‘IT’S

‘IT’S TERRIFYING’

Steve Lackmeyer, Carla Hinton and Jordan Gerard

The Oklahoman USA TODAY NETWORK

Co-workers of Dillon Awes say the City Hall information technology employee is polite and friendly at his job. In his second job as a church leader, however, he says people who are LGBTQ+ should be tried for abomination and executed.

“They should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head,” Awes is heard saying in a recording of a June 5, 2022, sermon at his former church in Texas.

In the same sermon, Awes also told his congregation “all homosexuals are pedophiles” and LGBTQ+ friendly pastors should be “put to death.” Addressing children listening to his sermon, he warned that people who are LGBTQ+ “will hurt you.”

While he is not known to have espoused those beliefs during his city job, his rhetoric has some of his co-workers worried for their safety.

“It’s terrifying,” said one of two LGBTQ+ coworkers interviewed by The Oklahoman. “I didn’t expect that to come out of his mouth. While watching those videos, I felt physically ill.”

Both workers asked not to be identified out of concern of being retaliated against.

Awes now leads a storefront congregation in Oklahoma City started in 2022 as a branch of Stedfast Baptist Church at Peppertree Square on Northwest Expressway. It was renamed Anchor Baptist Church in 2024. The church is listed under its former name as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

When contacted by The Oklahoman, Awes declined an interview.

“If your story is trying to involve the workplace, I will not be doing an interview as I don’t want my words to be misconstrued as the beliefs of my employer,” Awes told The Oklahoman in a Facebook message. “If you want to know about the doctrine of Anchor Baptist Church, feel free to check out our doctrinal statement at anchorkjv.com.”

The doctrine page highlights the church’s rebuke of gay people.

“Sodomy (homosexuality) is both an abominable sin and a crime in God’s law meriting the death penalty,” the website’s doctrine page states.

In a YouTube video Awes posted titled “Firearms Training With Baptist Bros,” someone is heard instructing a man firing a semiautomatic rifle to imagine he is targeting transgendered individuals “killing kids.”

The Oklahoman found no evidence of violence by Awes or his church against the LGBTQ+ community or other minorities. The church’s website states that “Anchor Baptist Church vehemently condemns all individual acts of violence and vigilante justice.” But other religious leaders warn that the sort of comments made by Awes can spur acts of violence by those exposed to the message.

“That kind of rhetoric emboldens people to enact violence,” said the Rev. Lori Walke, senior pastor of Mayflower Congregational Church-UCC, in Oklahoma City.

“We’ve seen it play out on the national stage, and so to have that in our city, coming from someone who is also employed by our municipality, is deeply troubling and certainly demands some kind of response to ensure that all of our city employees feel safe, not even feel safe, but are safe.”

Records obtained by The Oklahoman show Awes was hired by the city of Oklahoma City on Aug. 6, 2024, as a ground maintenance employee and then was promoted on March 14, 2025, to be an application support technician with hourly pay of $26.47 – about $55,000 a year.

The description for Awes’ current job, provided by the city in response to a request from The Oklahoman, shows it is designated as a cybersecurity sensitive job classification as set by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice. No information was provided by the city about what information Awes has access to in his job.

On his Linkedin page, Awes lists dayto- day tasks at previous jobs as including writing and maintaining code, fixing software bugs and implementing new features.

One of the city employees interviewed by The Oklahoman said they didn’t learn of Awes’ statement that LGBTQ+ people should be tried and executed until a city employee Googled his name shortly after his promotion to a job in which he is tasked with responding to upgrades and repairs to workers’ computers.

“He is very bright and prompt,” one of the employees said.

“He is polite to everyone. And then when you see the videos, it’s like the earth shifts. It’s not this very nice person you know at work.”

Awes was national news; OKC didn’t Google his name

The comments by Awes and the beliefs of his church are well known in Texas, where protests led to the congregation repeatedly being evicted by landlords.

The story was covered by the largest newspapers in Texas, including The Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle and Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

National coverage included NBC News, Newsweek, Yahoo and The Daily Beast. But that history, according to several sources, was unknown locally when Awes was first hired to mow lawns at Oklahoma City parks.

