In the fall of 2009, my wife and I went on a missions trip to Moldova with three other people. After spending several days in London to recuperate and see some sights, Kim and I traveled north to Wales, Keswick, Edinburgh, and York before returning home.
Whenever I look at photos from that trip, this little voice tells me, “The whole time you were away, the church board back home was plotting to end your ministry.”
As I’ve recounted in my book Church Coup, the official board met with me on October 24, 2009 and announced a decision designed to end my tenure at the church I had served effectively and faithfully for 10 1/2 years.
Talk about an “October surprise!”
Forty-three days later, I resigned, and preached my final sermon a week later.
I’ve been through many tough times in ministry, and managed to overcome each situation with God’s help.
But not this time … because the spirit in the church had changed.
When I refer to such a “spirit,” I’m talking about an atmosphere … a climate … a mood that I could feel … though others may not have sensed it.
In fact, one way of looking at that fifty-day conflict is to identify the spirits that drove some to push out their pastor.
As I’ve listened to the stories of many pastors and church leaders since my departure, I’ve learned that these spirits are usually present before a pastor is forced to resign … as well as during any extended conflict.
As I see it, there are at least seven spirits that drive a church coup:
First, there’s the spirit of resistance.
For years, we were the largest Protestant church in our city of 75,000 people … by far … excellent numbers in a city with only three decent Protestant churches at the time.
But an underground resistance movement… fueled by someone outside the church … slowly expanded and reached a crescendo by the fall of 2009.
Most of my time as pastor, both my leadership and preaching were well-received … but near the end of my tenure, things had changed.
Resistance is the feeling a pastor senses that certain leaders and members are no longer following his leadership.
I first started detecting resistance when we started a building program around 2002. I let the congregation have input on both the architect’s drawings as well as our fundraising plan.
And every vote involving the building was unanimous.
We lost about eight percent of our people during that time, and two individuals in the inner circle tried to sabotage the project.
As a leader, I never forced my ideas on people. I made proposals, stated my case, asked for input, addressed objections, called for an official decision, and then moved forward.
If various individuals didn’t like my proposals, they had many opportunities to voice their displeasure in public.
But they didn’t … they went underground instead.
By the time 2009 rolled around, I could feel the resistance, especially when I preached. To quote Phil Collins, there was “something in the air.”
No matter what I did – perform a wedding, conduct a funeral, propose a change – there always seemed to be pushback.
Especially from the church board.
No matter how hard I tried, I could not please them. They never told me I was doing a good job. They never tried to encourage me. I always felt like I was on trial.
And their resistance started wearing me down.
Second, there’s the spirit of bitterness.
Regardless of church size, it only takes seven to ten people to force a pastor out. If that minority is determined to oust the pastor … and are willing to use the law of the jungle … they often succeed.
Some people were angry with me because I took positions contrary to theirs on matters like baptism … women in ministry … outreach events … worship style … you name it.
A handful shared their disagreements with me and we worked things out. Most told everyone but me about their anger and pulled others into their web.
For example, as our new worship center neared completion, I created seven principles for the way we were going to run our worship services. I went to the church board and gained unanimous approval for those principles.
But a woman on the worship team disagreed vehemently. She began complaining about me to anyone who would listen, to the point that the board chairman had to intervene.
I invited her into my office, listened to her concerns, explained my position, thought we had an understanding, and assumed that was the end of it.
Until she started complaining again.
A few months later … having caused much division … she and her family left the church. It hurt. I thought we were friends.
I’m unsure if she ever forgave me. And when people feel and express bitterness toward their pastor, that bitterness spreads, and eventually wears a pastor down … and can tear a church apart.
And all too often, the bitterness morphs into a vendetta.
Third, there’s the spirit of hypocrisy.
A hypocrite is a play-actor … someone who acts one way in public but another way in private.
While hypocrites act in a spiritual manner outwardly, they are completely different people inside.
Pastors can sense those individuals and families who aren’t behind them. You try and move toward them, and love on them, but sometimes, it just doesn’t work.
There was a couple in that church who had been there since the church started. No matter what, I just couldn’t seem to connect with them.
