As AME Church meets for General Conference, retirement plan questions continue

By Adelle M. Banks (RNS) — When the Rev. Carieta Cain-Grizzell reached age 75, she had expected to retire after a lifetime as an African Methodist Episcopal Church member who became a pastor of several of its churches. Instead, the Washington, D.C., native-turned-Californian is now “on loan” to the United Methodist Church, first pastoring a Fair Oaks congregation and recently appointed to one in Oakland. “Pastoring is my ministry,” said Cain-Grizzell, whose lineage in the historically Black AME denomination traces back five generations. “It was something that I wanted to do,although I had to do it even if I didn’t want to do it.” AdChoicesSponsored Cain-Grizzell is one of thousands of pastors, elders and staffers of the AME Church who lost substantial portions of their retirement savings due to an alleged mishandling of the accounts. A class action lawsuit filed in 2022 against the church calculated the total loss at $90 million.& As of Wednesday (Aug.21), church leadership has not revealed a clear path to restore the funds. The Rev. Carieta Cain-Grizzell. (Courtesy photo) As the AME Church opened its weeklong quadrennial General Conference on Wednesday in Columbus, Ohio, people like Cain-Grizzell questioned how the fallout from the financial crisis...