January 2020…
January 5th… first Sunday away.
On January 12th… my husband and I chaperoned a weekend youth trip.
On January 19th…my family and I attend a church in a nearby city. The church I mentioned toward the very beginning of my blog.
After church, I met my friends for a fun day. They encouraged me to come back to church soon. But I told them I wasn’t ready yet.
January 22nd… I went to the church on Wednesday night to help the kids practice for a music camp.
Friday 24th, Saturday 25th … I helped chaperone an overnight music camp.
I show this timeline for a couple of reasons. For some of those reasons, I will come back and fill it in later, but for now, I use it to show that I was still very much in. Our family participated in youth events, chaperoned things, and spent time with friends. My kids were attending Wednesday evening services. The only thing we really weren’t doing was attending Sunday church services.
February 2020…
This entire month was crazy for my family. First, we started a jury trial on a case 6 years in the making. I won’t go into everything here, but we suffered a devastating financial blow as a company in 2014 and filed a suit immediately after.
It took 6 years to get things to the place where we could finally have a trial.
Jury selection took place on Friday, January 30th… the trial was set to begin on Monday, February 3rd.
Let me stop and say this really quickly. This court case weighed heavily on my entire family every day of those 6 years. It affected every part of our family business. It took a toll on everyone. I spoke to the pastor about it all the time. He knew how nervous we were. He knew what it meant to our family.
I asked him several times if he would come and sit with us in court. We had to be there every day. There was plenty of room in the gallery for people to sit. The courthouse was only about 2 blocks from the church, where the pastor was in his office daily. He could have come over very easily. It would have meant something to us even if he had only stayed for a little while. We needed friends during this time, and we thought he was at the top of that friend list. The moral support would’ve been so nice from our friend and pastor.
One day my parents’ pastor came to sit with them. I texted our pastor that night, asking him if he was planning to come to court. I told him that my parents’ pastor had already been there to support them, and he lived over an hour away. He sent back a snarky text about my parent’s pastor being a church planter and playing by different rules.
Our lawyers informed us on that first day of jury selection that we had to be very careful in this small town. They asked us to refrain from going to the grocery store in this town, out to eat, anything. Then they asked us if anyone of us attended church in Tree Town. I slowly raised my hand. They said it would be best if we didn’t attend Sunday services until the trial was over.
They explained that it could be harmful if a juror attended church and saw us in the service. The judge asked the jurors each time they came in if they had seen anyone, talked to anyone, or read anything that could make it hard for them to make a fair decision. If any of the jurors visited Tree Town Baptist and ended up talking to us, sitting near us, or just seeing us in that service, they would need to answer the judge’s question honestly. Being in a small church service with them could be a red flag to the judge. We had waited far too long for this trial, and there was no way I would mess it up.
We told the pastor what the lawyers said, and he wasn’t too happy that we wouldn’t be returning in February. People would talk. They would think I was mad about something and not coming back. I didn’t care what he thought at this point. This trial was more important.
So, instead of attending Tree Town Baptist that month, we attended the big church we loved so much in the city.
Another thing that happened in February of 2020 was that I began to have an irregular heartbeat. I would end up wearing a heart monitor during some of the court trial. The issue would be undiagnosed until the following year, when I discovered that I have stress-induced PVCs. A totally benign problem, but one that makes you think you are having a heart attack. It just goes to prove that I was under an insane amount of stress that month. I was in uncharted territory. We had never spent time in court like this, and so much of our future as a family business counted on how this court case ended. A pastor would’ve been a comfort during that time.
Thursday, February 6th, was a very stressful day in court. The judge came very close to calling a mistrial, and when we left that afternoon, we had no idea what his decision would be. We were nervous and upset. After court that day, we drove over to the pastor’s house. We just needed a friend to talk to. He hadn’t shown any interest in coming to court, so we decided to visit him instead. Our daughter had art lessons that night, so while she was there, it seemed the perfect time to spend visiting with the pastor and his family.
We went into the house and visited for a while. We had genuinely missed the whole family. We spent a bit telling them about the trial, and they told us how things were going with them. It was pretty normal. We didn’t feel uncomfortable asking to stop by. Even though we had been away for a while, things were good.
As we were leaving, we were all standing in his driveway. The pastor began to tell us that he had someone he would like me to talk to about the Children’s Minister position. This wasn’t the first time he had asked me to do this. Another girl, who was a church member, considered taking the job. I talked to her, and by the time our conversation was over, she had decided that working for the church she loved probably wasn’t a good idea.
