About a year ago, our family moved to a new town and started visiting a nearby church. We were very excited to find a church that was, a) close and b) lined up with our core beliefs and values. The pastor was dynamic and engaging; his sermons were challenging, thought provoking and biblically sound. The people were friendly and welcoming and we found ways to get connected. Eventually we attended a membership class and decided to join the church.
I had found it difficult to connect in ‘churchy’ activities since my abuse, but resolved to begin attending a monthly ladies luncheon that I had seen advertisements for on the church Facebook page. I connected with a former co-worker and friend who had invited us to the church initially, and we decided to attend one of the luncheons together earlier this year. It was a great time of fellowship, and I made some new friends. Win-Win-Win, right?
WRONG
It was probably a few weeks later that a post popped up on my Facebook feed that caused me to audibly exclaim ‘whoa!’. A very VERY concerning issue was staring me right in the face about some people who attended and served in this church, and I had some questions. I first contacted my friend privately, and she confirmed what was clearly obvious from the Facebook post. After showing the post to my husband, we decided a meeting with the pastor was in order.
always meet in a public place
Prior to meeting with the pastor in person, we sent him a Facebook message to let him know our concerns. He assured us that he had the same concerns and felt certain that we would be able to clear it all up in an in-person meeting. In preparation for the meeting, I had some screen shots and notes on my phone to help my husband and I remember the things we wanted to discuss. We wanted to be prepared. We were hopeful!
We met at a local coffee shop – although we had offered to have the pastor over to our home. I believe now that it was a strategic move, to meet in a public place. The conversation did not start off well. Instead of addressing our concerns or allowing us to express our concerns, the pastor controlled the entire conversation!
“A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind.” Proverbs 18:2
red flags
“You folks aren’t the first people to come to leadership with this issue…”
Now see….on the surface that could be interpreted to mean that the church leadership is well versed in dealing with the ‘issue’, since it’s been brought up several times, but in reality what that means is that it’s an UNRESOLVED issue. We were told that it came up about once a month. ONCE A MONTH?? I was sort of dumbfounded that the pastor tried to spin it as an issue with the people bringing it TO the church, rather than it being an issue IN the church.
“I have a friend over at XYZ Seminary and we have talked about a different way of dealing with this issue…”
I’m no bible scholar, but I do know that Solomon said in the book of Ecclesiates, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” I knew (and I suspect HE knew that I knew) that this was a smokescreen to avoid dealing with the issue. I was not impressed with him name-dropping a professor at XYZ Seminary. I believe that if I were to call this professor, I would not get the same ‘solution’ that was pitched to me that day in the coffeeshop, as it would be completely inconsistent with that seminary’s theology.
“We’ve talked to these folks and they don’t see a problem with what they are doing. There’s not much else we can do.”
This was the point of contention with me, because YES PASTOR, there was plenty you could do! Aren’t you the guy in charge?
“People have misinterpreted that scripture; here’s what it really means in the original greek…”
Now this one…THIS ONE really set me off. I sat there, calmly I might add, as this pastor of a fairly large congregation blatantly bended the interpretation of a scripture to fit his agenda. I didn’t question him, however, because at this point in the conversation I could tell it was pointless. He refused to be challenged. (also he didn’t go to seminary, so where did he learn greek??)
“That scripture only applies if the person is saved. We don’t know if these folks are saved so we can’t apply it to them…”
I have screenshots from the church’s Facebook page of the pastor baptizing them…so there’s that.
“I bet if you asked all of these people why they liked the posts, they would say they were just being supportive and loving…”
There were some questionable posts that members of the church ‘liked’ on Facebook, and I showed the pastor the screenshots. Some of these people are in prominent serving positions or in leadership. My concern was that there was some confusion going on that needed to be cleared up in the church body, but instead the pastor tried to speak for the people who had made the decision to engage on their personal social media account.
“That person isn’t leading that ministry. You were misinformed.”
Again – screenshots.
“My wife got so angry when I told her that I had to talk to someone else about this issue. She said, “Don’t they know he has a family?”
Ahh….the martyr response. Pastors use their families as a defense for how they shouldn’t be held to account, because they sacrifice so much! I certainly won’t discount the amount of time and effort that a lot of pastors put into their ministry work and I believe that many times they put in more hours than required. I don’t think that this particular discussion was the time for this pastor to play that card. It was clearly a defense to deflect from being held accountable for his failure to address the issue that we were discussing. There are plenty of other professions that require an equal amount of sacrifice. Case in point; I didn’t get a lecture from my doctor about how much time I took away from his family when he had to show up to deliver my babies. He chose to be a doctor and understood the sacrifice that came with it.
“I plan on preaching a sermon in a few weeks that will be pretty controversial. It will probably cause some things to change.”
He went into some detail as to what this sermon would be about and if it actually materialized, it WOULD be something that might invoke some major changes concerning the situation we were speaking to him about. We were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and see if he would actually do it.
He didn’t.
The problem with that ‘promised sermon’ was that the pastor was simply placating us. I really hate being placated. It’s insulting and disrespectful, especially from a pastor. Even if he DID preach that ‘controversial’ sermon, it would have been the cowards way out of dealing with the issue. Passive aggressive spirituality. No thanks.
