An Innocent Man
How I Was Railroaded Out Of My Own Church
A Church With No Name
It’s important to note that I’ve never once mentioned
the name of my church here on the PraiseNet. There are a
couple of reasons for that, first and foremost to
protect the privacy of my church family and my own
privacy—whatever’s left of it—as well. My convictions,
loudly proclaimed here, tend to stir up nests of
hornets. I’d rather not subject my church family to
reprisals from narrow-minded “Christians” taking out
their angst on people who had nothing to do with it.
The other reason I’ve never mentioned my church here is
because Scott, the senior pastor (whose name is of course not actually
"Scott"), did not support this
ministry. He didn’t support it mainly because Scott is
an isolationist pastor of mixed race who tends to fellowship only with
white churches. He’ll deny that all day long, but the
truth of the record is our church, led by Scott, hardly
fellowshipped with any churches at all. In the year I was
there, we didn't visit even one other church or receive
even one church in our sanctuary, and my repeated efforts to reintroduce
our church to the larger black church community met with stonewalling
and derision from my "partner" in the pastorate. There was a Latino
church sharing our building. I mean, they were already
there, and we didn't even fellowship with them. One
local ministry came to baptize at our church, which
Scott graciously permitted. But our church didn't hang
around to fellowship with them—we went home. we just
walked out before they got there. We fellowshipped with
absolutely no one. Associating with other churches,
black churches most especially, was simply not a priority for Scott.
When dating a single mom, the common warning from the
woman is that if you get involved with her, you are
inevitably getting involved with her child. You cannot
separate the two, they are a package deal. Well, the
PraiseNet and myself are indeed a package deal. It is
ridiculous for anyone to welcome me into their church
leadership and try to ignore this ministry that is so
much a part of who I am. It is also wrong of me to join
any ministry that does not embrace this one. So both
Scott and I made mistakes, from the beginning, by trying
to cordon off important pieces of ourselves. Scott’s
aversion to this ministry was a huge flag on the play.
But, like many dating couples, I saw what I wanted to
see. I wanted to be part of that family, of that body.
And I just put up a wall between them and this ministry,
which was ultimately an unworkable situation. Whatever
body you are a part of should embrace the whole you—not
just the pieces they want to use.
In the summer of 2006 I began work on a website for the
church, a site that eventually became two sites—one for
the church and one for the church-sponsored literacy
ministry. My role as co-pastor would begin months later
and would include pastoring the church’s
communications—including the newsletter and web
ministry. But Scott gagged me at every opportunity:
every time I’d write or post anything even remotely
controversial, anything with even the smallest amount of
bite to it—here Scott comes with his objections. Scott
rounded the edge off of everything I did, interfering
with the web site, which was my area to lead. The fact
was, Scott simply never submitted to my leadership ever.
He was Fidel Castro and I was pastor of Things Scott
Didn’t Care About. But Scott cared about everything and,
despite his earnest declarations of parity between the
leadership, he meddled with everything and routinely
overrode every decision anyone made.
So, there I was, a leading vocal critic of the black
church, marooned at this place where this man would
routinely strip my words of meaning. I could not preach
my convictions. I could not teach my convictions. I
could not write my convictions in the church newsletter,
so I didn’t bother submitting anything to it, since the
only thing Scott would approve for press was watered
down, rounded-edge oatmeal. Mind you, I was the pastor
who was supposed to have approval over such things, but
Scott routinely overrode me and routinely threatened to
bring the matter before the entire pastors group if I
didn’t do what he wanted.
It was Scott’s practice to treat his church members like
children—carefully controlling what information they
could and could not have. When James Dobson’s
distributed pamphlets with instructions to all
Christians to defeat a same-sex ballot initiative, that
information—which included illustrations of ballots and
where to check which box— was made freely available to
the church. I objected to that. I object to the church
telling people how to vote. Certainly, we should tell
people to vote, but what they vote and how they vote
should be their decision, not ours. Moreover, by
allowing campaign and ballot materials in the church, it
seemed unfair to present one side of an initiative
without presenting both sides. Scott, of course,
objected. He told me he is under no obligation to be
fair. He had no obligation to present both sides, there
is no equal time rule. He has a duty to protect his
flock. I argued there’s a big difference between
information and propaganda. I told Scott, if our truth
is so weak that it can’t stand scrutiny, then it is not
truth at all. Let’s hear both sides of the argument,
then let’s put those arguments up against God’s truth
and be led by that. The Focus On The family stuff was
allowed in, no other material was allowed. Scott did,
however, ultimately ask that all such material be
cleared by the pastors before being distributed at the
church. Which was ironic considering this was my area to
lead: I should have been the party who approved or
disapproved such things.
So far as I am aware the only perfect man to ever walk
the face of the earth was Jesus of Nazareth. Beyond Him,
there are only flawed human beings. Pastors: you don’t
have to be perfect. You can admit you made a mistake.
You can be human. They won’t toss you out. They won’t
lose faith in you. If anything, the more open and honest
you are about your own shortcomings, the more people
will tend to respect you and trust you.
It’s what I liked most about Tom Hanks’ performance in
Saving Private Ryan: his Army captain’s humanity. The
guy was a school teacher. He didn’t pretend to have all
the answers. He let his men see his doubt, his
uncertainty. He didn’t debate the big issues. All he
knew was, accomplishing his mission meant he could go
home, and that was good enough for him. Demonstrating
that humanity ultimately won him the loyalty and trust
of his men.
Instead, in our tradition, our pastors wear their
insecurity on their sleeve. Only deeply insecure men
have to talk and talk until their mouth goes white from
spittle, interrupting and dismissing any input from
whomever they are having a conversation with. That’s
what gamblers call a “tell,” an involuntary twitch that
reveals something about a person. The more arrogant a
pastor is, the more insecure he ultimately is.
Arrogance is not a byproduct of the indwelling of the
Holy Spirit. Arrogance is about self. Arrogance is about
fear. Anyone afraid to let you into a conversation is
fearful of what you have to say. Anyone so hell-bent on
dismissing your opinion is simply terrified that his own
opinion can’t be trusted. Anyone so absolutely sure that
he is right and you are wrong is simply covering for his
own deep-rooted insecurity. These are men who should not
be leading churches, and yet, in my experience, these
are exactly the kinds of men churches gravitate toward
and elevate: the arrogant, dismissive, mean boss. This
is about church folk submitting to their natural desire
for strong leadership rather than seeking a man who
emulates the personal example of Jesus Christ.
Thirty Days
I kept my
resignation in my desk for two months,
finally submitting my 30-day notice at the church’s
quarterly business meeting in May of 2007. I informed
the senior pastor days ahead of the meeting that I would
be submitting my resignation. Days before the church
meeting, the senior pastor met with the other co-pastors
behind my back, having a secret meeting about me and
planning what became his intervention at the church
business meeting. He did not inform me of his meeting
nor did he advise me of what these men had decided about
me.
At the meeting, I tendered my 30-day notice, and the
church body accepted it. Subsequently, two other pastors
rose and lodged an objection to my terms, insisting I
step down as co-pastor immediately. They criticized my
giving notice as being selfish and accused me of forcing
the church to undergo a painful transition over the next
month (actually, by then there was only three weeks left
in the month). This stirred up confusion among the
church body, and I was asked to step out of the meeting
while they attempted to resolve things. The fussing went
on for about an hour before they agreed to table the
motion until the following week so somebody could get a
copy of the church bylaws and see what they should do:
there was no precedent for one pastor telling another
pastor when he must step down. Once the church body
accepted my terms, there was really no way the other
pastors could force me to do anything. After all, I was
just as much a pastor as any of them were.
However, the confusion and anger among the church body
was, to me, unacceptable. This is not what Christ would
have wanted, it wasn’t what I wanted. Had these men not
met behind my back but had simply told me what they
wanted, I would have submitted to their leadership and
stepped down immediately. There would not have been a
fuss because we would have stood united in purpose and
agreement, presenting a united front to the membership.
Instead, the intent there seemed to be to cause a fuss,
so the senior pastor (who was absent) could then say,
“See? Priest is stirring up all this trouble!” Which was
not true. People were sad that I was leaving, but there
was no trouble, no confusion, no fuss until the senior
pastor started it by sending his guys in to lodge their
objections.
The bottom line: sowing discord among the brethren is a
heinous crime, one God explicitly hates [Proverbs 6]. My
goal then shifted from what I wanted to finding the best
avenue to quash the growing discord among the folks at
the church. They were my first priority. So I called the
senior pastor and agreed to his terms. This was our
pattern: everything I did had to, absolutely, always be
done on his terms. As senior pastor, he coordinated the
efforts of the five pastors there, but he was not in any
way my “superior;” we were all pastors. But his
influence was prominent, and everything had to, bottom
line, be done his way, even my leaving. No 30-day
notice, I must step down now.
To ease the confusion and quiet the problems there at
the church, I agreed to keep my membership there, to
stay on as an associate minister, performing precisely
the same tasks I’d always performed at the church. Since
Scott could not accept me as his co-pastor, since Scott
had behaved, from day one, like he was my overlord, I
figured our relationship would improve once I officially
became his subordinate rather than his peer.
I was wrong. Now Scott had a license to oppress me and
give me grief. As I stepped away from the pastorate,
Scott stepped in to fill that vacuum with More Scott. No
longer even pretending to be available to input and
ideas, the church became The Scott Show as Scott surged
forward, much like our president, continuing the same
policies he’d used for years before any of the
co-pastors arrived. Policies that had failed to grow the
church or make significant progress there. Scott’s new
vision was More Of The Old Vision as he took more and
more control of things, implementing even more of his
Scotticisms, completely unaware or, perhaps, unwilling
to admit that he was simply doing polished-up versions
of what he’d always done. That he was amping up the same
old policies that had failed to accomplish his goals for
the church.
I grew silent, becoming, essentially, the church
musician. Which is what I had explicitly told Scott I
did not want to become. When I first arrived at that
church, I told him, the reason I’d never considered his
church before was because his church did not have a
musician. In this town, anybody sober who can sit up
straight and play the piano has been pressed into
service as a church musician. I hate being a church
musician. It’s just too much work and it’s not my
calling. And, yet, there I was, over in the corner, on
the piano. Scott removed me from the preaching schedule.
Scott avoided assigning anything to me that was even
remotely pastoral in nature. I was stripped of any real
responsibility there at the church other than playing
the music.
As a graphic and web designer, I’d developed a number of
communications tools for the church, including two
websites—one for the church and one for the church’s
literacy ministry. So I was still doing those tasks. I
was supposed to manage all church communications,
including all design—signage, flyers, etc. But, by that
time, the church staff routinely ignored me, crafting
their own signs and flyers and so forth, which looked
like, well, looked like they did it themselves—which was
precisely what I was there to prevent. My role was to
keep all of that design stuff uniform and keep a
professional face on the ministry. Instead, every week,
I’d see these signs and banners and flyers and things
that looked like some kid designed them. My concerns
were routinely dismissed by the office staff who all but
rolled heir eyes when I asked that all of this stuff get
run past me before it was printed.
This was, I now realize, a consequence of Scott's own
public disregard for me and for my role in his ministry.
Absolutely no one was going to the website or using it
for any real purpose. Well, other than Scott, who would
post the occasional Scotticism to the blog. No one was
submitting information or articles for the newsletter.
The praise team had never fully adjusted themselves to
me, and routinely did not show up for rehearsal. In late
May, they chose to start rehearsing on Saturdays—which I
told them, up front, was unacceptable. Churches should
stop putting things on Saturdays. A church’s purpose is
to keep families together, not rip them apart. Families
are ripped apart all week long between school and work
and other activities. Come Sunday, they are dragged down
to the church house where—yep—they are split up into
youth and adults and so forth. Saturdays are usually the
only day most families have that they can possibly spend
time together. And, in our tradition, we run folk six,
seven days a week, churches scheduling and scheduling
because they’re looking at open days on a calendar
rather than looking with spiritual eyes about how to
strengthen marriages and families. Saturdays are a no
with me. But, there they were, leaving their husbands
and wives and kids and practicing on Saturdays to CD
tracks—exactly what they were doing before I got there.
Scott was dismissing me altogether as irrelevant and
certainly unimportant. None of my gifts were being put
to effective use. and I wondered, “Lord, why am I here?”
