A Bright Future

If you would have told me last year at this time that I'd be leaving the church plant I helped begin, I would have laughed in your face. Attendance and income was up, plus the people were finally beginning to "jell" as a family. We loved our coworkers and bought into our church's mission 100 percent.

Then we got a new senior pastor.

If you've never worked in a church you can't possibly understand what a terrifying thing this can be to church staff. If you have worked in a church, that comment probably triggered a post-traumatic stress incident! It's never easy on staff or congregations, but we decided to make the best of it. God is in control and all those other clichés, right?

It became obvious within six months that we had some big problems brewing at the church. The man turned out to be the most frightening narcissist that I've ever met, or hope to meet. Every person is looked at as an opportunity or an obstacle to his success within the denomination. Employees started leaving meetings in tears. Everyone was treated with suspicion. A happy organization became a dreary place where people stopped dreaming about the future and began watching the clock.

In a bungle that only denominational bigwigs can pull off, our church building actually hosted three different churches: the traditional parent church, the one Lamont and I pastored (missional), and a Hispanic church. Suddenly there wasn't any space or funds available for two of the three ministrie (guess which two). Accomplishing the simplest thing became an uphill climb. Every positive step would be turned into a negative by the senior pastor.

We had some dialogue with some denominational representatives in hopes that some mutual understanding could be reached, but we should have realized that a nasty egomaniac isn't going to turn into a cooperative partner. Ever. When people from our denomination asked us if we would consider running another church for them, we knew the writing was on the wall. A few weeks later I was told that although all options would be considered, our district head was leaning towards shutting our ministry down and merging it to the traditional church. We were told that we would still have jobs somewhere, so just hold on until the end. Sweet.

I have put up with any number of things in my ministry: long hours, unhappy parishioners, lack of funds, punchy church boards, low attendance, dumb denominational initiatives, plus this narcissist. But I could not and would not be satisfied with putting on a happy face and punching the clock until the end.

The good news is as of November 15, I won't have to! And neither will Lamont! After a great deal of prayer and soul searching, we were both offered new jobs one hour apart last week! They're both jobs working with young people, both have faith-based components (Lamont's is in a church), and we'll actually be making a lot more money!

Our senior pastor had the strangest reaction I've ever seen. He was positively overjoyed at our resignation, launched into his plans to merge the churches, and then spent the next half hour warning me not to turn people against him, steal anything, or sabotage the computers on the way out. Then he prayed for me like this: So often God, people try to follow your will. But sometimes they follow their own will, thinking that it's your will. And that leads to the way of destruction... You can't make stuff like this up, kids! A sociopath boss is scary enough. But a sociopath boss who thinks that God is on his side is really freaky!

It's tough wrapping things up in our current location. We've spent 5 years on the church plant, plus the previous 5 in the traditional church. We will miss the our congregation dearly, and wish that these vulnerable people didn't have to get caught in the crosshairs of this mess. Explaining to a sobbing youth group why we were leaving was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. And it wasn't much easier to do the same with the adults in never-ending home visits on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Our thoughts and prayers will be with them always...

Church went great on Sunday, despite the sadness. Our lives are going to be so different. We really feel like the best is yet to come!