Page 160 - Unseen Hands by Nona Freeman

Unseen Hands
should be clearly defined.
The board members came to the afternoon meeting.
They demanded that the ministers meeting be postponed, and they promised to bring written charges against Tekle when the meeting resumed the next day.
They returned after an all-night session and made the following statements:
1. Tekle's two tracts, one on the new birth and the other asking if the reader desired salvation, were not scriptural. (They had commended and freely distributed the tracts up to that time.)
2. They could not give the school to the church; they depended on it for a living. They wanted to continue teaching and to witness for the Lord in their spare time.
3. Tekle had defamed them in letters to Brother Harris.
4. They insisted that they did not need Tekle's leader ship, saying, "We are grown men and can direct our selves. We have the Spirit to lead us. We do not want Tekle to come to us except by invitation."
Brother Harris immediately appointed three men to examine the tracts: Hailu Wolde-Tsadik, Bekele Feyye, and Wolde-Giorgis. Answering the third point, he said, "Brother Tekle did not defame you to me. You are our brethren; in good faith, I have handed a gift of $2,400 for the expenses of this meeting to our treasurer. Brother Teshome."
Discussion on the other points became heated with the board members doing most of the talking. At one point, one of them asked for the floor and turned to Brother Harris. "You are not our superintendent," he said, "and you should be silenced!"
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