I recently watched a TV show where a little girl found her single mother right after she had been murdered. The case went unsolved for years.
Ten years later, that girl had become a young woman, but she still wanted to know … indeed, had to know … who killed her mother and why.
The show explored this idea: Is it better just to accept a tragedy and move on? Or can a person only move on when they know who and what caused the tragedy?
One of the great tragedies in Christian circles is the high number of pastors who are forced out of their churches every month.
It’s safe to say that at least 1,500 pastors leave their positions every thirty days … hundreds of them due to forced termination.
In a minority of cases, the pastor did or said something to accelerate his exit, such as embezzling funds … committing sexual immorality … using a controlling, dictatorial style … or engaging in a moral or criminal felony.
But in the vast majority of cases, a faction inside the church conspires to target their pastor by plotting together, manufacturing charges, circumventing procedures, and then forcing his resignation.
After a pastor has undergone such a painful experience, how much time and effort should he invest in finding out who wanted him out, and why?
_______________
There is no easy answer to this question. Maybe this story can shed some light on the options.
Three decades ago, I had a pastor friend who was forced out of his church after nine years. A faction in the church falsely accused his teenage daughter of doing something wrong. The faction insisted the girl apologize in front of the entire church, and the pastor resigned to protect her.
As was my custom, I called him immediately and listened to his story.
I asked him one day, “How many pastors from our district have contacted you?” (There were 85 churches in our district.) He told me, “You’re the only one.”
A year after he left, we met for lunch. He knew the name of the person most responsible for his departure … someone well-connected inside the denomination … but he did not know why he was targeted.
I gave him a book on forced termination … one of the few available in the 1980s … and after reading it, my friend told me, “Now I know why they got rid of me.”
After that, I lost contact with him.
Years later, I opened up the San Francisco Chronicle one morning and there was a front page story about my friend. He had left the pastorate behind and pioneered a new approach to ministering to patients with HIV.
I was proud of him … not only for overcoming the pain from his past, but for directing his energies toward helping others.
_______________
Let me draw four lessons from my friend’s story:
First, most pastors have a good idea of the key players involved in their departure.
The pastor usually knows the board members … staffers … key leaders … and regular churchgoers who don’t like him.
The pastor may not know how their spouses or children are involved … nor the exact number of people who want to see him gone.
But most pastors know the identities of most of the individuals who are out to get him. (And if he doesn’t, his wife surely knows.)
In my friend’s case, he told me the name of the man who was most behind his departure. I have always remembered it.
In some cases, that’s all the pastor needs to know. In other cases, the pastor needs to know more … a lot more.
_______________
When I was forced out of my position as senior pastor nine years ago, I knew the board members were involved, and within two weeks, I discovered that the associate pastor and the previous pastor also played a part in my professional execution.
Over time, friends inside the church informed me of specific individuals who either joined the plot or applauded my departure.
I needed to know the names of those people so I could unfriend them on Facebook … purge them from my mailing list … or avoid them if and when I returned to the city where the church was located.
As it was, I still made some mistakes in trusting people I shouldn’t have trusted.
Some pastors might say, “Since I can never know the names of everyone who was against me, I’ll just cut off all contact with everyone from that church.”
But I chose not to do that. I had developed friendships over my 10 1/2 year tenure that I wanted to keep, so I maintained a small level of contact with specific individuals.
The most supportive group turned out to be the people who had once attended the church but had moved away before the fireworks began. Most didn’t even want to know who pushed me out or why.
In fact, my wife was contacted by one of those individuals this past week, and he asked her to become a key leader in a new missions organization.
But I think it’s important that a pastor identify the individuals most responsible for pushing him out of ministry … not to reconcile (almost nobody who conspires to get rid of a pastor wants reconciliation) but to avoid them socially … forgive them unilaterally … and relinquish them into the hands of a just God.
Second, most pastors don’t know the real reasons for their departure.
In the case of my pastor friend, I suspect that some in the church thought he was too rigid in his convictions. He was very outspoken about his likes and dislikes, and even made me wince one time when he visited our church and criticized the Christmas tree in the back!
But I suspect that his unwillingness to play games may have been a contributing factor in his departure. My friend made his decisions on the basis of righteousness, not politics or denominational priorities.
In many cases, the real reason why a faction goes after a pastor is that they just don’t like him. He’s not “our kind of guy.”
But another reason why the faction doesn’t like their pastor is that they can’t control him.
After reading the book I gave him, my friend thought he knew why the faction targeted him … and maybe he was right.
But a lot of pastors never find out … and I think they should.
What if you keep repeating the same mistakes in church after church?
_______________
Maybe the film Murder on the Orient Express can help us understand the “why question” better. (I’ve seen three versions of the story on film, and each one is captivating.)
The famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is traveling on the Orient Express train when a snow storm blocks the train’s progress. During the night, a shadowy passenger is stabbed to death.
Who killed him … and why?
In the end, Poirot discovers that nine different people put a knife into the passenger’s body … each for a different reason.
That’s often what happens when a pastor is forced from office. The plotters may circulate various public reasons why the pastor has to go, but they don’t share those reasons with others because it might make them look petty or unspiritual.
For example, I remain convinced that hatred and personal revenge are behind more terminations than we could ever imagine, but no self-respecting believer is going to admit those sins.
So there are public, group reasons for eliminating the pastor … and a host of more private, individualistic reasons.
In my case, there were four main parties:
*the church board
*the associate pastor
*a faction of disgruntled churchgoers … including some charter members
*my predecessor and his Fan Club
I might also add a fifth group, composed of a few former staffers and people who had left the church.
I believe that each party had a different motive for taking me out. The associate pastor’s complaints were not those of my predecessor, and his complaints were different than those of the board.
It’s always amazed me … you can have a church of a thousand people, but if two people don’t like their pastor, they will inevitably find each other.
But disgruntled leaders find each other much more quickly.
Third, most leaders never tell their pastor why they think he should leave.
As I wrote above, my pastor friend did not know the real reason why some people wanted him to leave the church.
Why not?
Because church leaders – specifically the church board – never told him to his face.
They wimped out.
This is a huge problem in our churches.
When people are upset with their pastor, they don’t tell him anything directly.
They tell their friends instead.
As some churchgoers pool their complaints, they get organized … hold secret meetings … create a list of charges against their pastor … and rope in sympathetic board members or staff members.
The pastor is arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced … usually without his knowledge.
And then one day, the board chairman tells the pastor that he has a choice: resign with a small severance package or be fired without any severance at all.
And all the while, no one has the guts to tell the pastor what he was doing wrong or how he could correct his behavior.
Maybe it’s just human nature for people to criticize an authority figure secretively, but it’s cowardly for people to create charges against their pastor without ever telling him what they’re unhappy about.
After all, pastors can’t read minds … so how can they change their behavior if they don’t know what they’re doing wrong?
_______________
Over the years, I had to fire several staff members. I hated doing it, and viewed it as a failure on my part, believing that I didn’t hire them wisely or manage them effectively.
I hired one staff member, and a few weeks later, he disappeared for two weeks without telling me a thing. When he returned, we sat down for a chat, and he told me he had every right to go on vacation without my approval or knowledge.
After I fired him, a leader asked me, “What took you so long?”
But when I fired someone, they knew exactly why I let them go. They may not have agreed with me, but they didn’t have to guess why they were no longer employed.
In my case, the official board never formally sat down with me and expressed any concerns about my character or my ministry to my face.
They told my predecessor.
They told the associate pastor.
They told their wives.
They told their friends.
They told key leaders.
They just never told me.
And when the board fired my wife, they never spoke with her, either … telling me to go home and tell her that she had been terminated. (I told them that two of them needed to meet with her, and later that week, they did. But shouldn’t they have done that on their own?)
My wife and I just finished watching the fourth season of Line of Duty … a superb police procedural show from Great Britain about a police unit dedicated to rooting out corruption among law enforcement officers.
When the AC-12 unit has compiled enough evidence, they call in the officer in question, present him or her with all their evidence … and let the person respond after each piece of evidence is presented (including surveillance photos).
That’s the way it should be in our churches … but most of the time, things aren’t done that way.
The pastor’s detractors take shortcuts instead … ignoring their church’s governing documents, avoiding Scripture, and working around labor law.
The single biggest mistake the board made with both my wife and me is that they did not bring their concerns to us personally.
We could easily have rebutted most of them … and if we were wrong, we would have admitted it and asked for forgiveness.
But when you start with a desired outcome, you’ll circumvent a fair and just process … every time.
And by doing so, you violate the rights of the accused to alleviate your own anxiety.
Finally, most pastors wish they could reconcile with their accusers.
A new pastor succeeded my pastor friend in the late 1980s. I shared several meals with him.
I don’t remember the details, but the new pastor invited my friend back to the church. Some in the church apologized for the way they had treated my friend, and asked for his forgiveness, which included the major power broker.
This only happened because the new pastor discerned that unless he dealt with the church’s past, they might not have much of a future.
I was reminded this past week of another situation where a megachurch pastor was accused of having an affair with a woman in his church based on circumstantial evidence. (This pastor taught a theology class I had in college and was considered a great communicator.)
When a new pastor came to that church – and he was someone I had heard preach – he eventually invited the pastor back and the church reconciled with him.
How I wish that would happen every time an innocent pastor is forced to leave a church! But I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard of this being done.
If the church board had just talked to me honestly before making drastic decisions, we could have worked things out. I might have taken time off, or looked for another ministry, or renegotiated my job description, or shuffled the staff around.
But they never talked to me directly, talking to others instead. They triangled their pastor by siding with his opponents.
Reconciliation only works when both parties care more about winning over the other party than winning at all costs.
_______________
Since the board never discussed their concerns with me directly, I had to use alternate methods to find out the real story.
And if I didn’t find out, I would be forced to guess for the rest of my life why I was pushed out … and such speculation often ends in torture and misery.
So I discreetly talked to people inside and outside the church. I wrote down everything that seemed relevant.
I consulted with:
*church friends
*staff members
*former board members
*influential people inside the church
*church consultants
*seminary professors
*Christian counselors
*a Christian conciliation expert
*other pastors
To this day, I believe that I made minor mistakes in my ministry … the same kind everyone makes … but that I did not commit any major offense against the Lord, the church, or anyone else.
I had to put the puzzle pieces together to:
*accurately assess responsibility
*avoid making similar mistakes in the future
*try and eliminate the cloud over my last ministry
*help my wife to heal
*see if I had any future in Christ’s church
*be able to sleep at night
_______________
Could my pastor friend have succeeded in his hospital ministry if his former church had never called him back for a time of reconciliation?
Maybe.
But what a blessing it was for him to return to his former church, listen to the apologies of those who tried to harm him, and grant forgiveness to the entire church body.
As some people write on Twitter, “More of this please!”
Yes, Lord … more of this … please.
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Restoring Kingdom Builders 
Should a Pastor Know Why He Was Terminated?
November 30, 2018 by Jim Meyer
I recently watched a TV show where a little girl found her single mother right after she had been murdered. The case went unsolved for years.
Ten years later, that girl had become a young woman, but she still wanted to know … indeed, had to know … who killed her mother and why.
The show explored this idea: Is it better just to accept a tragedy and move on? Or can a person only move on when they know who and what caused the tragedy?
One of the great tragedies in Christian circles is the high number of pastors who are forced out of their churches every month.
It’s safe to say that at least 1,500 pastors leave their positions every thirty days … hundreds of them due to forced termination.
In a minority of cases, the pastor did or said something to accelerate his exit, such as embezzling funds … committing sexual immorality … using a controlling, dictatorial style … or engaging in a moral or criminal felony.
But in the vast majority of cases, a faction inside the church conspires to target their pastor by plotting together, manufacturing charges, circumventing procedures, and then forcing his resignation.
After a pastor has undergone such a painful experience, how much time and effort should he invest in finding out who wanted him out, and why?
_______________
There is no easy answer to this question. Maybe this story can shed some light on the options.
Three decades ago, I had a pastor friend who was forced out of his church after nine years. A faction in the church falsely accused his teenage daughter of doing something wrong. The faction insisted the girl apologize in front of the entire church, and the pastor resigned to protect her.
As was my custom, I called him immediately and listened to his story.
I asked him one day, “How many pastors from our district have contacted you?” (There were 85 churches in our district.) He told me, “You’re the only one.”
A year after he left, we met for lunch. He knew the name of the person most responsible for his departure … someone well-connected inside the denomination … but he did not know why he was targeted.
I gave him a book on forced termination … one of the few available in the 1980s … and after reading it, my friend told me, “Now I know why they got rid of me.”
After that, I lost contact with him.
Years later, I opened up the San Francisco Chronicle one morning and there was a front page story about my friend. He had left the pastorate behind and pioneered a new approach to ministering to patients with HIV.
I was proud of him … not only for overcoming the pain from his past, but for directing his energies toward helping others.
_______________
Let me draw four lessons from my friend’s story:
First, most pastors have a good idea of the key players involved in their departure.
The pastor usually knows the board members … staffers … key leaders … and regular churchgoers who don’t like him.
The pastor may not know how their spouses or children are involved … nor the exact number of people who want to see him gone.
But most pastors know the identities of most of the individuals who are out to get him. (And if he doesn’t, his wife surely knows.)
In my friend’s case, he told me the name of the man who was most behind his departure. I have always remembered it.
In some cases, that’s all the pastor needs to know. In other cases, the pastor needs to know more … a lot more.
_______________
When I was forced out of my position as senior pastor nine years ago, I knew the board members were involved, and within two weeks, I discovered that the associate pastor and the previous pastor also played a part in my professional execution.
Over time, friends inside the church informed me of specific individuals who either joined the plot or applauded my departure.
I needed to know the names of those people so I could unfriend them on Facebook … purge them from my mailing list … or avoid them if and when I returned to the city where the church was located.
As it was, I still made some mistakes in trusting people I shouldn’t have trusted.
Some pastors might say, “Since I can never know the names of everyone who was against me, I’ll just cut off all contact with everyone from that church.”
But I chose not to do that. I had developed friendships over my 10 1/2 year tenure that I wanted to keep, so I maintained a small level of contact with specific individuals.
The most supportive group turned out to be the people who had once attended the church but had moved away before the fireworks began. Most didn’t even want to know who pushed me out or why.
In fact, my wife was contacted by one of those individuals this past week, and he asked her to become a key leader in a new missions organization.
But I think it’s important that a pastor identify the individuals most responsible for pushing him out of ministry … not to reconcile (almost nobody who conspires to get rid of a pastor wants reconciliation) but to avoid them socially … forgive them unilaterally … and relinquish them into the hands of a just God.
Second, most pastors don’t know the real reasons for their departure.
In the case of my pastor friend, I suspect that some in the church thought he was too rigid in his convictions. He was very outspoken about his likes and dislikes, and even made me wince one time when he visited our church and criticized the Christmas tree in the back!
But I suspect that his unwillingness to play games may have been a contributing factor in his departure. My friend made his decisions on the basis of righteousness, not politics or denominational priorities.
In many cases, the real reason why a faction goes after a pastor is that they just don’t like him. He’s not “our kind of guy.”
But another reason why the faction doesn’t like their pastor is that they can’t control him.
After reading the book I gave him, my friend thought he knew why the faction targeted him … and maybe he was right.
But a lot of pastors never find out … and I think they should.
What if you keep repeating the same mistakes in church after church?
_______________
Maybe the film Murder on the Orient Express can help us understand the “why question” better. (I’ve seen three versions of the story on film, and each one is captivating.)
The famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is traveling on the Orient Express train when a snow storm blocks the train’s progress. During the night, a shadowy passenger is stabbed to death.
Who killed him … and why?
In the end, Poirot discovers that nine different people put a knife into the passenger’s body … each for a different reason.
That’s often what happens when a pastor is forced from office. The plotters may circulate various public reasons why the pastor has to go, but they don’t share those reasons with others because it might make them look petty or unspiritual.
For example, I remain convinced that hatred and personal revenge are behind more terminations than we could ever imagine, but no self-respecting believer is going to admit those sins.
So there are public, group reasons for eliminating the pastor … and a host of more private, individualistic reasons.
In my case, there were four main parties:
*the church board
*the associate pastor
*a faction of disgruntled churchgoers … including some charter members
*my predecessor and his Fan Club
I might also add a fifth group, composed of a few former staffers and people who had left the church.
I believe that each party had a different motive for taking me out. The associate pastor’s complaints were not those of my predecessor, and his complaints were different than those of the board.
It’s always amazed me … you can have a church of a thousand people, but if two people don’t like their pastor, they will inevitably find each other.
But disgruntled leaders find each other much more quickly.
Third, most leaders never tell their pastor why they think he should leave.
As I wrote above, my pastor friend did not know the real reason why some people wanted him to leave the church.
Why not?
Because church leaders – specifically the church board – never told him to his face.
They wimped out.
This is a huge problem in our churches.
When people are upset with their pastor, they don’t tell him anything directly.
They tell their friends instead.
As some churchgoers pool their complaints, they get organized … hold secret meetings … create a list of charges against their pastor … and rope in sympathetic board members or staff members.
The pastor is arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced … usually without his knowledge.
And then one day, the board chairman tells the pastor that he has a choice: resign with a small severance package or be fired without any severance at all.
And all the while, no one has the guts to tell the pastor what he was doing wrong or how he could correct his behavior.
Maybe it’s just human nature for people to criticize an authority figure secretively, but it’s cowardly for people to create charges against their pastor without ever telling him what they’re unhappy about.
