An Innocent Man
How I Was Railroaded Out Of My Own Church
God & Money
On August 1st, I stopped by the office to pick up my
check. I’d spoken to the church’s bookkeeper who said
the check would be ready on thus and such day. I was
going through a terrible time financially because of yet
another pastor who—as many of our pastors tend to—failed
to honor his own agreement whenever it suited him,
whenever he got mad about something, he no longer felt
obligated to keep his word. So this other pastor refused
to pay me for work I’d done, creating a very, very bad
time for me. I’d told Scott about it, and we’d prayed
for that pastor and shared time together, asking God to
intercede in my finances. By the time August rolled
around, I was in real need, and depending largely on my
housing allowance from the church.
Only, there was no check. Scott told the bookkeeper not
to cut it.
This was his insanity. This was the man’s morose,
ridiculous and un-Christ-like Scotticism: his penchant
to use legalistic rules, mostly rules he’d make up on
the spot, to justify being a bastard. Scott apparently
told her not to cut my check because I shouldn’t be
getting a check. I was no longer a co-pastor, so I was
no longer entitled to the small housing allowance the
church was paying me. I would have to submit a new
financial proposal and it would need to be run through
the church’s next quarterly business meeting, be voted
on, and implemented, perhaps sometime in October.
He knew I was hurting. He knew I was suffering. And he
made up this nonsense on the spot, for whatever reason.
Worse, he didn't tell me. He just made up his new Scott
Rule and, knowing I was in need, knowing I'd worked and
worked hard all through the month, just stiffed me.
Without warning, he just let me take the hit. I came in
to see him and said, perplexed, “Scott: I’m doing
exactly—exactly—the same things I was doing when I was
co-pastor. I’m playing the music every Sunday, I’m doing
the power points, I designed the new church sign, I
designed the brochures and business cards—and more. I’m
an important part of the ministerial staff. Why should
there be any difference now?”
And, Scott said, and this is a direct quote, “We weren’t
paying you to do any of those things. We were paying you
to be our pastor, and you quit.”
Well, first of all, I told him, I didn't quit. I was
still there—every single Sunday. Still the church
musician. Still a minister at the church. Still going to
the hospital. Still helping around the church. Still
designing. Still rehearsing. Still praying. Still doing
all the things I'd always done. "Well, what makes any of
those things worth paying for and not, for instance, our
Sunday School teacher?" I told him I never placed a
value on what I do. The reality was that I could spend
more time at the church, helping the church, with the
housing allowance than I would be able to without it. If
I had to take a musician job at another church in order
to meet my needs, for example, that would deprive my
church of music on Sundays.
Second, the church wasn't paying me at all. The church
was providing a housing allowance, which is not, by any
stretch, a salary. The only thing that had changed,
between then and now, was my title. Nothing else had
changed in terms of my job description. If a change
needed to be made in the church's finances, I was fine
with it. But hanging this all on a job title—when
nothing had materially changed in terms of what I was
doing— was petty and disingenuous. At bare minimum, I
should have been informed before the change was made,
not a month after the fact.
Of course, with Scott, it didn’t matter. He launched
into his usually long-winded, dry-mouthed monologue, and
I just gave up. In July, I’d played the music for five
Sundays in a row, rehearsed the praise teams, done all
of the power points, designed a new sign for the church,
re-dressed the church website, run noonday prayer every
week, set up and broke down the equipment, cleaned up
the facility, pulled weeds, climbed 20 feet on a ladder
to pull down and clean clogged air vents and dozens of
other things. I’d worked like a dog in July. And, not
for the money—for the ministry. To further God’s work,
with an ever-diminishing hope that my relationship with
this man might improve.
Scott told me, “Your pastoral stipend ended in June.” I
asked why someone didn’t tell me, and he said, “Someone
should have.” He then went on to blame another co-pastor
for dropping the ball. I told Scott the magazines keep
coming until you cancel the subscription. Were this any
job, any job at all, and I’d worked through July, you’d
have to pay me for July. Scott’s attitude was that those
rules do not apply to the church, and I agreed: the
church, if anything, should perform well above the
ethical standards of the world. If anything, the
church’s conduct should be completely above reproach.
“Scott, you can’t let me work all through July and then
claim to have stopped paying me in June.”
It was like talking to a brick.
Scott’s solution was to use his own pastoral stipend to
provide my July housing allowance. Ordinarily, this
would have been a gracious and Christ-like gesture, were
it not for the fact of (1) the church’s unethical
conduct in cutting me off without telling me and (2)
Scott being the one who caused this mess in the first
place. In that light, his gesture seemed smarmy and
manipulative. It was what bullies do: get you to thank
them for not beating you up and taking your lunch. It
was a slimy gesture, the orchestrations of a pimp,
designed to make me feel like I am nothing and he is the
generous and benevolent high muck-a-muck granting me
dispensation. It was Scott humiliating me for the sake
of humiliating me, perhaps an attempt to break me and to
finally put me in my place.
