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Harassment complaints aimed at pastor
LeCLAIRE, Iowa — The pastor who got the attention of his community and the police when he posted a graphic anti-abortion sign in his yard now faces harassment complaints from two church members who say he hounded them for supporting a presidential candidate different than his.

The women accuse the Rev. Tim Groves, pastor of New Life Community Church in LeClaire, of repeatedly harassing them by telephone and in visits to their homes because they supported John Kerry and say they are distraught over feeling forced to leave the church they love.

“I pounded a nail in the first church here in town,” Helen Talbot, 80, said Tuesday as she sat surrounded by portraits of Jesus on her living room wall. “I was 6 years old and my uncle held me up on the scaffold so I could pound a nail.

“I read my Bible every day,” she said. “Now my pastor has called me a liar for telling what he did.”

In the past week, Groves has told Talbot and Clarice Mizer, 73, that they violated church policy by taking their complaints to police rather than trying to resolve them at church....

...Talbot said her relationship with the pastor has been strained in recent months, but it boiled over after a church deacon came to her house and told her to remove Kerry campaign signs from her yard. She said Groves followed up with a phone call, telling her she is not a Christian if she supports Democrats.

She said the calls from Groves continued while she was in a Davenport hospital for surgery.

Mizer said she has had similar run-ins with the pastor.

“He was continually calling me and telling me that if I was standing before God I would be condemned for voting for Kerry,” she said. “He called him (U.S. Sen Kerry, D-Mass.) a murderer.

“I asked him to stop, but he wouldn’t do it.”...

...Arrowood said state church leaders in Des Moines also are aware of problems in LeClaire and expressed concern over language in a letter sent to church members last month in which Groves referred to a meeting with the devil.

“It was Wednesday night, October 6th, that the Devil appeared to me in my living room and clearly spoke to me as you would speak to a neighbor,” he wrote in the six-page letter.

“Now I know we live in a milk toast society where we’re suppose to tolerate everybody else and we Christians are suppose to be these compassionate do-gooders who never squawk or squeak and certainly don’t get involved in any area of life except for church life,” he wrote. “Well, news flash, church, that’s a LIE from the DEVIL.”

Arrowood categorized the message as “very unusual” and said he is reading more of Groves’ writings.

Meanwhile, Talbot and Mizer said they have suffered emotionally and physically from the stress of the fallout at their beloved church.

Mizer said she worries about what will happen next.

“I’ve got to get my Life Alert key to my apartment back from the pastor,” she said. “I’ll have to ask the police to help me because he won’t like that.

“He knows I’m not a well person and when he yells at me it upsets me no end.”...