The Plot to Destroy

 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...

Weeds Part 3

My last post may have made it seem as though the students getting the youth pastor removed and the weeds leaving were closely tied events - they were not. The immediate aftermath of his termination left me as the responsible adult with a handful of students, a significant portion of whom were the children of the fundamentalists and were staunchly opposed to women leading males over the age of 12. The scion of one these "fundies" felt that he could be openly disdainful because he was informed by his parents that I was an illegitimate leader as a female.

Suddenly, I had some men in the church seeking to become leaders in the youth ministry because they were afraid that I could not "properly lead male students." While I normally welcome volunteer offers, these "helpers" had no prior experience in youth ministry nor did they have any real interest in teaching and discipling students; instead, they only wanted to be in the group so that the main leader would be a man. I politely declined the offers and found other volunteers elsewhere, mainly by beefing up the responsibilities of the committed Senior Class and bringing in Young Adults who were open to trying new things in their ministry lives. I kept these young leaders in roles where they could succeed, under an ever watchful eye. I knew that the situation was only temporary and within nine months, we hired a very good, young youth pastor.

Hiring this new guy did not make the fundies happy at all. He was (and is) the absolute opposite of what they consider acceptable. Worse, in their estimation, I had introduced him to our senior pastor and helped get him hired, despite the fact that he did not look or act like what a fundamentalist would expect from a youth pastor. They made one final concerted effort to get rid of youth pastor and me, but when the senior pastor would not accede to their termination demands, they left the church.

Had these folks merely left quietly, our church would be a lot better off today. Unfortunately, they did not leave quietly, they influenced others to leave and poisoned a small group who decided to stay on, continuing the fight underground. The underground force bided its time for over two years. What happened next came about when these weeds emerged from the bitter soil...

More On The Stubborn Weeds

The weeds, mainly the ones with the plans to take over leadership and remake our fellowship into their image, began to campaign quietly for the removal of certain staff. At the same time, there were a number of parents of young adolescents who had become disappointed that a popular young staffer had not been promoted to a full-time permanent position. A story was spread that this young person had been sabotaged in his position by others who were jealous of the young one's popularity. Their wrath was particularly focused on his immediate supervisor - the steady, albeit uninspiring leader of the youth group:, however, there was much more to the story that remained hidden behind the scenes. The weeds used the anger with the supervisor as the means to have him removed and replaced with their guy. Every week, the weeds' ringleaders worked side by side in ministry with the man they sought to replace and regularly reminded their temporary allies that he was the cause for their favorite leaving our church. And so the weeds turned the natural frustration of others into a reason for removing this leader, whom they saw as an obstacle to their takeover plans and lobbied to have their own candidate installed as a replacement.

I wish I could say then that I knew what was happening around me, but I didn't. I knew that the guy they wanted out lacked support from a certain crowd, but I never knew why; these people didn't prefer the young leader to the more experienced one. I was completely unaware, as were the majority of their allies, that the weeds plotted a mini coup to remove our pastoral staff and replace all of them with those aligned with their fundamentalist theology. Had members of their alliance known what the real intent, it would have fizzled immediately.

There were agendas and motives that seemed to compete against one another.  I was aware that the young leader had additional, more powerful foes that helped to engineer his exit, this had nothing to do with how these foes regarded the young man's immediate superior. This small group of church members had their own bad reasons for seeking leadership change and certainly weren't interested in bringing in someone who would be obliged to rival faction. They pushed their own candidate as a replacement instead.

Having parental support can be very important, but support is no substitute for skill and qualification. I learned very quickly that the one under the weeds' patronage was in way over his head - without education, experience, or skill to manage a group without an extreme mount of help. When that promised help dissolved overnight leaving me alone with him to lead the ministry, I knew it would be an even greater challenge. As soon as their chosen replacement had his first stumble, his patrons backed away from their endorsement and remarked, "That's what happens when you pick unqualified people for a job." The ones who had been duped by the weeds into supporting the change soon discovered that their teens didn't like this new leader any better than the one they got rid of; these kids had already checked out of our church, never to return.

The weeds were fine with the others leaving because he removed most of the public school students. Even if the weeds' own children weren't happy with their leader, they were certain that it would be a strict environment regardless. Until it wasn't, that is. One family from the weeds left to find a more constrained youth group for their child and forbade his interactions with his former friends at church. The result was a disaster; their son rebelled and left Christianity altogether. Within six months the remaining weed leaders realized that their man was not as easily controlled as they desired and even though most of the volunteer staff had quit, still one remained (me) who didn't fit their ideal.  They began to complain more openly about the church as a whole and specifically about the awfulness of the youth group. When the remaining students themselves refused to attend, the church had no other choice but to again seek a more satisfactory replacement.

