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Archive for the ‘Healing After Leaving a Church’ Category

Book Excerpt: Rebuilding

Posted in Church Coup Excerpts, Healing After Leaving a Church, Personal Stories on April 15, 2011| 6 Comments »

From time-to-time, I plan on posting sections from the book I’m writing about the conflict my wife and I experienced in our last church ministry. After writing about 420 double-spaced pages (with lots of footnotes to bolster my opinions), I still hope to finish the book soon before inviting friends to review it. Here is an excerpt about the difficulty we experienced – and most pastors and their wives experience – after we left our church and community. Realize that this is still in draft form and not in final form. As always, thanks for reading!

Throughout this process, family and friends encouraged us to “let go” and “move on with your lives.”  It has not been easy to do so.  People wanted us to move on out of their own anxiety or because they saw how much pain we were experiencing. One of the challenges I faced when I moved to Arizona is that I wanted to know why the conflict happened.  When many pastors are forced to exit a church, they are able to put the conflict behind them and move on with their lives, but I found that difficult if not impossible.  My analytical brain could not rest until it uncovered the truth about our sensitive situation. The first few months after we moved to Arizona, I was still angry, but as the months wore on, I was more puzzled than anything.  Why did our opponents do what they did?  Based on the destructive aftermath, it just didn’t make any sense to me.

When Kim’s brother Ian was only eighteen, he was killed by a drunk driver.  Kim had never experienced the death of a close loved one before and it really shook her up.  In a sense, her whole faith was dismantled, even though it was rebuilt even stronger later on.  But there were certain actions that she had to take proactively so that healing could begin.  We drove to her brother’s gravesite at Forest Lawn.  We visited the very spot where he was killed.  Kim flew from San Jose to Los Angeles on several occasions to be with her family as they pursued a civil suit against the person who was driving when Ian was killed.  After Kim had done her investigative work, she was finally able to release the injustice committed into God’s hands, but it took her eighteen months to do so.

I operated on the same basis.  After six months or so, I still had unanswered questions about what happened, so I contacted a few of my friends – some of whom still attended the church – and asked them about certain details.  However, some of them interpreted my puzzlement as bitterness and wanted me to “let go” and “move on.”  While I understood the reason for their counsel, I couldn’t move on until I had most of my questions answered.  After we met with some friends from the church in early August, and after consulting with several Christian counselors who specialize in helping pastors with forced exits, I was finally able to be at peace about the events that occurred eight months after our final Sunday.  Writing this book has also been therapeutic for me because it has allowed me to rid my brain of a host of issues and allowed me to regain perspective. But I still have occasional flare-ups of anger and have come to accept them as part of the healing process.

You can’t short-circuit these kinds of feelings.  It’s like trying to hurry up grief after a divorce or the death of a loved one. You have to drink the cup of suffering dry.  You can only put it all behind you when you’re ready, not when others want you to be ready.  Kim and I would go for a few days and be in good spirits, but then something would remind us of what happened and we’d both go into depression for a day or two.  For example, although we enjoyed marked improvement in emotional health after we passed the one-year mark, we then had to move forty minutes away from our place in Surprise toward Phoenix to be closer to Kim’s work.  The move cost us time, energy, money (we lost a deposit on a rental), and possessions (we broke a few things), and the whole moving event triggered negative emotions that we hoped had disappeared: “Why is this the fourth house we’ve lived in over the past fourteen months?  Why do we have to haul all our possessions around again?  Will we ever be able to buy a house and feel settled?  When will we return to the kind of life we once knew?”

Back in Arizona, Kim and I had to engage in a project we had never attempted before: try and find a church home.  While we stayed home a few Sundays – mostly due to physical or emotional exhaustion – we found the process of visiting churches to be extremely daunting.  We perused church websites to determine which churches to visit, but we went to most of them only once.  Nearly every church we visited had edgy music (which we liked), and the music was usually skillfully played and sung, but we often didn’t feel like singing praises to the Lord.  Many of the songs that were presented were taken directly from passages in the Psalms, but the lyrics included verses that praised God and excluded those verses that expressed doubt or anger (like in the imprecatory psalms).  Believe it or not, the way I felt emotionally, I would have welcomed singing some imprecatory psalms from time-to-time, although I’m sure I would have been in the minority!  It seems like most churches want everyone in the congregation to feel good after the worship time without realizing how some people are feeling before worship starts.  In my view, Christian worship times miss the variety of emotions expressed in the Psalter.  We encourage praise and joy but do not want anything to do with depression and anger.  Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to the music of people like Bob Dylan or Van Morrison.  They know how to express a range of emotion through their lyrics, voices, and instruments.  For months, I’ve been drawn to Bob Dylan’s music because, as I listen to him sing (or croak), it seems like Bob understands what I’m going through, while a great many believers do not.  With a few exceptions, most of today’s Christian music doesn’t acknowledge pain or suffering very well.  I realize that singing psalms of lament won’t necessarily help a church to grow, but there must be a reason why so many people don’t sing during worship times. Maybe in many cases, they just don’t feel like singing lyrics that fail to reflect their present state of mind.

