What has happened to unity in the church? I guess a better
question would be was there ever unity in the church? If we base our answer to
this question off scripture we might be able to say yes a few times, but not
consistently. Many times we find prophets standing against other prophets and
kings, the educated standing against the uneducated, Jesus standing against the
social and religious elite, Paul in opposition with Peter and Jesus’ other
disciples, and in Paul’s letters we find that many churches stand divided over
at least a few issues. The point is that people always find something to
quibble over. I am no different than any other follower of Christ’s teachings
throughout history in this. I pride myself in learning and discovering what it
means at its core (with as little cultural influence as possible), to be a
follower of Christ in a functioning community of disciples. This pride often
misleads me to feeling superior to cultural Christians. This pride has been
something I have struggled with for years.
Once I graduated from high school it was shown to me that
church isn’t all butterflies and rainbows. The funny thing is, I already knew
this but decided to ignore it once I had found a church and community that I
liked and fit into. I knew that pastors often cheated on their wives, didn’t
pay tithes, or assumed control over a church leaving little room for the
members to act in community with one another. I have seen church boards
mistreat their pastor by forcing social obligations on them that no human could
possibly be expected to meet. I have even witnessed women being treated as
inferior, women degrading each other in church to assume control over a
ministry, and men ousted from the congregation because they suggest that the
church should live within its means.
An example of this type of control grabbing, unity busting
attitude is most recent in my mind because of what happened at the last church
where I was fully committed to the community. This was the church I had
recommitted my life to God in. I loved the people there, many of whom I
considered to be as good as family. I feel like this was the place that I first
“grew-up” in Christ. What happened at this church began with disagreements over
the church budget between board members and the pastor. The church was losing
about five hundred dollars each month paying the bills and the pastor’s salary.
Some blamed low attendance and tithes being down consistently for about five
months. The disagreement began with a board member asking the pastor if he
could take a five hundred dollar pay cut. This does sound unreasonable at
first, but the pastor worked another job full-time and the church paid him
$1,500 in salary and another $1,500 in housing expenses. The pastor said no,
and the church treasurer, standing with the pastor, convinced the other board
members that it would ruin the church. I later found out that this was not the
first time. A division between the board and pastor over his salary had
happened in the first year I was at this church, but I was ignorant to it because
I was a high school student, and like most high school students I was only
concerned with high school and my friends. The result of this first quarrel
over the pastor’s salary ended in the pastor and the congregation asking the
two opposing board members and their families to leave after one of them
threatened to stop paying tithes to our church if the pastor didn’t get a pay
cut.
Along with these squabbles over money issues, some members
of the congregation began to ask questions about what “church” should look
like. They felt that something was missing in our community and wanted to
discover what that was. One of these included a close friend of mine who had a
degree in applied theology from and was working on her Bachelors in psychology.
She wanted to start a discussion about community, a community of the church’s
members that took a deep interest into each other’s lives outside of the
building they met in on Sunday mornings. This conversation spread through the
church like a fire and caused many people to get excited about the future of what
was once a bleak and discontent church community. Everyone was invested in this
idea; even the board and pastor were greatly interested in this conversation.
Soon the bottom fell out. The pastor resigned and took his
family with him. His daughter and son-in-law were the youth pastors and worship
leaders, and his other daughter also took part in leading worship. Everything
we had known that made the church a church walked out the door. I considered
myself good friends with the youth pastor and so it was very upsetting to have
this happen. I am not entirely sure what had happened to cause this abrupt
departure, but I have listened to both sides. According to the pastor a few
church members had been pushing him and his family to do more in the church,
and to be active in a way that he felt was not possible. He felt that more was
being demanded of him than what he could give without causing detriment to his
family or other responsibilities.
The story I gathered from the members that had been pushing
him was that they were asking him to take a larger part in the community that
was developing in the church. They wanted him to be more open and honest to the
congregation, to be less “pastoral”, to be friends with the people of the
church and not just their “leader”. Apparently the pastor had been meeting with
a mentor from the Assemblies of God who was helping him digest and vent about
pastoring a church. When he explained the situation and how some church members
wanted to get to know him in a more personal way his mentor strongly advised
against it. His advisor warned him that if he did, then it would jeopardize the
authority he held over the congregation. I also learned that about 2 months after
leaving he had another job as an associate pastor in a nearby city. As far as I
know, these were the two sides that led to the pastor leaving.
After the pastor had his last Sunday the church was left
with a massive void to fill, and the board began its search for a new pastor.
During the next three months or so the church got by. I stepped into the youth
pastor role, continuing the group I had been a leader in under the pastor’s
son-in-law. This was mostly because no one else in the church (other than me)
was interested at the time. Other members of my family stepped into roles that
the congregation was unwilling to fill. My mother had been leading a women’s
bible study for about year before the pastor left and continued to do so during
the void. My sister and a few women from the church had begun a children’s
ministry a few months before this departure and chose to continue it. My
father, who was the chairman of the board, was charged with leading the search
for a new pastor by the board and gave sermons some Sundays with breaks from my
brother who was studying to become a pastor and was being mentored by the
recently departed pastor. We also had various guest speakers from other area
churches speak on Sunday mornings. My father also invited a few pastors to come
and speak that the board was interested in hiring as the new pastor. One man
seemed to stand above the others as he was well liked by the congregation and
seemed to hit all of the right buttons with the board.