The employees say they have raised their concerns with their bosses and other city officials and were told they would keep an eye on his activities at work.

City Manager Craig Freeman, human resources Director Aimee Maddera and Parks Director Melinda McMillan-Miller all declined interviews for this story.

Oklahoma City council members and the mayor are prohibited by the city charter from commenting on personnel matters unless they directly involve the employment of the city manager, city auditor or municipal counselor.

Awes’ comments and beliefs show up in a quick Google search. The city’s spokesperson, Kristy Yager, said human resources policy prohibits hiring managers from using search engines to vet a job applicant. She said the city does not have the staffing to add online searches for job applications.

Yager said the city, which has a workforce of 5,000, employs four people in human resources who screened 27,000 applications in 2024.

A church planted in Oklahoma City by a controversial pastor

On the website for his Oklahoma City church, Awes shares how he went into full-time ministry at 23 at Stedfast Baptist Church after he moved to Texas and how it was that church’s pastor, Jonathan Shelley, who ordained him and sent him to Oklahoma City to start what is now Anchor Baptist Church (not to be confused with other churches using the name of Anchor Baptist Church in other communities).

A 2023 story in the Houston Chronicle reported Shelley co-founded Stedfast Baptist Church in Fort Worth in 2014 and built a congregation around open hatred of Jewish and queer people. The newspaper quoted an October 2022 sermon in which Shelley asked, “Did (the Nazis) actually kill six million (Jews)?”

The paper went on to quote Shelley as answering his own question with “I doubt it. Only if we were lucky. We need to be the loudest voice out here, explaining how the Jews are wicked, evil, Satanic people.”

Awes, meanwhile, more recently posted a sermon on YouTube titled “Burn in Hell Pope Francis.”

The March 2, 2025, live stream was viewed more than 1,800 times. The church channel has 915 subscribers. The ailing pope died on April 21, 2025.

The Oklahoma City church, then under the name Stedfast, popped up on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s 2023 list of anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups.

The list was part of a report warning that the number of such hate groups had jumped by about one-third, to 86, marking the highest number of anti-LGBTQ+ organizations recorded in the history of the SPLC.

Recent guest speakers at Anchor Baptist Church include Steven Anderson, who celebrated “50 less pedophiles in the world” after the 2016 massacre of 49 people at the predominantly LGBTQ+ Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Local churches challenge teachings by Awes

Walke and the Rev. David Wheeler, senior minister of New Covenant Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), lead open and affirming congregations, meaning their churches are welcoming to LGBTQ+ members.

Wheeler said the situation may be viewed through different lenses. He said from a constitutional perspective, the Anchor Baptist Church pastor is entitled to freedom of speech.

“In the broadest sense, he should be able to say what he believes, no matter the lack, in my opinion, of good moral grounding, for what he’s saying,” Wheeler said.

The pastor also pointed out the contradiction of promoting someone with hateful views to a position where they could potentially gain access to personal information of vulnerable groups. Wheeler said when there is hate speech and violent rhetoric, whether in jest or whether it is an extension of someone’s belief system, these become problematic when they may be seen to represent a city which is not a private organization like a church.

Job once considered a safe space

The presence of Awes at City Hall coincides with the city having transitioned from a city once intolerant of gay people to current Mayor David Holt participating in Pride Day parades and the creation of a human rights commission.

“The city of Oklahoma City prohibits discrimination, harassment and retaliation based on membership in a protected class, bullying and any other inappropriate conduct in the workplace,” Yager said, adding employees are encouraged to make a report when they believe they have experienced workplace discrimination, harassment, bullying or retaliation. “

The employees who shared their concerns with The Oklahoman said the city was indeed a place they considered safe – until finding out about Awes’ thoughts on the LGBTQ+ community. They fear Awes’ statements as a pastor could inspire others to act out on his comments.

“People are scared, and it’s not just gay people,” the first city employee said. “No one should have to go to work and think where am I going to hide if someone like that shows up with a gun.”