to her nephew after years of family feuding.

Solid Rock Church co-pastor Darlene Bishop has held control of the estate of her brother, country music songwriter Darrell “Wayne” Perry, who died of throat cancer in 2005 at age 55.

Perry’s songs included Tim McGraw’s “Not a Moment Too Soon,” Toby Keith’s “A Woman’s Touch” and Lorrie Morgan’s hit, “What Part Of No.”

Perry’s four children say Bishop hastened her brother’s death in 2005 by promising to use prayer, instead of medical treatment, to cure his throat cancer.

Sixty-five-year-old Bishop says she encouraged her brother to see a doctor, but he refused.

“All of (his children’s) accusations against me were not warranted,” Bishop said.

Sixty-five-year-old Bishop and her husband, Lawrence, founded the Solid Rock Church in southwest Ohio in 1978. It grew from a dozen congregants in a tin-roofed building with folding chairs into a megachurch with 13 churches in the Philippines and an orphanage in Brazil.

The Dayton Daily News reports that Darlene Bishop Ministries made more than $1.3 million in 2007, the last year for which complete IRS records were available.

“She thrives on fame and stardom and shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue,” said Bishop’s nephew Bryan Wayne Perry. “I’m ashamed that the same blood runs through our veins.”

In one of Bishop’s books, she says God cured her of breast cancer in 1986. Twenty years later, in a court deposition, she said she was never medically diagnosed with the disease, but believes she had it.

Her brother’s children said Bishop used that story to persuade her brother not to seek medical care until it was too late.

“It hurt me tremendously,” Bishop said of the family quarrels. “I’m not going to allow anything to make me bitter. My conscience is clear.”

Bishop said she and her husband are looking ahead to replacing the bust of Jesus with a full-bodied statue made of limestone.

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Information from: Dayton Daily News, http://www.daytondailynews.com

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July 25, 2010 11:50 PM EDT