Let’s call them Bo and Jo.
I ministered to them when there were deaths in their family. I intentionally sought them out for conversation after services. They were cordial but rarely warm.
I knew they were good friends with my predecessor but tried to ignore that connection. After all, what could I do about it?
Eight days after the conflict started, the entire church board resigned, and a week later, we held two already-scheduled congregational meetings designed to announce the board’s departure.
After 24 years of leading healthy congregational meetings, all hell broke loose that Sunday. A few members became unglued and publicly sided with the board.
After the second meeting, Bo came up to me and said, “I’m praying for you, brother.” I looked at him and said, “Are you, Bo?” (I knew he stood against me.)
A friend later told me that Jo was crying in the ladies room because she was afraid that I wasn’t going to be kicked out as pastor.
Before I resigned, I was informed that Bo and Jo played a crucial role in forcing me out.
Jesus knew who the hypocrites around Him were and called them out. I sensed who some were but never knew what to do except keep them out of leadership.
If you don’t want me as your pastor, there’s a simple solution: leave the church.
But people like Bo and Jo don’t want to leave. They want their pastor to leave instead … even if he isn’t guilty of any major offense … because in their minds, it’s their church, not his church.
And, of course, they know best.
And because hypocrites are experts at playing a part, pastors may not know who they are, so they can’t proactively work things out with them.
Fourth, there’s the spirit of cowardice.
When it comes to interpersonal squabbles at church, most Christians are cowards.
If they’re personally offended by someone, they don’t approach the person who hurt them as Jesus instructed in Matthew 18:15 … they complain to their network instead.
This is especially true when it comes to pastors.
Whenever someone had the courage to tell me directly they were upset about something, I always thanked them for speaking with me personally … but it rarely happened … not because I’m scary, but because people find it uncomfortable to confront their pastor.
But sometimes, what people are thinking and feeling about their pastor is based on inaccurate information … and God’s people may not want to hear the truth.
Last year, I heard about a church where someone accused the pastor of stealing a small amount of money. Instead of speaking with the pastor privately, this individual reported the pastor to the authorities, and then told many others in the church about his accusation.
As the charges bounced around the congregation, some felt emboldened, and added their own personal gripes about the pastor to the mix.
The pastor was driven from office even though the evidence clearly showed he had done nothing wrong.
His career was destroyed over a lie.
Christians become cowards when:
*board members are upset with the pastor but never tell him how they feel.
*members allow false accusations about their pastor to spread.
*everybody is afraid to confront the ringleaders who initially attacked the pastor.
*people who know the truth won’t share it for fear of being vilified.
If God’s people would just grant their pastors the protections Scripture offers them in Deuteronomy 19:15-21, Matthew 18:15-17, and 1 Timothy 5:19-21, we could put an end to the epidemic of pastoral terminations once and for all.
But that will require a spirit of courage that is sadly lacking in most congregations… and it requires working hard to disintegrate the groupthink that grips so many.
Fifth, there’s the spirit of gullibility.
Many years ago, I began an Easter service by announcing that the President of the United States had suddenly resigned.
After hearing gasps all over the room, I exclaimed, “April Fool!”
If I tried that today, someone would check out the news on their smart phone before I ever got to “April Fool.”
But churchgoers who often check out the facts regarding the news rarely check out negative information they hear about their pastor.
If I was a regular churchgoer and I heard a serious rumor about my pastor, I would want to know:
*the original source of the rumor.
*who is spreading the rumor.
*who they’ve been talking with.
*how solid their information is.
*the views of different staff and board members.
If I believe the first thing I hear, then I’m really gullible. And if I pass on that information without verifying it, I could well be passing on a lie … and destroying both my pastor and my church.
But wise, mature, discerning Christians check out the veracity of what they hear before they do anything else.
Yet in all too many churches, people hear negative information about their pastor … instantly believe it … spread the story to others … and then can’t revise the narrative because it will make them look bad … so they continue to perpetuate half-truths and outright lies.
During our conflict, after board members resigned, they and their wives jumped on their phones and called as many people as possible. (A friend from out-of-state told us who called her and what was said. Why call her?)
When I was telling my story to my ministry mentor several years ago – a former pastor and denominational president – this is the point at which he said, “Jim, I am so sorry.”
It’s one thing for people who hate their pastor to spread vicious rumors about him. It’s another thing for good Christian people to believe them … especially when the pastor has a decade-long track record of integrity.
What hurts more than anything is that most people never bothered to pick up the phone to hear my side of the story.
The week before I resigned, Satan attacked my family in a horrible way. Few people know the story. I’ll spare you the details.
During the attack, I received a phone call from a newly-elected board member who told me about the latest charge against me. He told me the source of the rumor … where that person heard it from … and exactly what they were saying.
Because he called, I was able to snuff out the rumor with facts, which I’m sure he passed on to the other new members.
I could have snuffed out all the rumors if people had just contacted me … and I still can … but by this time, nobody cares.
Don’t the conquerors write the history?
Sixth, there’s the spirit of blindness.
By blindness, I mean that a pastor’s attackers believe they see his faults clearly.
They just can’t see their own.
Let’s modify Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:3-5 a bit:
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your pastor’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your pastor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your pastor’s eye.”
Paul’s words in Galatians 6:1 (with one modification) are also appropriate here:
Brothers, if your pastor is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.
God’s Word does not say that you are to watch your pastor’s life and then tell others about every little thing he may have done or said wrong.
No, Scripture says that before you deal with those caught in sin, you should first “watch yourself” to make sure you have a humble, loving approach so you can restore the wayward person.
And if you don’t first “watch yourself,” you aren’t qualified to address anyone’s sin.
Whenever a pastor is pushed out of a church, there are usually a few narcissists and sociopaths involved. People who have these personality disorders never admit they do anything wrong at home … at work … or on the road.
They bring that same mentality to church, and when they sense their pastor is vulnerable, they move in for the kill … and never feel badly about the part they play.
What’s amazing to me is that many churches allow such spiritually blind people to be their leaders.
Finally, there’s the spirit of destruction.
There is a spirit behind these seven spirits … and it’s not the Holy Spirit of God.
As Ephesians 2:2 specifies, it’s “the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient” … Satan.
As I say quite often, Satan has invaded a church when two factors are present: deception and destruction.
Or we might say … deception leading to destruction.
Jesus said in John 8:44 that Satan is “a liar and the father of lies” and “a murderer from the beginning” … and He was addressing His comments to spiritual leaders.
When a pastor has done something wrong, those in a church controlled by the Holy Spirit will gently and lovingly confront him with the goal of restoring him spiritually and even vocationally.
But under similar circumstances, those influenced by Satan will harshly and hatefully condemn him with the goal of destroying him both personally and professionally.
Instead of identifying Satan’s work in their own lives, such people gleefully detect satanic influence in their pastor.
As Neil Young sang, “I don’t feel like Satan, but I am to them.”
My wife and I could not only sense Satan’s influence during the conflict … we could taste and feel it.
It’s something you never forget.
After the church board resigned, I hired a church consultant … with the assistance of five well-respected congregational leaders.
After interviewing some leaders, and witnessing two horrendous congregational meetings, the consultant wrote a report where he exonerated my wife and me and faulted others.
Then a nine-person team from the church looked into the charges against us and publicly announced that we were not guilty of wrongdoing.
But one year later, the tables had turned, and friends sadly informed me that my reputation inside the church had been decimated.
The verdicts of the consultant and nine-person team no longer mattered. My opponents had to win. I had to be destroyed.
The hit job on me was so complete that after I left the church, not one person – including family, friends, or colleagues – felt that I should ever pastor again.
After 36 years, my church ministry career was over.
_______________
Several months after I resigned and moved to another state, I had a conversation with a church consultant from the Midwest. I kept asking him, “Why did these people … who claimed to be Christians … act the way they did?” Because I could never act that way toward anyone else, I couldn’t get my head around it.
The consultant told me, “Jim, the opposition to your ministry was probably there for years, but you didn’t see it because people covered it up well. When you were attacked, their true feelings came spilling out.”
_______________
I’m going to end this article by quoting Galatians 5:19-23:
The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hated, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Which terms best represent those that try and force out their pastor?
Hint: it’s not the second group.
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Restoring Kingdom Builders 
The Ninth Anniversary of a Church Coup: Snapshots of a Pastoral Termination
Posted in Church Conflict, Church Coup Excerpts, Conflict with Church Antagonists, Conflict with Church Board, Conflict with the Pastor, Pastoral Termination, Please Comment!, tagged church conflict, Church Coup, pastoral termination on October 24, 2018| 9 Comments »
Today is the anniversary of a day that changed my life forever.
Nine years ago this morning, after returning from a mission trip overseas, I entered the office of the church I served as pastor for an 8:00 am meeting with the official board. We were supposed to discuss our plans for the next year’s budget.
Instead, the board announced that they had terminated our most valuable staff member: my wife. Their sole charge against her was that she had overspent her missions and outreach budgets by a wide margin.
But she wasn’t their eventual target. I was. The board didn’t have enough evidence against me that they could take to the congregation for a dismissal vote, so they went after her instead, assuming I’d resign if she did.
I’ve recounted the story of the fifty-day conflict that ensued in my book Church Coup (which may be the most detailed and complete account of a pastoral termination ever written). I revisit the story in this blog every October 24. As one of my advisors told me, “You never want to forget what it felt like to go through that awful experience.”
The purpose of telling my story is for pastors, board members, and churchgoers to learn what to do and what not to do during a conflict with the pastor. I am not telling my story to garner sympathy or to gain followers. By relating my experiences, I still hope to teach.
So let me share some snapshots of what I experienced over the seven weeks of the conflict. Many stories are outtakes from my book while some are based on information I received after the book was published in the spring of 2013.
After more than 35 years in church ministry … I still can’t believe the following events happened to me … but they did.
_______________
The board told me that they would give my wife a choice: she could resign or be fired. They said they felt so strongly about their decision that they were all willing to resign, the implication being that if she didn’t resign, they would.
And the following week, because she didn’t resign, they did. (To this day, I wonder who advised them to try that tactic.)
If she resigned, that would take the pressure off them … and that was her initial reaction: to just quit.
But when she thought more clearly, she didn’t believe she had done anything wrong … and she was positive she had not overspent the amount the board claimed.
So she didn’t quit immediately, as the board hoped she would. We both decided to wait and see if we could discover the truth behind their decision first.
Kim’s dad (a former pastor and Christian university professor) told her, “If you didn’t do anything wrong, don’t quit.” A Christian counselor who had advised us for years told me, “If she resigns, that would be a lie. Make it a battle.”
We didn’t want to make it a battle, but the board had not made enough of a compelling case for my wife to say, “You’re right, I messed up, I will resign.” We needed more information.
In my wildest dreams, I never thought the church board would take such drastic action.
But they did.
_______________
For years, my wife worked for a pace setting company in Silicon Valley, and she sometimes had to fire employees … but always by the book. She was upset with the board because they had not followed any kind of protocol. She kept telling me that her rights had been violated.
Several months ago, my wife visited that company again, and briefly told her story to the organization’s founder and president, who agreed that my wife had every right to sue the church/board for wrongful termination.
On the one hand, Paul commands Christians not to sue other Christians in 1 Corinthians 6:1-8. I get that.
On the other hand, too many Christian organizations … especially churches … do violate the rights of staff members and pastors when they terminate them … and they do deserve to be sued.
But the separation of church and state usually protects such churches.
I wish some churches would be sued successfully … if only to teach church leaders to use biblical procedures … and due process … when they’re thinking about terminating pastors and staff members in the future.
Because if those same leaders were treated in a similar fashion at their workplaces, they would probably sue the pants off their companies.
_______________
On the night after the board met with me, they convened a meeting of the church staff to announce my wife’s termination. Not only did the board add several more charges to their list, but such a meeting was probably illegal.
An advisor who later became my mentor told me that in our state, if my wife had been in a secular company, she could have sued them for four to six million dollars for telling her co-workers why they had fired her.
Five nights later, when my wife finally met with two board members at my request … so they could tell her to her face why they had terminated her … she told them that she could sue them for the way they had handled things. This wasn’t merely an emotional outburst … this was based on the careful way she fired employees for years at that Silicon Valley company.
A former board member from that church told me emphatically over a period of years that the board violated the church constitution and bylaws when they terminated my wife. The governing documents clearly stated that staff members could only be fired upon recommendation of the senior pastor to the official board. When the church voted to approve those documents, my wife was already a staff member.
One night, while walking along the Bay on a very dark night, I ran into another former board member who told me it was going around that my wife and I were planning on suing the church. It wasn’t true … we weren’t planning on suing anybody … but many churchgoers believe the first thing they hear without confirmation.
The church board totally bungled the way they handled things, and when my wife called them on it, we became the bad guys … and had to be destroyed.
All too often, this is the way Christians handle their conflicts. We’re godly … they’re ungodly.
_______________
When my predecessor retired and left the church in December 2000, he and his wife moved to another state. But they eventually moved back to California … and settled in the very city my wife and I have made our home the past six years.
My predecessor became the president of a parachurch group, and that group’s founder also lived in our city at the time. The founder told me that several years before 2009, while they were playing golf, my predecessor told him that he was going to return to the church I was pastoring. The founder told him, “No, you can’t do that!” But my predecessor seemed determined.
This information tells me that the plot to get rid of me went back months … if not years … before the board acted against my wife. As a megachurch pastor who knew my predecessor told me eleven days after the conflict surfaced, “You have no idea how much you have been undermined.”
That same pastor told me that he had heard my predecessor make the exact same charges against my wife using the exact same terms that the board used. To what extent did my predecessor formulate or refine the charges against her?
Because my predecessor had been in ministry for years, his counsel seemed legitimate to the board. They most likely trusted him without questioning his motives or strategies.
But in the process, the previous pastor clearly violated pastoral ethics … which the board undoubtedly knew nothing about.
A year after I left, guess who returned to the church to preach at the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services?
That’s right … my predecessor … who had his fingers in the church board, the church staff, and the congregation for many years.
God rest his soul.
_______________
I’ve never given a moment’s thought to returning to my former church. I served there ten-and-a-half years, resigned, and left it for good. How wrong would it be for me to interfere in the church’s governance so many years after leaving?
Why did my predecessor even want to return? My guess is that his Fan Club were telling him that things at the church were really bad and that only he could save the church.
In fact, several years before the conflict surfaced, I heard a report attributed to my predecessor that our church was losing attendees … when the opposite was true … and I informed the church board of the rumor without naming its source.
But we had grown steadily and were the largest Protestant church in our city. We had a positive reputation for miles around. We had built a new worship center. My wife and I had both been keynote speakers at the area Sunday School Convention. In our community, where a church of 150 stood out, we were like a megachurch. A Navy chaplain once told me that when he was stationed near India, and knew he was going to move to our community, someone recommended that he attend our church.
Why did things seem so bad to a tiny group of people? Because they didn’t have positions of power … and that was intentional on my part. They were not behind our mission and vision. They were not behind me as their pastor … and I knew it. They were able to serve … just not in positions of influence.
But they thought that because they were founding members, they deserved preferential treatment.
One time, my predecessor visited the campus and told me that a woman from our church was calling him constantly to complain about me. I figured as much. While I was pleasant around her, I couldn’t let her be a leader because I didn’t trust her.
And I felt the same way about some of my predecessor’s other fans.
When people once held power in a church, but no longer do so, they will sometimes do anything to get that power back … even if they have to violate half the New Testament to do it.
_______________
One woman did her best to disguise her opposition to me, and I had to interact with her on a regular basis. After a while, pastors develop a sixth sense about such people.
After the board and associate pastor resigned, I called two public meetings of the congregation to announce their decisions. During one of the meetings, a friend went into the women’s restroom and this woman was crying because, she said, she was afraid they weren’t going to get rid of me.
After we left, this woman openly bragged about how she and some others in the church worked the plot that sent us packing.
I could never plot against a pastor. I’d leave the church first.
God calls a pastor to lead and teach. He doesn’t call anyone to force out an innocent pastor. So why is it so easy for many Christians to join a coup against the person that God called?
If you have a good answer, I’d like to hear it.
_______________
The primary charge against my wife concerned finances. I continue to maintain that the numbers that were verbally announced to me at the board meeting had been massaged.
For example:
*My wife had committed funds to some vendors for our annual Fall Fun Fest on Halloween … but we hadn’t yet held the event to recoup any of our expenses.
*As I mentioned in my book, several thousand dollars were mistakenly sent overseas … and undoubtedly counted against her mission budget … when she had nothing to do with that decision.
*When my wife was putting together a team for a mission trip to Eastern Europe, we had to buy the plane tickets in advance … and one person backed out. We tried, but weren’t able to recoup the funds for one leg of his journey.
*When our mission team flew to Moldova, we brought along extra suitcases filled with items for poor people and the vulnerable children … but even though we were told in advance by an airline executive that we wouldn’t have to pay extra for each leg of our journey, we were overcharged for the suitcases anyway.
My wife or I could have explained these decisions had we been given the opportunity … but no one on the board asked us or the bookkeeper anything about these expenses.
The budgets of two unrelated ministries were thousands of dollars in the red … but to my knowledge, no one ever addressed those deficits with the leaders that managed those budgets.
No, my wife … our most effective staff member … was singled out for special mistreatment.
In the spring of 2009, I went to the board and asked for funds to visit two churches in Southern California to learn about their multi-venue services. The board approved those funds … and then they were charged to the worship budget without the leader’s knowledge or consent … sending his pristine budget into chaos.
Were other unrelated expenses charged to my wife’s budgets without her consent or knowledge?
When I finally asked for the board’s accounting, I received something incoherent from the bookkeeper. When my wife asked to see the board’s numbers, they did not give them to her.
When my wife finally met with the bookkeeper a month after the conflict surfaced … and the board members had all quit … the numbers told a completely different story. When a nine-person investigative team examined matters a month after that, they concluded that “there was no evidence of wrongdoing” on our part.
Was the financial charge against my wife a bluff to prompt us both to resign?
_______________
Someone made a public charge that I mismanaged church finances. That was an outright lie.
What’s ironic is that even after the conflict erupted … and even after I left the church … I was still a central person concerning church finances.
*When the board refinanced the loan for the worship center, I had to sign the document. If the credit union had known the board’s plans, they might not have approved the refinancing. When companies make loans to organizations, they want to know in advance that the leadership is going to remain stable.
I wonder what the board told them about their pastor’s long-term prospects?
*During the conflict, the church bookkeeper stopped by my house once or twice a week so I could sign checks, which I’d do on top of her car on the street.
*Months after I had left the church, I was still the key person concerning the church’s credit cards. The bookkeeper was still contacting me, asking me to call the company and give them directions.
If I had really mismanaged funds, would I have been able to do any of those things?
When a pastor mismanages funds at church, it’s often because his own financial house is in disarray … but our personal finances were and are pristine.
It’s so easy to throw general charges around without being specific and without doing it to the face of the accused.
_______________
When the composition of a church board changes, it can throw the entire congregation off-balance.
For years, I had worked with three men on the board who were all older than me. We had been through a lot together. I trusted them, and their actions indicated that they trusted me.
One moved away about six months before the conflict surfaced. He was the person who always had my back. The other two termed out but stayed in the church.
Had even one of those men still been on the board, the coup never would have taken place. They would either have stopped it or exposed it.
In the end, the new board in 2009 was composed entirely of people younger than me. They lacked the experience and maturity of the older men … one of whom had experienced a church split years before in another church and would never have tolerated the tactics used by my opponents.
Someone on the board ended up leading the coup. I always knew his identity. May God forgive him for all the lives he harmed in his attempt at personal payback.
_______________
The board never attempted anything resembling restoration. It was all about punishment. As Charles Chandler from the Ministering to Ministers Foundation told me, the board members were personalizing matters.
As a Christian counselor asked me, “Where’s the redemption in all this?”
