Category: Darlene Bishop

The 62-foot King of Kings statue no longer stretches out its giant arms to motorists on Interstate 75, but a pastor of the Solid Rock Church says the June 14 fire was good PR for what the church is about: Christ.

The fire also shone a spotlight on the Bishops, who built Solid Rock from a dozen congregants in a tin-roofed building with folding chairs into one of the region’s largest churches, with a satellite church east of Cincinnati, a home for troubled women, 13 churches in the Philippines and an orphanage in Brazil.

Darlene Bishop, television evangelist and co-pastor of the Solid Rock Church in Monroe, has won a bitter court feud involving the estate of her brother, songwriter Darrell “Wayne” Perry.

Four of Darlene Bishop’s relatives are suing her over her claim that God cured their father – her brother – of throat cancer. He died of the disease 18 months ago.

Darlene Bishop, the nationally renowned evangelical preacher, begins her book about how God cured the cancer afflicting one of her brothers. Nowhere, though, does she mention, that the brother, Darrell Perry, a successful country music songwriter whom everyone called Wayne, died from the cancer a year and a half ago.

Solid Rock Church, with its atmosphere of unplanned gigantism, is one of the few places where a 62-foot statue of Jesus could fit right in.