It was also difficult for me to hear other pastors teach.  While most of them delivered their messages in a competent style, at times I was appalled at the interpretations of Scripture that I heard given from the pulpit.  (Doesn’t anyone own or consult biblical commentaries anymore?)  One staff pastor preached on the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20 and had absolutely no clue what the words really meant or how the passage was structured.  Like many pastors, he read the passage aloud and then said whatever he wanted to say about it.  He went straight to application without ever dealing with interpretation.  But more than anything, I’ve had a tough time listening to pastors ignore Scripture while highlighting their own ideas as if what they have to say is more important than what God says.  My wife and I now attend a mega church, not because it’s large, but because the pastor is an excellent preacher and he knows what he’s doing when he teaches.  (It’s a good thing that pastors don’t speak to other pastors on a regular basis.  We can be a tough audience.)

When I first left our former church, I didn’t want to preach anymore.  Over time, I have come to accept the fact that I may never preach again, at least as my primary calling.  Last Sunday, our pastor talked about the recent death of his father, and recounted how whenever he had a conversation with him, his dad always told him two things: love your wife and preach the Word.  When I heard that, I got choked up.  I have always loved my wife.  I miss preaching the Word.

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Saying Goodbye After a Pastoral Termination

Posted in Conflict with the Pastor, Healing After Leaving a Church, Pastoral Termination, tagged , on March 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »

As a child (and a young man, and an adult), I was an avid reader of the Peanuts cartoon strip.  There was often more wisdom and true-to-life observations in those little panels than you’ll get in most places.  One time, Linus and Lucy were going to be moving away because their father had taken a job in another city.  Charlie Brown hung his head in sorrow and said, “I need fewer goodbyes.  I need more hellos.”

Exactly.

But there comes a time when all of us must say goodbye – to a departing friend, to a graduating class, to a treasured house, to a dying loved one – and even to a church family.  During my ministerial career, I’ve said goodbye to six church families.  In some cases, it was a wonderful experience.  As people said kind things about you, it was almost like listening in at your own memorial service.  In others … well, let’s just say that people aren’t always thoughtful.

Let me discuss five ways that a terminated pastor might say goodbye to his church family:

First, he needs to tell his side of the story.  When I first became a pastor, I was shocked at how many of my colleagues were forced out of their churches by either a small minority or the governing board.  In each case, I contacted these men and heard their side of the story, and in each case, they were grateful that they could tell their story to somebody.  Know why?

Because they had been told that if they told their side of the story to anybody, that would be divisive.

Unbelievable.

For years, conventional wisdom held that when a pastor was forced to leave his church, he should fall on his sword, refuse to say anything to anybody, and walk away.  But the pastors that I spoke with regretted that they had followed that counsel.  After they left their church, these pastors (a) allowed their enemies to define their legacy, (b) saw friends flip on them (because they only heard one side), (c) watched their reputations be destroyed, and (d) felt they had to leave the pastorate for good because they felt stigmatized.

There is a lawsuit currently on its way to the Supreme Court.  It involves a claim by a pastor that he was terminated and then defamed by two pastors within that church.  You can read about it here:

http://www.thestreet.com/story/11000761/1/us-supreme-court-weighs-review-of-pastor-defamation-verdict-first-amendments-free-exercise-of-religion-clause-at-issue.html

While all of us should be sad that Christians feel they must use the secular legal system to settle disputes, this trend will continue until the Christian church gets its act together and allows pastors who have been unfairly treated to defend themselves in a structured and just manner.  Mainline churches have their own court systems – why not evangelicals?  Even Jesus had the opportunity to defend Himself at several trials, crooked as they were.