I took part in the first interview the board had with him.
We expressed our concerns about church leadership and how our church was one of
the people and not the clergy. We also expressed that we don’t want a pastor
that feels the need to control everything. The candidate agreed with us in our
concerns and assured us that he had no intentions of becoming controlling or
having to take part in every ministry. He let us know that his wife was gifted
in administration and was highly uninterested in becoming the women’s or
children’s ministry leader as many other pastors’ wives. I honestly felt that
this pastor and his family ware a perfect fit for our community.
For the next few months we had this new pastor speaking on
Sunday mornings while I organized the media and presentation materials (announcement
slides on a PowerPoint) and I helped the new unpaid worship leader put together
a song list for morning worship for which I also took part in by playing my
bass guitar as I had for the previous four years. I had taken a large role on
my shoulders and felt that many things would not operate without me because so
few people ever expressed interest in helping. I had even begun to organize the
schedule for those interested in cleaning the church every week. Not to mention
that during this time I was a full-time college student and working 15 to 20
hours a week as a custodian. I didn’t really feel overburdened at the time, and
the church was falling in love with this new pastor.
The honeymoon phase with the pastor ended though, at least
with my family. The pastor let me know that he didn’t want me to lead the youth
group that now had his children in it, although he did still want me to take
part in it. I’m not entirely sure if he just wanted control or if he didn’t
like that I was a little more progressive toward in my theology and methods
than he liked. He seemed unwary of having me in a leadership position and began
phasing my time sharing with students to every other week. I wasn’t upset with
the idea of sharing less with students; in fact I liked it because I had more
time to do homework and wasn’t preparing something every week.
The course of action the pastor took with my parents,
however, was completely different. At board meetings my father kept stressing the
importance of our new pastor to become accredited with the Assemblies of God.
We were an AG church, but he had his license through the Church of God
denomination. For our community to retain the building it had met in for over
50 years we would need an AG pastor or the AG would seize it, remove us from
the building and appoint a pastor of their choice. This tension between my
father and the pastor went on for months and my father eventually brought a
member from the AG District Counsel to observe a board meeting and answer some
questions we all had about AG bylaws and theology. The result of the meeting
was an even higher level of tension. The Counsel member gave a deadline for the
board and pastor to get him accredited and only increased the misgivings many
in the church community had with the Assemblies.
The tensions between the pastor and my father hit a high at
the next board meeting. The previous week he had written a letter to the board
as response to the requirements he received at the board meeting. The letter
outlined his desire to move the church down to a “mission” status and take two
years to become accredited with the AG. He wanted the church to become a church
plant instead of progressing from where the church was. At the board meeting he
openly told my father that he didn’t like him or his family. He thought that we
were controlling and had taken over the church. He thought we were holding the
church back and causing problems. My mother was accused of controlling the
women’s ministry and not allowing his wife to take on the role as the leader, a
position that she wanted no part of before. He cited that my father was the
chair of the board, my mother led the women’s ministry, my sister led the
children’s ministry, and I led the youth ministry. At the point of this board
meeting eruption my father was simply doing his job as the chairman of the
board, my mother was only leading a bible study and not a whole ministry, my
sister was one of four teachers in a children’s ministry led mostly by someone
else, and I was in the transition of leaving my leadership role as the youth
pastor to focus on my education.
My whole family felt deeply rejected after this
confrontation and felt like there was nothing we could do. Neither my father
nor the pastor were willing to talk things out or to clarify why we were all in
the positions that he saw. I think the
most frustrating thing was that we had no support from the other board members.
The church treasurer had been schmoozing the pastor and his family (apparently
something he did with every new pastor to get on their good side), and the
other board members were so afraid of confrontation that they simply agreed
with whoever was the loudest or most forceful in a disagreement. We were unable
to explain how we ended up in the positions we were before we decided to leave.
The next Sunday my father announced that we would be leaving and read the
letter that was given to the board by the pastor. After that I shared my
experience with the church and expressed my deep sadness in leaving a community
that I was once so attached to and that had previously fully supported me. We
all wished them the best and left.
I know that my family’s actions were not saint-like in the
least bit, but we were deeply offended and felt like we were under attack and
had no support from what we thought was our community of friends and family. We
tried to follow what the Bible says to do during conflict by addressing it with
a few people and then the congregation if nothing had happened.
So what happened to the community? I think there were a lot
of things that contributed to the break-down of the community, but most of all
it was pride. I have heard some people say when I tell this story that some
communication would have solved most of our problems, but what kept that from
happening? The answer is pride. The source of our pride and dissent are the
thoughts that if someone is having a problem with us then they need to seek us
out, or that our thoughts are always in the right. The reality is that whenever
there is an argument in the church community pride is involved. We set our
interpretations above all others instead of searching for the truth or a common
ground to work from.
A pastor from a church in my hometown writes an article for
the local newspaper each week. I usually don’t agree with him very often and
can be annoyed with the clichés he uses, but one article he wrote struck a chord
with me. He talked about how recently many congregations are crossing
denominational boundaries to form connections with other church communities. He
also stressed the importance of unity within the community of Christ. I’ll end my discourse with a quote from this
article:
