The Door El Paso, a congregation of Christian Fellowship Ministries (CFM), the network known as The Potter’s House and Victory Chapel, received an insurance settlement from Nationwide for roof work: according to accounts from inside the church, more than $1 million for a full replacement. What happened to that money is the question Angel Medina, then pastor of The Door’s church in Fabens, Texas, began asking in early 2023, and it remains unresolved in the record: no court has ruled on the insurance question, and El Paso leadership denies in writing that any fraud occurred. What the record does document is what happened to the man who asked. Within weeks Medina was removed from ministry; recordings, emails, and text messages posted publicly by his family trace the pressure that followed; and the one part of the conflict that did reach a court, the fight over the Fabens church building, ended with a judgment against the church side. This article follows Episode 5 of a YouTube series on the case, and the same disclosure applies: the material comes from the public Instagram account cj.med.ina and from conversations with the Medina family, who reviewed the account before publication. Allegations are presented as allegations, and anyone involved — including The Door El Paso leadership — is welcome to respond with documentation through the contact page.
Who Angel Medina is
Angel Medina was no outsider. By his family’s published account, he converted in 1998 after calling out to God in a jail cell, joined The Door Christian Fellowship in El Paso under Pastor Paul Stephens, and became a pastor in 2006. He and his wife Ruth pioneered a church in San Jose Miahuatlán in Puebla, Mexico, moved to La Paz, Bolivia, in 2009 to pioneer another, returned to El Paso in 2014, and in 2022 opened The Door’s church in Fabens, Texas, launched out of the El Paso congregation. The church’s own later email acknowledges the relationship: it states that El Paso had invested more than $74,000 in Medina and his ministry in the prior year alone.
The allegation about the Nationwide settlement
The core allegation, as the family and online accounts state it, is that the El Paso church received the Nationwide payout for a full roof replacement but had a cheaper repair done, leaving a difference the family’s side puts at roughly $400,000. One account goes further, alleging that a reputable roofing contractor declined the job after being asked to inflate invoices, and that the work then went through a man referred to as Tobi, with George Lopez acting as general contractor. Those are allegations from one side of a dispute, and they have not been tested by any court. Two details, however, come from inside the church’s own circle. In a recorded clip posted by the family and attributed to Pastor Ernesto — Ernie Alonso Lopez — the settlement is explained with an analogy: if his wrecked car could be fixed cheaper at another body shop, “I don’t think that’s bad” to pocket the difference. And in clips attributed to Joe Stephens, Paul Stephens’ son, the arrangement is described in harder terms: “They did a repair, which is illegal,” with the warning that if the paperwork says replaced, the full amount could be owed back to the insurer. The clips do not settle what Nationwide paid for. They show that Medina was not the only person connected to The Door El Paso describing the roof money in these terms.
Three meetings in 2023
Medina’s own written response, posted publicly, gives the sequence. On May 11, 2023, he met Paul Stephens privately after speaking with George Lopez about the claim; Stephens assured him the settlement had been used for roof repair and said invoices and proof of payment existed and could be reviewed. Medina thanked him by email and asked to see them. On May 18 he arrived expecting paperwork and instead found the church council; he names Juan Baquera, Kofi Sallar, Richard Contreras, and Stephens. By his account the subject changed from invoices to his heart: Sallar repeatedly framed the matter as Medina’s spiritual problem, Stephens acknowledged in that meeting that he had kept money from the settlement, and Medina was told that unless he produced documentation from Nationwide his accusation would not be treated as credible. Medina then sent the council material from the Texas Department of Insurance and an indemnification clause from an insurance textbook, and proposed bringing in Nationwide itself or outside experts; he says the council refused. On June 6 he was told he would be removed from ministry because the issue remained, in leadership’s words as he reports them, an issue of his heart. His response challenged them to name biblical grounds: he had committed no immorality, crime, or doctrinal error, and the removal followed his questions about the settlement.
