I realized that I never finished the story of the Weeds I began nearly two years ago. As I said many of the Weeds went elsewhere, but a few them went underground and bided their time. The Senior Pastor who had refused to acquiesce to their demands to remove leaders they didn't liked accepted a call to another church. An interim pastor was hired to preach and lead the congregation through the transition. The weeds who remained, had gotten themselves elected to the leadership group -in fact, one family controlled a third of the votes and also completely controlled one ministry committee. This family never got over the fact that the previous youth leader had been removed for good cause and blamed me as the reason their friend of many, many years was let go.
Initially, they took advantage of the Interim's lack of familiarity of with our particular style of congregational politics, but after a while, they recruited him fully into their camp with false narratives about people and events. They tried to sneak significant changes to the budget past an unsuspecting Board and congregation, only to be caught by the Church Moderator when the unapproved document didn't meet the 2 week publication notice required by the governing documents. The weeds and their allies were livid that they were stopped in their tracks. How dare this Moderator interfere with progress and their vision for the church? Something must be done, they decided, to remove this Obstructionist and Troublemaker! Unfortunately for me, I was that Moderator. I became the object of their scorn and the target for removal from the church.
As the year ended and the new one began, I was suddenly called into the Interim's office along with the Office Manager and told that I needed to find a life outside our church. That seemed odd because I had prepared, during my working years as an engineer, to be doing exactly what I was doing as a retiree - free to serve in whatever ministries I wanted, all the the endorsement of the previous Lead Pastors and the Board Chair. Suddenly, I was told that there was "no such thing as a full-time Volunteer" on staff and that I was a fool to think that God had called me to do ministry in any way. I heard "stories" from this man about how I had "bullied" this person or done such and such to someone else. Every thing he accused me of was an out and out lie! The Office Manager who had known me for years,told him as much. But this "pastor" who only saw me a few days a week, for less than six months said, "he knew better" than she did.
I had never experienced something so surreal - here was someone with a list of grievances without any evidence to support them. Where were these anonymous people who were making these claims? (When the ones he claimed who had issues with me were asked again some time later, they all denied it or downplayed their significance. What they ALL had in common was that they were in a group or groups led by Mr. Weeds, the ringleader.) Didn't need them, the pastor said, he knew the truth and the fact I didn't agree with him meant I was insubordinate. Not only that, I was also emotionally unstable, if not mentally ill with low emotional intelligence. (Now in my previous line of work, if any of what he had said were actually true, I would not have had my job for 31 years. The truth was that I was often praised in my performance appraisals for my emotional intelligence and the ability to work well with others.)
And so began the systematic removal of me from ministry at the church I had attended since birth...