And, it was the moment I realized this man was in
serious trouble. He had wandered off, gone astray and is
lost. Saddest of all: the church is so personally loyal
to him, they cannot see, in any objective fashion, that
the reason the church is not growing is because of him.
In retrospect, I now realize Scott was a bully of
classic proportions, something everyone could see but
him. The saddest part about bullies is, the church
developed a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, where everybody
knows what a control freak Scott is but nobody is
willing to engage him about it. Everybody could see
Scott was running the other pastors away, but they all
decided to have a kind of collective psychosis where
Scott would twist everything into unlikely scenarios
where people who disagreed with him weren’t spiritual
and were liars and thieves. And the church routinely
bought it.
Over time, Scott became exactly the kind of
mean-spirited, hard-headed arrogant pastor he and I both
despise. The kind of man Scott ordinarily wouldn’t even
eat lunch with. Right before my eyes, the man became a
lunatic, full of himself, lost. Always accusing, always
demanding, and always ready to destroy others in order
to protect himself and his ego. I don’t pretend to
understand why Scott first recruited me to this church
and then subsequently treated me like dirt, but he did.
By any reasonable objective standard, Scott mistreated
and abused our relationship, broke his word repeatedly,
and, ultimately, pushed me out of the church. The only
people who don’t think so are Scott himself, and the
hypnotized folk who continue to be loyal to him no
matter how ridiculous the man becomes.
It seemed obvious to me and to others that Scott wanted
me to leave. That he was either deliberately or
passive-aggressively pushing me away. Which is why all
the drama and character assassination—fueled by Scott
after I left—seems so puzzling. My exit seemed
preordained, it seemed to be what he wanted. Why then,
after I did what he clearly wanted me to do, did he
apparently set out to destroy me?
I pray for him daily. I do. I am deeply concerned about
him, about his soul. I am deeply concerned for the souls
of those who remain loyal to him. These people have to
see the revolving door at that church, have to know it
is Scott himself who continues to run people off. They
see the pattern, they know it’s him, and they live in
denial about the entire thing. They buy whatever
ridiculous, extreme story Scott invents to justify his
behavior, and they turn on those of us who follow God’s
direction and leave that place.
Scott’s most basic problem is he has surrounded himself
with enablers, with people who feed his ego and allow
his dysfunction to continue unchallenged. He is looped
in by people so loyal to him that he can set the place
on fire and somehow justify it to their satisfaction.
Talking to Scott is an utter waste of time because he is
the most closed man, the most closed human being, I have
ever met. He is absolutely unavailable emotionally, has
absolutely no ability to objectively evaluate his own
behavior. He is lost. A lost soul. I weep for him, my
heart breaks for him, but I will no longer stand around
applauding his lunacy or pretending the emperor is not,
in fact, naked.
When you think your pastor is in trouble, when you think
your pastor’s gone off the rails and when you see people
being mistreated, when you see people coming and going
through a revolving door, when you know your pastor is
being irrational: be a friend to him and stand up. It
will probably be a waste of time, but stand up. You’ll
probably be shunned and spat on by the rest of the
brainwashed church folk, but stand up. You think you’re
being loyal, you think you’re doing your pastor a favor
by standing beside him when he’s wrong, when he’s
unreasonable.
But, when you see, with your own two eyes, the pastor
being a lunatic, and you say and do nothing about it,
you are just as guilty of the blood as he is. You are,
in fact, guilty of his blood as well, guilty of allowing
him to descend into self and apostasy. When you cower
and quake, afraid to challenge him, you are, in fact,
letting him down. As much as it is the pastor’s
responsibility to watch over you, it is your
responsibility to watch over the pastor.
Even if that means being run out of your own church.
Time To Go
It was
time to go. During the following Sunday’s
service, Scott got up and told the congregation he
intended to pastor there for the next 40 years. That,
unless God called him elsewhere, it was his plan to be
there, at the church, for at least 40 years. I was
sitting in a back pew, listening intently to this guy.
Wondering what I was doing there. And God said to me,
clear as a bell, “Priest: can you serve under this man
for the next 40 years?” And I said, “No, Lord.” And God
said, “Then, what are you doing there?”
On August 5th, 2007, the Lord God Jesus Christ released
me from that church and from that man. I packed up my
gear and went home. I left in the manner the pastor
insisted upon and the church approved at their May
business meeting—leaving without notice. It was what
he’d insisted on. I didn’t say a word, I didn’t
criticize him, I didn’t try and split the church, I
didn’t create a ruckus.
I just went home.
Which was when things got really bad.
Christopher J. Priest
2 December 2007
editor@praisenet.org
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