While I don’t believe a falsely accused pastor should publicly tell his story inside his church (then accusations will be tossed back and forth), he can do so privately, and should.  The best way to do this is to contact selected church friends and tell them your account of what happened.  The devil doesn’t want this to occur because he only wants one side of the story told: his side.  And the devil will use his side to not only defame the pastor, but to defame the church as well.  Because while Satan does target pastors and their families, he hates churches most of all.

Then when the pastor leaves, when his detractors try and smear him, there will be those who have heard “the other side.”

Maybe the biblical example of Jesus is a good pattern to follow.  While Jesus did not tell His side of the story to Caiaphas or Pilate or Herod, His disciples (like Matthew and John and Peter) did tell His side in the pages of the New Testament.  The Gospels are both apologetic and evangelistic documents.  In fact, the gospel itself encapsulates Jesus’ side.  He died – that’s the verdict of Jesus’ enemies.  He arose – that’s the verdict of His followers.  We know the full story today, but for a long time, many people only heard that Jesus was a criminal, not the promised Messiah who became the Lamb of God.

Second, he needs to act with class publicly.  And this isn’t easy, especially if the pastor believes that he’s been unjustly treated.

This kind of class starts with his resignation letter.  It should be brief rather than long, positive rather than negative, thankful rather than bitter, and unifying rather than divisive.

If the pastor is permitted to preach one more time – which he often isn’t when he’s terminated – his message should look back with gratitude and look forward with hope.  It’s not the time or the place to burn bridges.  The memory of an effective ministry can all but be wiped out with a few thoughtless public remarks.

By the way, if a pastor needs to leave a church to keep it united, shouldn’t those who perpetrated his departure leave as well?  In other words, shouldn’t the church begin again with a clean slate?

Third, he should allow a goodbye event.  Sometimes when a pastor is forced to leave a church, no one wants to throw him a party of any kind, so he just kind of slinks away.  But even if the pastor doesn’t wish for an event like this for himself, it’s part of the grieving process for the church as a whole.  If the church’s leadership doesn’t wish to throw a huge party, they can at least … order cake.  (Just make sure the pastor and his wife get some.)

A better event would be for the pastor and his wife to attend a party at the home of one of their trusted friends.  They can invite those they still feel comfortable being around.  The pastor and his wife can also arrange for photos to be taken with their precious supporters.

Fourth, the pastor should encourage people to stay in the church.  Frankly, I cannot understand how a pastor would leave a church – under any circumstances – and later want that church to be destroyed.

Which is the greater legacy: to leave a church and then have it flourish years later, or leave a church and watch it flounder and eventually die?

The growing church makes Jesus look good and enhances the legacies of all pastors who have come before.

When mistreated, some pastors will leave a church and start another one down the block or across the city – and their core group will consist of followers from the church they just left.  They will encourage people to leave that church and join them in their new endeavor.  This kind of move guarantees bad blood between those two groups for a long, long time.

It’s far better to encourage people to stay in the church and make it better.

Finally, he should not interfere with the church’s affairs.  It is a breach of professional ethics for a pastor to leave a church and yet continue to exert influence within the fellowship.  When a pastor leaves a church, in most cases, he should leave the community and not return.

If he stays in that community, there will be people in the church who will complain to him about the pastor or the board or certain decisions, and the former pastor – being human – may not be able to resist offering his opinions.  Whether or not it’s his intention, too many pastors undermine their successor through their offhand comments.

When a pastor leaves a church, he should leave in every way possible.

He can and should keep some friendships.  He can receive news about how the church is doing.  (And should rejoice when the church is doing well.)  He should pray for the church and its new pastor, and if he hears criticism about his successor, he should either support him or say nothing at all.

One of the worst church crimes imaginable is when a pastor seeks to undermine his successor.  It’s not your church or my church: it’s Christ’s church.  Can you imagine Joshua undermining Moses, or Paul undermining Timothy?

I guess some pastors, in the words of Michael Jackson, “never can say goodbye.”

Because conflict situations like a forced termination may only occur once in the life of a pastor and a congregation, it’s wise to think through some of the issues ahead of time.

May you never have to experience a situation like this, but if you do, may the Lord give you the grace, wisdom, and courage to do what is classy and right.

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Fifteen Months Ago

Posted in About Restoring Kingdom Builders, Burnout and Depression in Ministry, Healing After Leaving a Church, Personal Stories on January 31, 2011| 8 Comments »

The Lord has done some remarkable things in our lives over the past fifteen months.