What the recordings say
The recordings the family later posted are the part a reader can hear rather than take on anyone’s word, and they concern the handling rather than the roof. In one clip attributed to Paul Stephens, he tells Medina he has the credibility, the church, the leaders, and the council, and Medina does not: “You’re gonna crash and burn. That’s what’s gonna happen.” Another attributed clip warns that pressing the issue will not end well for Medina and his family, and another frames the matter as one to leave to God rather than take to law. None of the posted clips shows leadership offering the obvious ending — putting the insurance file and invoices on the table. That handling matches a pattern documented across the network: the question is redirected at the questioner, and the money itself is never accounted for to the congregation.
The church’s answer in writing
The El Paso leadership’s position is on the record in the email Medina posted, attributed to Pastor Stephens, the church council, and staff. It rejects the fraud allegation outright: law enforcement, the insurance company, and the authorities have nothing to pursue because there was no fraud. It asserts the corporate position — Medina signed the Fabens lease as an agent of The Door Gospel Church, Inc. of El Paso, not personally — demands he turn over or close the church bank account, and states: “We will continue to honor the lease and occupy the building.” Medina’s written reply refuses the email’s olive-branch framing, since he had already been told he was done and people in other cities had been instructed to disassociate from him. He insists his statements were facts rather than slander, argues that if prosecutors could not act it was a matter of the statute of limitations rather than propriety, and repeats his one consistent remedy: let Nationwide and the underlying paperwork decide, and if Stephens’ name is cleared, he wrote, he would request restoration without reprisals. In the same letter he alleges a longer pattern of financial opacity going back to 1998 with Raul Almazan; that claim rests on his account alone.
The texts
Screenshots posted by the family show the building dispute in blunt terms. On July 19, Kofi Sallar texted Medina to move on quietly, called his eviction notices delusional, and told him to back off the church’s property; they were not giving him that building. On August 22, Sallar texted that he was trying to help Medina redeem what was redeemable, then listed what would follow otherwise: “Our actions will hurt you if we carry forward,” naming contact with the Fabens High principal, the FCA, the IRS, and state tax authorities. The family’s captions call the messages threats and blackmail; the reader can weigh the label, but the texts themselves show the dispute reaching Medina’s employment and tax standing, far beyond a roof.
What the court record establishes
One piece of the conflict was adjudicated. On October 11, 2023, the Fabens building’s landlords, Arturo Pineda Brojas and Micaela Garcia Marquez, filed an eviction petition in Justice of the Peace Precinct 6 against The Door Gospel Church, Inc., Paul Anthony Stephens, and all occupants. JP Court 6 ruled on November 1; The Door Gospel Church alone appealed, paying a $2,400 appeal bond and three months of rent into the court registry. The county-court record also shows Kofi Sallar appearing as a board member of both The Door Gospel Church and its wholly owned subsidiary, The Door Church Fabens, Inc. The appeal was heard on January 30, 2024, in County Court at Law No. 6 in El Paso County, and the judgment stamped February 21, 2024, awarded possession of 313 East Main Street to the landlords, ordered the keys returned and the premises vacated by 5:00 PM on February 22, released the registry funds to the plaintiffs, taxed costs against the church, and set any further appeal bond at $30,000. The court did not rule on insurance fraud; it ruled on the building, and the church side lost. The next day a Sheriff’s Office incident card, case 202402741, was created for the address; Medina later tried to file charges over entry, theft, and roughly $7,000 in damage, and the charges were never taken up. His congregation, locked out, met in a park for five months.
What is resolved, and what is not
The money question is open. The full claim file, the scope of work Nationwide paid for, and whether any criminal fraud occurred are unproven in the record, and the church denies wrongdoing; fairness requires both statements. The handling question is not open in the same way, because it is documented in leadership’s own recorded words, its own email, and its council member’s own texts: a pastor raised a financial question about an elder, and the response that is on the record concerns his heart, his reputation, his family, his building, and his livelihood, rather than the paperwork he kept asking for. The Fellowship’s own recent history shows where such questions can otherwise lead: Thomas Cunningham’s 2023 withdrawal letter alleged the same machinery of accusation without evidence in another case involving Joe Stephens. Episode 5 of the series presents the recordings and documents themselves; if you hold documents, recordings, or court records connected to this case or others inside The Door, the contact page is open, and so is the church’s invitation to respond.
