Those next several weeks were a strange time for the entire world. First, we were quarantined for two weeks to stop the curve, then those two weeks turned into two more, and on and on we went.
The church began to figure out how to exist in this new Covid world. How do you keep a congregation involved, and how do you ensure they continue to give? How do you prove that the staff has anything to keep them busy? Suppose there aren’t any services and no events or activities. Why should the church continue to pay an entire staff?… on top of that, you’ve just convinced the church to hire a full-time Children’s Minister. And now, there were no in-person children’s activities to plan.
I’m sure it was a trying time within the church. I don’t envy them. I was so happy that I wasn’t there anymore. I can’t even imagine what the pastor would’ve been like. I can’t imagine how up and down his moods were during this time, how many times he might have changed his mind and the direction of the ministry. I also knew if I still worked there, I would be required to be in the office. There would be no working from home.
The communication between the pastor and us was almost non-existent during this time. We contacted him a few more times through text and email, and we either received no response or something very short and not at all like we were accustomed to.
On April 10, 2020, the pastor sent me a text asking if my kids and I would be interested in leading online worship. It said…
Would you, and the kids consider leading online worship in a couple weeks? We can talk thru details if ya’ll are open to it.
I told him we would think about it and get back to him.
This was the first text I had received from him since March 9th.
On April 12, 2020, there was bad weather in our area. Our power went out, and I put a request on Facebook for people to let us know if any tornadoes were headed our way. The pastor began to text weather updates. It almost felt normal.
On April 13, 2020, I decided I should let the pastor know that we wouldn’t be able to lead worship… this is the text I sent him…
Thank you for the offer to lead worship and the trust that you have in our family. We have talked about it as a family, and we’re just not sure which way God is leading us as far as church is concerned. It would feel disingenuous to lead worship right now. As much as I would love to in my flesh, I don’t think it would be right. Above all, I want to praise God with an unhindered heart and don’t think that I am at a place right now to do that. Thanks again for the offer.
I felt like that text message was open and honest. I felt like I poured a lot of emotion and feelings into it. I was expecting a phone call from the pastor, or at the very least a heartfelt text message in return, but what I got was this…
Ok. Understand. Thanks.
That was all.
One week in April, my daughter won the youth contest over the youth Zoom meeting they had that week. Her prize was the youth pastor bringing pizza to the house.
On April 16, 2020, he delivered pizza and Gummy Bears to our house.
We all sat around the table on the back porch and enjoyed our visit. My daughter was thrilled. It was good.
It almost felt normal. And during that part of Covid, nothing felt normal.
The youth pastor stayed and visited for a while. He talked about how uncertain things were at the church during this time. He spoke of all the extra work he was doing, making videos for everyone so they could interact with the church members. He said that his plate was full. He had very little time for youth ministry because he was handling so much for the other ministries. Video communication was the only way the church had to communicate with the members, and he was the only one who knew how to edit or do anything associated with video technology.
During that time, each ministry was putting out weekly videos, and on top of that, all of the services were live streamed. This all fell on the youth pastor’s shoulders to prepare. There were others to help him out on Sundays, but the prep and the weekly videos were all his responsibility.
It was a lot, and I could tell that he was stressed about things. Again, I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for any of the staff during that time. I knew a few people who worked there during the height of Covid, and they said it was not a great environment to be in.
Before he left, I could tell things were about to get serious. He was going to ask me some questions, and I didn’t want to involve him.
He asked if we were coming back. I told him I wasn’t sure what we were going to do, that I was pretty sure the pastor was angry with us, that he wasn’t responding to our messages, and that something just didn’t feel right. He told me that the pastor was saying the same things about us. That my name was brought up a lot in the office. That they just couldn’t figure out what was going on. The pastor told them he was contacting me, and I wasn’t responding.
I just shook my head. I was over this game.
I offered my phone to the youth pastor. I told him that wasn’t at all how things had gone. I told him how we had reached out to the pastor several times, that I felt like we had lost our friend, and I didn’t understand why.
The youth pastor responded that he thought we should meet the pastor in person and talk things out. I told him I agreed entirely, but it wasn’t us who kept that from happening.
The youth pastor said something that day still makes me tilt my head in confusion. He said that I didn’t need to share my side of things with anyone. There was no reason I should try to defend myself, but instead, let the Holy Spirit defend me.
What exactly was I defending myself from? What was being said about me at the church?
I could count on one hand how many people knew about my misgivings about the new children’s minister. I wasn’t out talking about it. So, what exactly was going on?
On April 21, 2020, I received another text from the pastor. This was the first one since his abrupt Ok. Understand. Thanks. The last message he sent on April 13th.
This one said…
Can you talk a min?
I wasn’t about to do this over the phone. I had requested meetings with the pastor in his office. I had been clear on many occasions that I wanted to get together and talk things out in person.
He was no longer my boss; he was, however, my pastor. And how many times had I heard the sermon that if someone offended you, you should go tell them, and if that didn’t work, you should take two with you, and if that didn’t work… you know how it goes. It was the “Biblical” way to deal with issues between believers.
Here we had the pastor, the church leader, neglecting to follow this biblical teaching.
There had been zero communication with the pastor since he asked us to lead worship 10 days before.
I decided to take things into my own hands. I was tired of playing the pastor’s game.
I called my husband, and he suggested we ask the pastor to come to our house that night to talk. And so, I did.
My response to his text message was this…
Actually, we were wondering if we might talk with you in person? Could you come out here tonight for some back porch social distancing conversation?