This girl, though, I hadn’t heard anything about until that moment. He just casually brought it up. Like it was an afterthought. He said he was sure she wasn’t qualified for the job, but he just wanted me to tell her everything that the job entailed. This girl was a good friend from his old church. He went on and on about what a hard worker she was but explained that she had no experience in children’s ministry.
I told him I was super busy with the court case and that my weekends were the only downtime I had, but I might be able to find a few minutes to call her. He gave me her number and asked me to find a time to talk to her if I could, that it was important. Funny how he didn’t have time to sit with us in court and support us, but he wanted me to make time to do him a favor…
That was February 6th.
The pastor sent me a text message on Monday, February 3rd. I had asked him a question earlier that day, and he didn’t respond. When I questioned him again, he sent a text saying he was sorry he hadn’t answered earlier, but they had friends visiting from his old church. I didn’t know at the time, but this was the girl and her husband he told us about on the 6th. As I continue to walk through this portion of the story, that date will mean more.
On Wednesday evening, February 12th, after a full day in court, we went to the church because they had planned a “retirement” party for me. Kinda late, don’t ya think? Kinda odd? And on top of that, I was worried about attending any service during the trial. I knew Wednesdays were much safer than Sundays because the church didn’t have as many visitors on Wednesday nights, but it was on my mind.
I always speculated that this party was planned only because I had mentioned to my friends how disappointed I was about how my leaving had been handled.
We joined the congregation that night for the Wednesday evening meal. We sat and visited with our friends. It felt a little different, but I decided it was because we had been stuck in a courtroom for 2 weeks away from the real world. It was also the first time since I left on December 29, 2019, that I had been in any kind of church service at Tree Town.
After the meal, we went to sit in the pastor’s office so they could set things up for the party.
He was excited to talk to my husband and me. He couldn’t wait to tell us something. He was almost like a little kid with a new toy.
His first words were, “you’re going to be mad”…
I am? Why would I be mad?
He continued to tell me that he thought they had found someone to replace me.
I quickly told him that didn’t make me mad, wasn’t that the plan?
Didn’t we, as a church, want to fill the position?
I asked him who it was, and he informed me that it was the girl he was telling me about the week before.
Wait?
What?
I felt the blood drain from my face.
Let me clarify…
I had no issues with them replacing me; that was what I wanted. I wanted the ministry to continue and grow and thrive. I planned to stay there at Tree Town Baptist, watch it grow and thrive, and volunteer when needed. My shock wasn’t that they had found someone; it was that the person they found had zero credentials or qualifications for this job. I knew people who were teachers in the church that were much more qualified.
But wasn’t the idea to hire someone ministry-called and seminary-trained because that’s what I wasn’t?
At the very least, wasn’t it to find someone qualified for the position?
Did she become qualified in 6 short days?
Did he ever intend to find someone with the credentials he had so clearly stated to me, or were those just made up?
What in the world was happening?
He handed me the questionnaire he had her fill out for the Personnel Committee. He wanted me to read it.
I did.
He asked me what I thought…
I told him that her answer to the question about what order things were in her life worried me…. She said God was first, family second, but she made sure to say that her job at the church would be a close third. I told him that this concerned me.
If she was going into this putting such emphasis on the job and felt like it was important enough to word it that way, then I was afraid as a young mother, she would lose sight of the fact that the job wasn’t as important as her family…
I reminded him how confused I had been toward the end of 2019. How I elevated this job to God status and never found a way to say no to anything because the job was for God. And when I was at the end of myself, I felt like I couldn’t even run to God for help because He was the job. Had he so quickly forgotten?
His answer…
Brace yourself….
He began to tell me that she was a young Christian. In fact, had only been a Christian for 6 years, and he led her to the Lord. She wasn’t familiar with many Biblical things. She hadn’t had the best upbringing, and he said that her lack of Biblical knowledge was because she had not been raised by Christian parents and she hadn’t had good role models, but he could teach her.
A few of her answers would have disqualified her from the job with the Personnel Committee… for instance, she originally answered that in her life, she should have God first, job second, and her family third… not Biblically correct, but not something that couldn’t be taught in time… but he didn’t want them to see her spiritual immaturity, he wanted her to appear somewhat qualified…
So what did he do?
He told both my husband and me that he helped her change her answers to make them look better to the committee… yep, you read that right, reread it if you must…the pastor changed the answers on this children’s minister candidate’s questionnaire to help her get this job.
