Truman Dollar

Truman Dollar was born in Texas, the son of a pastor. He began preaching at age fifteen, and went on to be pastor at the Glenwood Baptist Church in Texas, the Ambassador Baptist Church of Allen Park, Michigan, and the Kansas City Baptist Temple in Missouri. At every church he worked for, the congregation grew dramatically. At the Kansas City Baptist Temple, he began a television ministry and the congregation grew to over 3,500 members. In 1983, he left Kansas City to become pastor of the Temple Baptist Church in Detroit. The church has a large congregation with 5,000 members and a whites-only membership policy. Dollar challenged both the narrow legalistic Christianity and the racism that was preached by the church's previous pastor. Although he met with resistance, the deacons of the church voted to allow non-white people to join the church in September of 1985. However, it came to light that Dollar had had inappropriate conversations with a woman while he was pastor at the Kansas City Baptist Temple. In 1992, Dollar was asked to resign his position as pastor and he moved with his family to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he worked for an advertising agency. He committed suicide in 1996.