Fifteen months ago, my wife and I lamented the fact that we would have to sell our house and move.  We had no idea where to go.

But the Lord prompted a former chairman of the church board and his wife to invite us to stay at their place in Surprise, Arizona, which we did for more than two months.

Fifteen months ago, my wife and I were so disoriented that we did not understand all that had happened to us or how to move on with our lives.

But the Lord put me in contact with Dr. Charles Chandler from the Ministering to Ministers Foundation, and Kim and I attended a Wellness Retreat in Tennessee that put us on the road to recovery.

Fifteen months ago, my wife and I knew that we would be leaving our wonderful church family behind, a prospect we dreaded.

But the Lord led us to a fantastic church (after visiting many not-so-fantastic ones) where we love the music, the preaching, their outreach orientation, and especially the way they do missions. (Kim is taking a class called Perspectives and absolutely loves it.)

Fifteen months ago, my wife and I thought that she might never visit or minister in Kenya again.

But the Lord arranged for a church in Georgia to seek Kim’s help in starting a ministry in Nairobi, and Kim was able to visit Kenya last May – while that church has invested thousands of dollars into the ministry of a pastor friend there.

Fifteen months ago, my wife and I were emotionally shattered and spiritually exhausted.

But the Lord led us to a wise and caring counselor, and He has slowly been rebuilding our strength.  While it may take some time for us to be 100%, we’re at a much better place than we were.  Several people have commented that it’s good to see us smiling again.

Fifteen months ago, my wife and I realized we would have to place our house up for sale, even though it was severely underwater financially.

But the Lord brought us a friend who proved to be a loving, persistent, and tireless realtor.  Although we sold the house four times before the short sale transaction was completed, we are forever in her debt.

Fifteen months ago, the former board of our church treated us in a manner we will never fully understand.

But the Lord used the next board to pray for us, encourage us, and let us know that we were still loved, and for that we will be forever grateful.

Fifteen months ago, to be honest, life didn’t seem worth living.

But the Lord has been refining us to the point where we are looking forward to whatever He has in store for us in the days ahead.

Fifteen months ago, we were looking backwards, trying to figure out what in the world happened to us and our church family.

But the Lord has turned our heads around so we are increasingly looking forward to what He has for us in the future.

Fifteen months ago, my wife and I knew that we would have to leave our positions at a church that we loved (and still love) very much.  We had no idea what else we might do because we felt that God had called us to local church ministry.

But the Lord helped Kim secure a job last summer at a charter school district office, and with her help, we are ready to launch a ministry for pastors and their families who have suffered in church ministry.  In fact, we hold our first board meeting next week.

And the Lord continues to do amazing things in our lives.  Because Kim’s work commute takes anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes each way, we knew we’d have to move toward her workplace when our current lease expired.

After enduring many frustrating experiences in trying to find the right place to rent, we discovered that our church had online classified ads.  We went to their website and found a fun place to rent (the walls in each room are painted a different color) in an unusual neighborhood.  We also discovered that our landlord went to my high school and that her step-mother was in my graduating class!

I have been passionate about pastoral conflict issues for more than 35 years, and now the Lord has called me to assist pastors who have suffered abuse, especially those who have experienced forced exits.

That’s why we’re launching our new ministry, Restoring Kingdom Builders.  If the Lord can help us rebuild our lives after undergoing life-shattering experiences, then He can use us to touch wounded pastors and their families.

Will you join us in praying that God will continue to use us for His glory?

I wonder what is in store for us – and for you – in the next fifteen months.

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Nobody Knows

Posted in About Restoring Kingdom Builders, Burnout and Depression in Ministry, Healing After Leaving a Church, Pastoral Termination, Personal Stories, tagged , , , , , on January 5, 2011| 10 Comments »

One of the best-kept secrets in the Christian world involves the forced termination of pastors and staff members.  There are few books published on this topic (Why I Stayed by Gayle Haggard being an exception) because they don’t tend to sell and because the issue deals with the dark side of the church – not exactly great marketing material for the Christian faith.  Occasionally a story is published in a journal for pastors, but that’s about it.