After all, pastors can’t read minds … so how can they change their behavior if they don’t know what they’re doing wrong?
_______________
Over the years, I had to fire several staff members. I hated doing it, and viewed it as a failure on my part, believing that I didn’t hire them wisely or manage them effectively.
I hired one staff member, and a few weeks later, he disappeared for two weeks without telling me a thing. When he returned, we sat down for a chat, and he told me he had every right to go on vacation without my approval or knowledge.
After I fired him, a leader asked me, “What took you so long?”
But when I fired someone, they knew exactly why I let them go. They may not have agreed with me, but they didn’t have to guess why they were no longer employed.
In my case, the official board never formally sat down with me and expressed any concerns about my character or my ministry to my face.
They told my predecessor.
They told the associate pastor.
They told their wives.
They told their friends.
They told key leaders.
They just never told me.
And when the board fired my wife, they never spoke with her, either … telling me to go home and tell her that she had been terminated. (I told them that two of them needed to meet with her, and later that week, they did. But shouldn’t they have done that on their own?)
My wife and I just finished watching the fourth season of Line of Duty … a superb police procedural show from Great Britain about a police unit dedicated to rooting out corruption among law enforcement officers.
When the AC-12 unit has compiled enough evidence, they call in the officer in question, present him or her with all their evidence … and let the person respond after each piece of evidence is presented (including surveillance photos).
That’s the way it should be in our churches … but most of the time, things aren’t done that way.
The pastor’s detractors take shortcuts instead … ignoring their church’s governing documents, avoiding Scripture, and working around labor law.
The single biggest mistake the board made with both my wife and me is that they did not bring their concerns to us personally.
We could easily have rebutted most of them … and if we were wrong, we would have admitted it and asked for forgiveness.
But when you start with a desired outcome, you’ll circumvent a fair and just process … every time.
And by doing so, you violate the rights of the accused to alleviate your own anxiety.
Finally, most pastors wish they could reconcile with their accusers.
A new pastor succeeded my pastor friend in the late 1980s. I shared several meals with him.
I don’t remember the details, but the new pastor invited my friend back to the church. Some in the church apologized for the way they had treated my friend, and asked for his forgiveness, which included the major power broker.
This only happened because the new pastor discerned that unless he dealt with the church’s past, they might not have much of a future.
I was reminded this past week of another situation where a megachurch pastor was accused of having an affair with a woman in his church based on circumstantial evidence. (This pastor taught a theology class I had in college and was considered a great communicator.)
When a new pastor came to that church – and he was someone I had heard preach – he eventually invited the pastor back and the church reconciled with him.
How I wish that would happen every time an innocent pastor is forced to leave a church! But I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard of this being done.
If the church board had just talked to me honestly before making drastic decisions, we could have worked things out. I might have taken time off, or looked for another ministry, or renegotiated my job description, or shuffled the staff around.
But they never talked to me directly, talking to others instead. They triangled their pastor by siding with his opponents.
Reconciliation only works when both parties care more about winning over the other party than winning at all costs.
_______________
Since the board never discussed their concerns with me directly, I had to use alternate methods to find out the real story.
And if I didn’t find out, I would be forced to guess for the rest of my life why I was pushed out … and such speculation often ends in torture and misery.
So I discreetly talked to people inside and outside the church. I wrote down everything that seemed relevant.
I consulted with:
*church friends
*staff members
*former board members
*influential people inside the church
*church consultants
*seminary professors
*Christian counselors
*a Christian conciliation expert
*other pastors
To this day, I believe that I made minor mistakes in my ministry … the same kind everyone makes … but that I did not commit any major offense against the Lord, the church, or anyone else.
I had to put the puzzle pieces together to:
*accurately assess responsibility
*avoid making similar mistakes in the future
*try and eliminate the cloud over my last ministry
*help my wife to heal
*see if I had any future in Christ’s church
*be able to sleep at night
_______________
Could my pastor friend have succeeded in his hospital ministry if his former church had never called him back for a time of reconciliation?
Maybe.
But what a blessing it was for him to return to his former church, listen to the apologies of those who tried to harm him, and grant forgiveness to the entire church body.
As some people write on Twitter, “More of this please!”
Yes, Lord … more of this … please.
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Posted in Conflict with Church Antagonists, Conflict with Church Board, Conflict with the Pastor, Forgiveness and Reconciliation among Christians, Pastoral Termination, Please Comment! | Tagged pastoral termination; reasons why a pastor is terminated; should a pastor know why he has been terimated; reconciling after a pastoral termination | Leave a Comment
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