He said he would check to see if his kids would be ok that night since his wife was working.
We agreed that he would come to our house at 6:00 that night.
Let’s go over a few things…
He had known since February that we were struggling with things. Hell, he had known I was having issues with things for over a year.
I had been controlling the narrative just like he asked.
He had minimal contact with us over the past several months.
At the time, I naively believed that this was still a close friendship. But, everything that had happened the past few months was strange, and our communication had gone from several text messages daily to almost non-existent.
As a pastor, he was behind in contacting us to work things out. Regardless of his feelings toward us at the time, we were faithful church members. We deserved at least the bare minimum of pastoral care. As close friends, I felt we deserved more than just pastoral care but also the common decency that friends offer one another.
We received neither.
You know, when people are guilty, they hide. When they know their cover is blown, they don’t want to be called out. So he knew that we were seeing through this game he was playing, and he was making himself scarce.
Remember when I talked in an earlier post about the issue with Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill? How the lady who said Mark needed men surrounding him to challenge and keep him in check… how she was fired, called a heretic, and eventually she left the church entirely…Mark Driscoll didn’t want anyone to keep him in check or challenge him. Oh, he said that he did. He told those around him that they could call him out on anything. He made a big deal about how his board of elders could say anything to him… but when it came down to where the rubber met the road, those were just words. It was for appearance’s sake only. He was saying the right things, and to those in the congregation, he appeared to be a man who willingly submitted to authority. But that wasn’t true behind closed doors. The pastor in the pulpit was different from the pastor in the office.
Remember how I talked about our old pastor, how he would choose his own deacons… how the main requirement was that they had the pastor’s back, that they were in his corner… This man was a one-man show. He didn’t even try to hide it. But, his ego was so large, and the fact that this church had zero regulatory policies in place, he could be that one-man show and challenge anyone who questioned him… and he did. And the membership turnover rate was tremendous.
My point is, that the personalities were the same. Both men are narcissistic. One seemed submissive in front of his congregation to a point (that changed as time went by), and the second one didn’t care what anyone thought.
But both of them had the same mentality…
Get on the bus, or get run over by the bus. And that bus was THEIRS… it didn’t belong to the church or the people; the pastor was the only driver.
I would like to enter into evidence that the pastor at Tree Town had this same mentality. In front of people, he would say that he wanted to be challenged, but behind closed doors, he was already planning how to get people in leadership roles that would back his every move.
Even when I was still there, he was scheming.
He started a Discipleship group… a handpicked few. They met once a week to study the Bible and memorize scripture. Before you say, hold up, that’s a good thing… I will agree, Discipleship groups are important, and they are good for the spiritual growth of a church. But what if they start out as a popularity contest? What if the pastor’s self-admitted reasoning behind choosing the ones that he did, was because he thought they would make great deacons? He specifically chose these young men because he knew the church would ordain new deacons in the coming years, and he wanted these guys to be those deacons.
Let me ask you this… if the pastor spends an entire year teaching a group of men, becoming their friend, their confidant… and his motives are to eventually have them chosen as deacons… do you think those men will ever challenge the pastor?
I’ll let you decide for yourself, but I know what my answer is. My answer is no… they won’t. And this is how I know that… I was the pastor’s “friend”; he manipulated me on levels I can’t even explain. I had his back at every turn. I controlled the narrative to protect him. He let me in on the secrets of the church; he gave me just enough information to make me feel extra important. He did that same thing with other people.
All the ones in Tree Town that he handpicked, the men, their wives, there was thought behind it. It was carefully thought out and planned… and it was always the younger crowd who the pastor navigated towards…, and his reasoning was that they were young enough to be taught (code for to trained support him) to be leaders in the church. They were young enough to be molded into what he wanted them to be. They were also young enough to look up to him as an elder, someone who was older, wiser, a Godly man, someone who could share his biblical knowledge with them. He felt more secure around these younger people…Very similar to the children’s minister he brought in… he liked to be the hero… The Paul to their Timothy, if you will. He made them his friends (just like he did with me), and then they would do his bidding (just like I did) It would eventually become an army of people who supported the pastor at all costs… and it was planned. These were the people who would “challenge” him, the ones who would be in leadership positions… the ones he trained.
Kinda makes you go, hmmm.
And just to be clear, these people probably don’t even know that they are being used by the pastor; I didn’t know that I was being used at the time. These are good, faithful people.
So, why didn’t the pastor want to talk things out with us…
I was talking to my husband recently about this period of time that we walked through, and he said that something inside of him just clicked one day. It was as if it was all clear, and we could see things we couldn’t see before. I think the pastor sensed that.
The pastor knew that we knew. He knew we would ask the hard questions. That we would challenge him. He had asked us to be honest with him on many occasions. This wasn’t a guarded friendship… until this moment… For him to contact us, sit down, and talk things out… would reveal stuff he wanted to keep hidden. He knew me. He knew how frank I was; he knew that I wouldn’t cut him any slack.
This is where the rubber met the road… and he wanted to avoid it at all costs.
Something else I think I should point out is this… at the time, my husband and I were genuinely worried about the pastor. This whole thing with him bringing this out-of-state girl in with zero qualifications looked terrible for him. He was always concerned about how things looked, and this could quickly end his career at Tree Town if people knew.
And surely they knew… how could they not?
Well, come to find out, he controlled the narrative very well. And the things that we knew other people didn’t. We had more pieces of the puzzle.
He came to our house that night. We sat on the back porch and talked for a very long time.
I think I’ll save that conversation for the next post.
Until Next Time,
Whitney