Most pastors prefer to keep quiet about what happened to them because there is a stigma attached to pastors who are forced out of their positions, whether the pastor was guilty of sin or innocent of wrongdoing.  In addition, those who have experienced this particular malady find that few people really want to hear their story, which involves a lot of angst and anger.  Pastors need to tell their stories to heal, but often can’t afford to pay a counselor and usually have no idea where they can turn for assistance.  The truth is that almost nobody knows how much a forced-out pastor has to suffer except their spouses, ultra-loyal friends and family members, and a handful of counselors.  But since our best statistics indicate that at least 1,300 pastors are forced to leave their pastorates every month in this country, thousands of qualified and gifted pastors are suffering quietly but intensely all around us.

When I tried to do my own study on this issue many years ago, I was castigated by several denominational officials who believed I was trying to cause trouble.  But I just wanted to know if the denomination tracked the victims of forced termination (they didn’t) and if they had any ministry to help those who went through this awful experience (they don’t).  It always seemed ironic to me that while denominational leaders encourage pastors to take risks so their churches will grow numerically, if those risks don’t work out, and the pastor is forced to leave, those same denominational leaders end up distancing themselves from that pastor.

More than a year ago, I was given a choice at the church I had served as senior pastor for nine years.  I was told by key leaders that 95% of the church was behind my ministry and that only a small group stood against me but that it would take five years of fighting to deal with the determined opposition (which was assisted and validated by a party outside the church).  A pastoral colleague with a strong personality urged me to stay and fight, but the conflict had already taken its toll on my family, so I elected to walk away and keep the church as unified as possible.

When that happened, I didn’t know – and few Christians do – what such an experience does to a pastor.  Here’s a partial list:

*You feel like a pariah, not only in the body of Christ, but in the culture at large.

*You try visiting churches but find you can’t sing the praise songs because you wonder how good God really is.

*You realize that many of the people you once counted as friends in your former church have turned their backs on you.

*You discover that some of your best friends don’t want to be around you because they’re weary of hearing about the pain you’re experiencing.

*You find yourself becoming increasingly isolated from others because you don’t know where you fit anymore.

*You have no idea how to answer the question, “So what do you do for a living?”

*You find that you cannot function without anti-depressants.

*You no longer know who to trust among family, friends, and ministry colleagues because too many people have already flipped on you.

*You hear wild rumors about why you really resigned even though they’re patently untrue.

*You wish you could truly reconcile with those who hurt you but realize you will probably never see them again, so …

*You do your best to forgive them, but there are times when you can’t seem to let things go.

*You are forced to leave your community because you don’t want to run into those who have conspired to destroy your life and ministry.

*You cannot find another church ministry – even when you’re healed – because most search teams won’t consider a pastor who was forced to leave a church, regardless of the reasons.

*You cannot bear to attend Christmas Eve or Easter services at another church because those were your favorite services at which to preach – and you wonder if you’ll ever have that opportunity again.

*Your spiritual gifts are sitting on the shelf, atrophying day by day.

*You regretfully un-friend anyone from Facebook who is married to – or friends with – one of your antagonists.

*Your marriage becomes either stronger or strained, depending upon the care you gave it before termination.

*You feel like God is through with you … but you still have to earn a living.

*You discover that you are vastly unqualified for most secular jobs due to your pastoral training and experience.

*You find that you can’t share your faith because you aren’t very excited about it anymore.

*You praise God for anyone who sends you an email or a card because it means you haven’t been totally abandoned.

*You honestly wonder if God still loves you.

*You learn that those who conspired to push you out of the church are proud of what they did.

*You discover a vast underground network of other pastors who have been through the same experience – and that the template used to force them out is the same one used to force you out.

*You become aware that the people who tried to destroy you aren’t your real enemies but that they were simply instruments of the enemy of your soul.

*You aren’t suicidal, but like Elijah under the juniper tree, you wish God would just take you home.

*You left your community with your house underwater financially, and because you were forced to sell at a loss, your credit has been decimated.

*You find that if you’re going to survive financially, you have to start all over in a different profession – and that starting over is more difficult than you ever imagined.

There’s more I could list – a lot more – but you get the picture.

When the average person loses a job, they still retain their friends, their church home, their career, their house, and their reputation – at least initially.  But when you’re forced to leave a church as a pastor, you may very well lose everything I just mentioned overnight – and the accumulation of all those losses is absolutely overwhelming.

That’s why my wife and I are launching a new ministry called Restoring Kingdom Builders.  Even though I’ve researched this area of conflict for years – and did my doctoral work on it – I had to actually experience the pain firsthand to truly be qualified to help others.  Rather than becoming bitter about what happened to us, we hope to take what we’ve learned and use our experiences to prevent these situations from happening to others.