Reading between the lines
While waiting for that promised sermon to happen, we held out hope that things would self-correct, and that we could get fully connected at church. We started attending a connect group and were even asked to LEAD a group! I found that quite puzzling because we weren’t that well-known….I mean we could have been ANYBODY – what was the vetting process? I now know it was more than likely another strategic move to distract us from the more pressing issue that we had brought up. We were new to the church and did not feel led to lead a group. so we declined. When the promised ‘sermon’ never happened, we quickly determined that we had been hoodwinked and decided to stop attending the church.
No one called us….no one sent us a card…no one sent us a Facebook message or an email…NOTHING.
When you suddenly leave a church and people don’t follow up with you or ask you where you are or why you have stopped attending, there is a reason, and that reason is because they don’t need or want your version of the story. They have already have a story.
I can only speculate what ‘story’ has been told about me and my husband and the reason behind our sudden departure from said church. Our next door neighbor attends this church and has not bothered to ask us why we are no longer attending! One thing I will say on our behalf is that we have spoken to no one and have not disparaged the name of the church or the pastor in any way. I suspect this cannot be said of him. The only explanation that not one single soul has not reached out to us is because they are being told not to.
".......Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
Luke 18:8
IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW
Social media is a heck of an investigative tool.
Most people don’t realize how you can piece together a history out of a few Facebook posts, but that’s exactly what I did, and what I found out brought this whole issue into a much clearer view. As it turns out, the pastor and his family have close personal friendships with the people we had concerns about, which undoubtedly affected his judgment and ability to lead the church properly. The bottom line was this – he didn’t want to do the hard things – the right things – because it would cost him. He didn’t want to risk losing relationships by being truthful.
That is a lack of character.
I contacted another pastor to get his opinion and this was his response:
“In my opinion, a pastor who allows this issue inside the church body to go unchallenged is unfit to lead God’s people…….and it confuses the rest of the church body as they observe their pastor tolerating sin. Such a man lacks the biblical character and moral authority to shepherd others.”
We are frustrated. We live in an area of the country where there is almost LITERALLY a church on every corner. The problem is that there is a severe shortage of men of character. While there is freedom in this country to pursue the practice of religion, what comes with that is the freedom for any man to claim a calling from God and thus speak on His behalf. This is where we have to be careful-diligent-vigilant.
We really really liked this church and were sad to have to walk away. Truth is the definer of a good church though, and this church is not being led by a truth-teller.
If there is a lesson to be learned in all of this – it’s that you MUST observe church leaders and make them prove themselves over time. They must prove themselves worthy of the office they hold. They must uphold the highest level of integrity and biblical standards. We can’t be so naive to blindly trust church leaders anymore.
Anna I’m sorry
I had a similar experience over 15 years ago at Fellowship Church in DFW. I left due to personal issues, nobody contacted me to see how I was doing (to make it worse, one of their members — who had severe mental issues — tried to get me to go along with his illegal plan to do things, when I wouldn’t he sent faxes to my work trying to get me fired). I didn’t realize it at the time, but two things happened beforehand which were signs that I was being not-so-politely asked to leave: 1) I was asked to… Read more »
I guess i understand why you don’t get into the details but the story is also pretty pointless without them. Are we just supposed to trust that your concerns were legitimate ?
John – The omission of the issue that we had with the church was to protect the identity of the church and the pastor. Thanks
Thanks for the post. It makes me think of my own stories from last year. I found that you cannot really know what any pastor is really like until you challenge them on something that is real that they are doing. or not doing, that they strongly disagree with you on. In your case you challenged yours and you see what happened. Something very similar happened with me. My pastor was so very nice that almost everybody loved him. Then he had someone walk into the church claiming to be a Christian but in a very public way doing something… Read more »
I left a church after 16 years and not under the best circumstances, only one person cared to contact me. I still love the Lord and his church but this shallowness stinks. I just don’t trust churches anymore. My new church is better, at least the people seem to care. I would like to one day talk to the former pastor but I don’t think it would go well, he is , in my opinion super protective of the church. Any criticism receives immediate pushback.
Thank you. I’m quite sensitive, at the moment, to the whole “leaving the church” experience. It is not fun, regardless of the circumstances.
Been there and done this…..Was a member of Seacoast Church here in Charleston, SC. Served for 2 services each Sunday (had to sign into a database when we served), went through their 6 month “internship” to be trained for “leadership” roles, set up for Celebrate Recovery, served as service co-ordinator for Celebrate Recovery…..Had two back to back surgeries that left me with such severe lower back pain, I could hardly walk and drive. Was asked repeatedly by the CR pastor when I would be back. Told him that I would not be back until I could move with a minimum… Read more »
Thank you for sharing Dave. It seems you were valuable to them when you had something to offer. I’m sorry they didn’t reach out to you in YOUR time of need. I’m also glad the experience left you wiser but not discouraged, because I do believe there many good churches out there. God bless.
Thank you Anna, and thank you for your blog.
Ok Anna read the whole blog. But you never that I saw said what the issue was ??!
Marcia,
Thank you for your comment – I purposely did not name the issue in order to protect the identities of those involved.