This was strange, to say the least.
What do you even call it? Is it manipulation, bad business practices, or just lying…
I remember the shock I felt when he told us that he had changed her answers. I felt like he was taking advantage of a young girl who was about to get in over her head. Suppose she was as spiritually immature as he said. In that case, her original answers could’ve been the warning the Personnel Committee needed to realize just how unqualified she was for this position. But instead, it seemed like he was so desperate for her to get this job that he would do just about anything to make sure it was a done deal…
When I pulled my jaw back up into the correct position after semi-recovering from the shock of what the pastor told us, I remember saying these words to him that night…
“I’ve been a Christian since I was 8 years old, taught kids in Sunday School since I was 16 years old, I’ve been in church my entire life, and this job nearly destroyed me.
It made me question my faith. It has made me question the church, it has made me question everything I’ve ever known, and I’m not a new Christian like you keep claiming this poor girl is….
I worry for her. I worry about her and how this could affect her faith…”.
His response… she’s a blank slate.
SHE’S A BLANK SLATE…
Is a blank slate all they were looking for or was the blank slate status advantageous to him so that he could make her whatever he wanted her to be?
Whatever it was, he had no concern for her well-being at all. She was just a blank slate.
How would you like the person hiring you to think that your best qualification for a new job is being a blank slate? How degrading is this? He was already using this girl. He already saw her as nothing more than an asset, an asset that he could control.
In 6 short days, he had changed his story from this girl not even being close to qualified to her being the right person for the job.
He had found the person HE wanted for the job.
I would eventually pose these questions to the pastor at a later date, but why were they even looking for a children’s minister out of state unless it was a qualified, seminary-trained, ministry-called person?
How was someone who had never even taught a Sunday school class more qualified for this position than some of the teachers we had in the church already?
If you weren’t going to hire someone qualified, why were you even looking outside of the town? Why not hire someone with close ties to the town, the church, and the ministry?
And why did the pastor seek out this random person from his old church? Was it a “safe” hire? Was it someone he could control?
Was it someone he knew wouldn’t challenge him? And how long had he been planning this?
Was it before I quit? Was this his plan all along?
And what about the money issue? Had Dave Ramsey so quickly cured the young people who didn’t know how to tithe before they even started the class? Was the pastor’s “pep talk” all they needed? Had they increased giving so much in 4 weeks that this hiring was possible?
One thing that the pastor said that night burned me up. He looked at me and said… that Wednesday night program I made you do… I was right about that, wasn’t I? It was a good idea, wasn’t it?
I looked at him and said, “it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but if it was worth me quitting to you, then I guess it was a good idea.”
When I look back on that, it really makes me wonder what he had planned and when he planned it.
I’ll delve into that more later, but after looking back over everything, I wonder if the pastor was pushing me out similarly to the former music minister and secretary. Was he letting me hang myself, hoping I would fail, allowing me to get so overwhelmed that I would quit, and then he wouldn’t need to let me go, and it wouldn’t look bad for him?
Was the evaluation planned to make me feel defeated…
The raise to make me feel less than…
The salary given to the permanent part-time music minister to show me that the church could pay more, but I wasn’t worth it.
I had watched this man fire the former music minister. I knew he wanted him gone. I watched him make life miserable for him. Then, when he wouldn’t quit, the pastor finally decided to fire him in a terrible way.
I had heard him repeatedly say that he wanted the secretary to fail… that he wanted her to hang herself… So why should I believe he would treat me any differently?
Why would I not think he wanted this new girl to have the job long before anyone at Tree Town Baptist even knew?
But if this was his plan all along, he would need it to look like it wasn’t… and he would never say it if it was.
Conspiracy theory?
Maybe… or maybe hindsight really is 20/20.
The committee would be Face Timing this girl for her interview after my party that night.
How were things moving so quickly?
Not qualified… February 6th
Qualified (blank slate), interview… February 12th
The pastor informed me while we were in his office, after telling us all about this new girl, that he had been asked to say something nice about me at my party that night. He had nothing planned; if he had to speak, so would I. He made it sound like this party was very much an inconvenience to him. He had many more important things to take care of that night. This was just a waste of his time.
I don’t know what came over me, but this came out of my mouth…
“Ok, I’ll make a speech tonight… I’ll talk if that’s what you want… I’ll tell them that you’re the reason I quit.”
I heard my husband gasp.
The scales were starting to fall from my eyes…
Until Next Time,
Whitney