Letters From Leavers

We began attending regularly because we liked the preaching and the music and the feel of the service. Most importantly to my wife and I, on the way home we could discuss the sermon with our teenaged sons because they ACTUALLY LISTENED! They really liked the pastor. This went well for a year and a half. I became friends with the pastor. We often had lunch together and soon he and I could freely confide in one another. We shared a common vision for what the church can be. We both read Brian McLaren and other authors and got together to visit a prominent church in the emergent church movement. I call my pastor and friend, “Mark”. He and I began planning a weekend retreat for men during which we could present the Christian faith as a spiritual journey and introduce various practices and resources.

But during the months that we were planning this event, Mark began telling me of meetings he was having with the “pastoral relations committee” which had been established by the church chairman, and of course, included him. They would invite him to a scheduled meeting a few days hence but not disclose the subject or reason for the meeting. At the meeting they would point out things they did not like about his ministry. It was supposed to be a time of “mentoring” but usually there was no building up, only tearing down. This happened several times. Then he found out that there was a clandestine letter-writing campaign to the denominational conference office, asking that Mark be removed. Included in those letters was a threat by one of the wealthy families in the congregation to stop tithing until he was dismissed. However, this denomination has a congregational form of government, so the conference could only influence the process.

Then Mark began getting pressure from the conference to increase the attendance and giving of his church. They wanted him to use “time-tested” techniques, and bring in a consultant if necessary. Mark felt that the way to grow a church is through building relationships in the community, and by being a loving presence there. He had the idea that the Church could more effectively be the Church outside the church building. The conference then wanted to know how he was using his time. When they found out that there were two families who were really hurting, and were taking several hours of Mark’s time each week, the conference told him that he didn’t have time to deal with that kind of people. He needed to get those numbers up!

Finally, after a year of this, Mark began to feel depressed. In fact, the depression became debilitating. The conference told him that they would pay for psychiatric help, but that Mark should probably take an extended time off. So Mark went on “Sabbatical” for three months, but he was forbidden by the conference from telling anyone that he was doing it because he was depressed about the effort to oust him. That clandestine campaign was not to become public, “for the sake of the church”.

The long and the short of it is that Mark finally did resign, with the encouragement of the conference. The day his resignation was announced, the church received a check for $10,000 from the family which had told the conference they had stopped tithing. Mark was given three month’s wages and a year of medical coverage, which was pretty generous.

Mark had planted that church five years earlier. At the conference level he had to report to “Bill”, who oversaw all church plants in the denomination for that region. Unfortunately, though Bill had been a pastor for a number of years, he had never planted a church.

Mark was certainly not without fault in all of this. His vocal critics did have SOME legitimate concerns. But they handled it in a deceitful, underhanded, unethical, and unChristian way. And Mark did a poor job of standing up for himself and the ministry he had built.

As far as the congregation knew, Mark resigned in December 2005 because he was burned out. No one was supposed to know that people had been planting knives in his back for well over a year. So, when Mark left a portion of the congregation left, but most stayed, having no idea that Mark had been screwed. As his friend, I saw it happen, but I couldn’t saw anything without making it even worse for him.

One funny thing was that because most of the congregation did not know that there were people in leadership who literally hated Mark, they organized a “Thank You Party” for Mark and his family. There were more people there than there had been on Sunday mornings after Mark left.  Certain key axxholes wisely chose to have conflicts in their schedules that day.

In the time since then Mark and I have led a small group of “church refugees” from that church. We meet for fellowship and support. We are not a “church” in any formal sense, and the chances are that we will probably never become an official church. Most of us have been unable to find another church home since leaving Mark’s former church. We have attended other places sporadically, but nothing really seems to fit. In fact, I wonder if I will ever find a church where I fit. I am most attracted to the emergent/missional movement in the Church, but there is nothing that even comes close to being a neighborhood church like that because we live in suburbia. We can find churches where women are taught to be subservient and where they clean their guns during Wednesday night Bible study. And we can find churches where we are told that if we attend there we might become mature enough in the Spirit that we too will literally roll on the floor during the worship service. I haven’t come across any snake handlers yet, but we don’t have many poisonous snakes here in the suburbs. This is sooo frustrating.

And when I listen to “The God Journey Podcast”, I wonder if I should even bother finding an official congregation. But that sort of leaves me hanging here with my wife and sons. I miss fellowship. I miss serving and feeling that I am part of something larger than myself. I miss seeing God work in and through people.