Now that you know a little more about the repercussions of forced termination on pastors, what can you do to help restore them and their families to ministry?  Let me know what you think.  Thanks!

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Disgraced or Graced?

Posted in About Restoring Kingdom Builders, Church Conflict, Conflict with Church Antagonists, Conflict with the Pastor, Healing After Leaving a Church, Pastoral Termination on December 22, 2010| 3 Comments »

While reading the Christmas story again last week, I was struck by a phrase in Matthew 1:19.  After Mary was discovered to be pregnant – presumably with another man’s child – Joseph her fiancee had several choices to make.

Because he was “a righteous man” – a man who thoroughly kept the Mosaic law – he intended to break off their betrothal because she had been sexually unfaithful to him.  According to Deuteronomy 22:23-24, Joseph had every right to not only “divorce” Mary but also to insist that she be stoned in order to “purge the evil from Israel.”  Scripture seems to indicate that most men in Joseph’s situation would have had Mary executed.

But Matthew tells us that Joseph was guided by a different spirit.  The ex-taxman writes that Joseph “did not want to expose her to public disgrace” so he decided to “divorce her quietly.”

He did not want to expose her to public disgrace.  How unlike our culture.  How unlike our media.  And sadly, how unlike Christ’s church.

I’ve been reading Gayle Haggard’s book Why I Stayed recently.  As you may recall, Ted Haggard was the pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs – a mega church of 14,000 – as well as the president of the National Association of Evangelicals.  Some unflattering news surfaced about him a few years ago, and Pastor Haggard resigned from both his positions.  Many women – even Christian women – would have left Mr. Haggard at that point, and would have been biblically justified in doing so.  But Gayle chose to stick it out with her husband, thus the title of the book.

The story of her relationship with Ted makes for fascinating reading, but I was far more interested in the latter half of the book.  Gayle describes the way that prominent Christian leaders, the church’s governing board, and their friends treated them during this time, and although she maintains a gracious, non-vindictive spirit throughout, the same cannot be said for the believers involved.

The Haggards – including Gayle, who was innocent of wrongdoing – were treated in a humiliating way by the church they founded in the basement of their home.  Within a week of their departure, all traces of their ministry at the church had been purged.  People who knew them were interviewed so as to find more “dirt” on them.  Both believers and non-believers were able to say anything about them they liked but the Haggards were not permitted to reply.  They were even told they had to leave the state of Colorado which meant that their children had to leave behind their friends and schooling.

No matter what they did, it was eventually misinterpreted.  No matter what they said, it was flagrantly disregarded.

Pastors are fond of preaching on the fact that God can use anyone, even a liar like Abraham, a murderer like Moses, an adulterer like David, and a hothead like Peter.  But let that same pastor fall into sin and he will be tarred, feathered, and blogged about ad infinitum, often by people who are his own teammates.

Phil Keaggy, who has long been my favorite Christian male artist, co-wrote a song with Sheila Walsh called “It Could’ve Been Me.”  The song always makes me think and can bring me to tears.  (The song is found on the CD Way Back Home and is available on iTunes if you’re interested.)  After describing the fall of a Christian leader, Keaggy’s powerful chorus nails each one of us to the wall:

But it could’ve been me,

I could’ve been the one to lose my grip and fall.

It could’ve been me

The one who’s always standing tall.

For unless you hold me tightly, Lord,

And I can hold on too,

Then tomorrow in the news

It could be me, it could be me.

Just four chapters after Matthew 1, the grown-up Jesus said in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7).  When Mary “fell” – which is what Joseph thought until the angel enlightened him – Joseph chose mercy over vindictiveness.  Mary’s pregnancy undoubtedly caused her to lose her local reputation as a virtuous woman.  It might even have ended her chances of ever marrying anyone.

But although we now know the back story, neither Joseph nor the folks in Nazareth did at the time.  A modern love story would probably tell us that Joseph married Mary anyway, but as a keeper of the law, he couldn’t bring himself to do that … until God told Joseph that Mary was not only his soul mate but also the mother of the promised Messiah.

When pastors are forcibly terminated from their churches, they suffer many losses: their jobs, their income, their houses (in some cases), their careers (potentially), their marriages (sometimes) and most of their church friends.  And though they’re almost always innocent, their family members suffer those same losses.

But just like Mary and Ted Haggard, they also lose their reputations, whether the charges made against them are valid or not.