There wasn’t any pathway to redemption. Coups don’t involve restoration. They can be bloody or bloodless, but they are always about one thing.
Getting rid of the leader at all costs.
If you can show me where in the New Testament we find such behavior commended, I’d be grateful.
I’ve been searching for years … and I still can’t find it.
_______________
Wherever you find deceit and destruction, you find Satan. Jesus called him “the father of lies” and “a murderer from the beginning” in John 8:44.
Based on some of the stories I’ve heard, I don’t believe Satan is centrally involved in every church conflict. Some believe that he is. I don’t.
I look for deceit and destruction. Someone in ministry suggested adding “doubt” to the calculus as well.
There was definitely deceit in our conflict. There were a lot of falsehoods going around: exaggeration, character assassination, misrepresentation, false allegations … it was all there.
And there was a lot of destruction as well. Satan’s aim in most church conflicts is to destroy the pastor’s well being … reputation … and career … but ultimately, to destroy the church itself.
Although I was not personally destroyed, my effectiveness for future ministry was. I don’t claim to know if that was the aim of anyone in the church. Maybe so, maybe not.
But I do know this: Satan gained a foothold in the lives of too many of God’s people in that church. Hatred and two-faced hypocrisy are not from God.
_______________
Most pastors who are forced out of a church are never exonerated. Their reputations are ruined, at least inside their former church.
But I was exonerated … twice.
The first time, a consultant the transition team and I hired during the conflict issued a report that the board had acted “extremely and destructively” and that my wife and I had been abused.
The second time, an investigative team of nine people from inside the church claimed that “there was no evidence of wrongdoing” on our part.
But some people could not allow those verdicts to stand.
When I left the church in December 2009, I was told that 95% of the church supported me. A year later, I was told that support was down to 20%.
I don’t know the truth of either percentage. But I do know that throughout 2010, there was a whispering campaign inside my former church to pin the blame for the entire conflict on me.
When an interim pastor (a friend of my predecessor’s) came to the church several months later, he convened a meeting of the old and new boards, and made everyone who knew the truth about the conflict promise that they wouldn’t discuss it with anyone. So when people attacked my reputation, those leaders were told not to counteract any lies and to remain silent.
But what about the people who were spreading falsehoods inside the church? Why didn’t anyone warn them to stop destroying the reputation of their previous pastor?
Because unity is based on truth … not lies … such diversions do nothing to heal people’s souls.
Even though I urged people to stay, scores of people eventually left the church and either changed churches … changed faiths … or sat at home for years because nobody had the guts to tell the church the truth about what happened.
Just another Christian cover up. Business as usual.
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One day, I met with the rookie district minister to share my side of the conflict. He listened politely and later helped reveal the part my predecessor played in the coup.
Several years later, when I was in New Hampshire, the DM called me out of the blue one Sunday morning to tell me that “I respect you and admire you.”
While that was nice, there was evidence to the contrary, so I didn’t know what to think.
But I had once served in the same church as an executive from that same denomination, and when he heard about the conflict … not from me … he told a friend, “[The church] owes Jim an apology.”
While I would welcome any kind of apology, nobody has ever apologized to me for their role in forcing me out of office.
Because if I’m innocent, they’re wrong … and I’ve learned that many, if not most, Christians hate to admit when they’re wrong.
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This is the last blog article I plan to write on what happened to me in 2009 unless there is some major future development.
The accusations against Judge Kavanaugh brought back a truckload of hurtful memories because the same tactics used against him were used against us.
My wife and I live in Southern California and are content with our lives.
We live about an hour from our son, his wife, and our three grandsons. I wouldn’t trade being near them for anything in this world.
Our daughter – who was so strong for her dad and mom during the conflict – still lives in the Bay Area and leads a fruitful life. We love her dearly.
God gave me a ministry to pastors and board members who are going through conflict, and I’m grateful for all the people I’ve been able to help.
Just last year, I advised a pastor from the East Coast who was able to beat back his own church’s coup attempt. He stayed … and his opponents left.
I pray that happens more often.
I’ve written 596 blogs over the past eight years. I plan to write four more and then take a break … maybe a long one.
As always, thanks for reading.
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