FROM ONE NEWS NOW/AFA

Christian meteorologist weathering a storm


Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow - 10/7/2010 8:30:00 AM

A Virginia Beach TV weatherman has been fired -- and the reasons management gave him were all related to his after-hours ministry.

on Cash, a 21-year employee of WAVY-TV, appeared on the station's highly rated morning show, but also traveled as an evangelist preaching at area churches large and small. Earlier this year, management came to him about his ministry -- and Cash agreed to some correction.

"[On] August 31 they came to me and apparently had somebody come in and heard me preach and say that I'm planning to eventually give up my television job when my contract was over and pursue full-time ministry because that's the Lord's calling," he recalls. "And I was abruptly fired."

Cash says WAVY general manager Doug Davis told him that going into full-time ministry was "bad for business."

The meteorologist and attorneys with the American Center for Law & Justice have filed a religious discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Cash states on his website that he never thought in his "wildest dreams" that he and his family would ever be part of such a complaint.

"I have never been a party to a lawsuit, believing that men and women of good will should resolve their differences directly," he shares. "I reluctantly begin this process -- not for me as an individual, but to vindicate our God-given right to worship as defined in the Constitution and federal law."

Cash admits to OneNewsNow that he is bewildered by the station's decision. "Why would they get rid of an employee of 21 years who was bringing them some of the highest ratings in the country -- and of course, ratings means money -- and the only thing that kept coming back [about my firing], everything listed, related to my ministry as a Christian evangelist?"

Cash believes God is involved in a very large way in perhaps pushing him into full-time ministry well ahead of his personal plans -- and he says he intends to follow that calling.

According to the station's website, Cash's 1999 end-times thriller -- The Age of the Antichrist -- "garnered national recognition and praise." He penned a sequel, Thunder in Paradise, as well as a third book, Lost Church, which he says is designed to call the church to true faith and repentance.