I find it ironic that pastors, who are conduits of God’s grace to scores of sinners throughout their ministries, cannot find that same grace when someone accuses them of wrongdoing.

May I urge you, not only at this Christmas season, but in every season of life, to be gracious toward every sinner who comes into your life, whether it’s a woman pregnant out of wedlock or a pastor who has been forced to leave his church because our Lord Jesus Christ suffered public disgrace that we might become recipients of His grace.

That’s why II Corinthians 8:9 is my favorite Christmas verse: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.”

May God give us the ability to treat wounded Christian leaders with the same grace that Christ has shown us … because only grace can lead us home.

Merry Christmas!

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Why Care About Pastors?

Posted in About Restoring Kingdom Builders, Healing After Leaving a Church, Pastoral Termination, Personal Stories on December 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I grew up in a pastor’s home and viewed it as being normal.  While my family was at church every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night – in addition to cleaning up the facility most Saturdays – I liked my life.  Even though I was a PK, I had a great childhood.  Church was home.

Until I was nine years old.  One Sunday night, after the evening service, my parents put me and my younger brother and sister to bed.  Shortly afterward, the phone rang, and my parents scooped us out of bed and took us to the home of the head deacon.  We three kids were placed in the room adjacent to the living room.  My brother and sister fell asleep quickly, but I could hear what was being said through the wall.  As I lay there in the dark, I heard the leaders of our church – some of whom taught me Sunday School – verbally crucify my father.

My dad probably should have resigned at that point, but he had founded the church.  It was his life.  He hung on for two more years before he finally resigned.  Twenty months later, he was dead at the age of thirty-eight.

Without its founding pastor, the church lasted for several more years but eventually disbanded.  It’s a good thing my father wasn’t alive to hear the news.  It would have killed him.

There is a part of me that wants to go back in time and help my dad manage that conflict in a different fashion.  Would he still be alive today if he had?  I’m not sure, but I do know this: there are thousands of pastors every year in our country who undergo similar experiences.  The best statistics available indicate that at least 1,200 pastors in America are forced to leave their churches every month.

What happens to them?  A high percentage of them never pastor a church again.  Many of their wives and children stop going to church, some for good.  (One pastor friend told me that after such an experience, his wife didn’t attend church for four years.)  Because pastors have engaged in specialized training and earned degrees that fit them only for church ministry, the great majority of pastors are  not qualified for secular jobs.  But because they feel they’ve been rejected by their previous church, the now ex-pastor struggles with self-confidence, depression, forgiveness, and an inability to trust people – especially Christian leaders.

Thankfully, over the past two decades, ministries have popped up all over the United States that seek to assist wounded pastors.  Some ministries specialize in counseling.  Others have retreat centers where a pastor and his wife can relax, read, and pray, as well as seek counseling.  Still others specialize in church conflict.  An organization composed of clergy caregivers called CareGivers Forum meets annually.  My wife Kim and I attended the latest conference in Wisconsin and were gratified to meet about sixty people who believe that God has given them a special calling in this particular area.  But unless the church of Christ wants to kick gifted pastors to the curb, we need many more ministries for pastors all over the United States.

I recently made a list of all the pastors I know who have been forced to leave their churches.  Besides my father, that list includes my father-in-law, my financial planner, a pastor at my daughter’s church, a pastor at my current church, a pastor friend who went to college with me (and who wrote an article in a major journal about his termination), a church consultant friend, a professor from college, and several ministry mentors, just to name a few.  In fact, according to an article in Leadership Journal from the 1990’s, 23% of all pastors have undergone the pain of a forced exit.

And you can add my name to the list, too.

After being forced to leave a church I pastored for nine years only a year ago, my wife and I were able to attend a retreat the following month in the southeast designed to help the victims of forced termination begin the process of healing.  We thoroughly enjoyed the skills we gained, the encouragement we received, the new perspectives we learned, and the hope injection we received that week.

Because that retreat was so meaningful, Kim and I want to offer retreats for pastors and their wives in the Southern-California/Phoenix area beginning this spring.  Because we believe that God can do a deep and lasting work in the lives of hurting pastors, we are calling our ministry “Restoring Kingdom Builders.”

If you know a pastor or a staff member who has recently experienced the pain of forced termination, please ask him or her to contact me at jim@restoringkingdombuilders.org.  We welcome pastors from all Christian denominations.

Please pray that God will richly bless this new venture.  Thank you!

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