Fired Pastor #1

The articles were written by my wife and posted here in hopes that someone else who may be going through a similar issue will be encouraged....

It seems a funny thing to think about, that those "confessing" Christ would be the same ones to punish the people of Christ. But that is my experience. And I have found it to be more common than not. When our family first went to M**** we were amazed at how mature they “seemed”. We allowed ourselves to be flattered by their friendliness and we were convinced that they wouldn't pick us for their church. When we were called back for our second and then third interview, we were shocked. Our naiveté is almost laughable now, but we were certain that words equaled commitment and we had a flawed view of depravity. We believed people to be totally depraved but only later realized that we (at least to some degree) functionally ignored it.


I smile now to myself thinking about how much trust I set in the fact that they had already had a conservative and grace driven pastor. We also wrongly assumed that their easy answering of doctrinal questions was proof that they were a good church. We assumed that the 11 pages of questions that we compiled for them would derail any significant problems before they could cause divisions. When they called Will to pastor them we were surprised and also thankful, we had truthfully presented ourselves and felt that our honesty would protect us. I hadn’t read (with understanding) the many passages where Jesus warns followers that their honesty might get them into the kind of situation we ended in. I wish I had.

We began work at M** at the beginning of December 2008. And everything went very well for at least six months. During the summer of 2009 Will suggested to the deacons that they should lead a mission trip and that was the first time we felt the influence of satan in this church body. The deacons, led by one, refused to even consider a mission trip, citing prayer although time hadn’t been taken to pray over this decision. Will was completely floored by such a false supposition that clearly is against scripture. The words of Christ in Matthew 28 are an imperative or mandate, we cannot explain it away especially with prayer, which should align with scripture if it is true. Will wanted to leave the church at this point because he knew that no church which denied the great commission could be biblical but I encouraged him to keep committed to the mission where we had planted ourselves. I often regret my choice to sacrifice in this way, I wonder if maybe leaving them would have been better.  

In the fall of 2009 a female member demanded a no-peanut policy at the church for her child (who has an allergy).  She slandered another member in the process (claiming that person had tried to kill her child with nuts) and also refused to speak with the other member about her assumptions and then broke fellowship with the church because she didn’t get her demands met instantly. Will had never been against taking certain precautions toward greater safety towards this child’s allergies, in fact he placed certain safeguards in place in the months following this situation, acquiring an epipen and getting detailed information about the children attending activities. But our biggest concern was this member’s spiritual state.

“Do not fear” is the most often given command in the Bible. And this member was driven by fear which caused Will to move toward her redemptively by confronting her in this disobedience and I also wrote her an email sharing about how our eldest son had had Neutropenia as an infant, an auto immune disease where diaper rash could actually kill him. I reminded her that the Lord is sovereign over our bodies and encouraged her not to teach her daughter that her main concern is for the body, but for the soul (I am not advocating that we simply ignore the body, but there are no barriers we could place to protect ourselves or our children from every danger). The woman rejected my encouragement as well as Will’s (refused to meet with me) and when she left the church widely circulated gossip which led to our treatment in the community getting very poor.

The isolation, phone calls and looks began at this time. But the worst part was how the adults at the school, where this woman taught, were now targeting our son. His desk was moved against the wall away from the rest of the kids, and our son was allowed to be neglected in his education and also treated poorly by other students. It was at this point that I realized that fear is SUCH a huge tool of the evil one, fear had not only consumed people in our church, but an entire community. Will was visited often to “confront” him for not doing anything. People believe something without weighing both sides, they only know half the story but behave as if they know it all. They make judgments based on gossip. How dangerous for the soul this is! Gossip truly is poison to a church, to relationships and to individuals. We began to see this truth first-hand.