The last of the ringleader weeds eventually left our church when their final demands were not resolved to their liking by church leadership; they led others out, but left a small cadre of like-minded friends behind.  Sadly, the ones left behind turned out to be more powerful and destructive to the church as a whole. More on that in my next post...

Reconnecting During a Quarantine: Stubborn Weeds

Nearly eight years ago I postponed posting to this blog. Things at work became crazy busy and the nature of my work made that aspect of my life off limits to blogging. My other life at church seemed to take a back seat to my professional career which I was trying to finish well prior to hanging it up for good. The youth ministry in which I served and had previously been headed by leaders with dubious character and/or qualifications was then being headed by someone of good integrity, experience and education. Not long before my last post, the final holdovers still in leadership from previous awful regime moved on and out of our church. Our youth group was significantly smaller, however a large graduating class of middle schoolers was coming up in 2013. The situation at church seemed hopeful and the future exciting. However, the "weeds" planted by the enemy are very stubbornly removed, even if new ones aren't being added.

The most nefarious weeds, I discovered, were the ones in which people pretended to be ones who cared about the spiritual welfare of others in our church when in reality, they sought control or power for their own selfish ambitions. The holdovers in youth ministry were one example of this, two of them had become involved with the group back in the days we had mistakenly hired someone who preyed on students for his own selfish desires. These two had their own selfish reasons to minister to students, none of which involved helping them learn to follow Christ. They instead looked to youth ministry to reconstruct their own self-described painful teen years into happier ones; they behaved not as responsible mentoring adults, but acted as giddy teenage peers wanting to hear the latest dating gossip. When the scandal over the leader's bad acts was revealed some months after he was terminated, their own participation in the coverup up of his deeds in order to stay in his good graces and remain in the group became known. Despite their role in the whole mess, they were allowed to remain in ministry and continued their divisive presence.

During that time frame, new people entered our church, some who had grand plans to turn our church into something that would be comfortable for them; it would be a church that had no room for "those people" - folks who looked differently with piercings, tattoos, or casual clothes, or who didn't fit into their fundamentalist ideal of what Christians should be. They were clever with these plans; they shared their goals only with others whom they believed were on the same page. Some wanted to be in positions of power in order to get their pet project or mission funded by the congregation. Others wanted a platform to showcase their skills. None of these people talked about wanting those who don't know Jesus to find Him.

These attitudes were also held by teenagers who garnered these thoughts from their legalistic parents. "Holiness" was gauged by how closely how others conformed to their standard, not how their heart reflected God's love and mercy.  It helped to force out an honorable, but unexciting youth pastor when these same folks demanded "someone else" (a someone who was more like them - homeschooled, for example, and who would enforce certain rules determined by the "fundies.")

At this point, the "weeds" had now reproduced on their own since no one had yet recognized their growing danger to the healthy and young plants of our church family.  More on these weeds next time.

The Youth Worker’s Lament

You were once a student in our youth ministry. Every week you came to youth group, both Sundays and midweek. You never missed a camp and hardly ever missed an outing. You even brought your friends who didn’t know Jesus to come along and you prayed regularly for their salvation. You read your Bible and prayed often; you were frequently the first to share the answer to a question asked in Sunday School. As you grew in your Christian walk, you branched out in ministry –working with younger kids in the children’s program, helping to lead worship or working behind the scenes in a support role. Eventually, you went on a mission trip and you were so inspired by it all that you believed it was possible that God was calling you to full-time ministry.

But then it happened . . . you graduated high school. It was time to move on to college. We warned you that you needed to stay connected to a good church if you moved away from ours or if you remained in town to get plugged into our college group. However, college groups aren’t nearly as exciting or adventurous as our youth group. Emotionally, you just wanted to remain a high school senior for while longer –with no pressure or expectation to be anything more than a youth in a youth group. It became easier and easier to sleep in on Sunday mornings, especially when you stayed out late Saturday night. It was too difficult to go out to Bible Study during the week because you needed to study or maybe because you now have a new group of cool friends who just aren’t into church.

Then you met that one person who showed a special interest in you; they thought you were smart, cute and funny. You felt the same way about them. It sort of bothered you at first that they weren’t a Christian; you had been warned that Christians shouldn’t date non-Christians but surely the youth leaders didn’t have this one in mind when they gave that warning. After all, your beloved is the one of the nicest, most moral persons you ever met, better even than most Christians you knew. Anyway, you thought to yourself, “How could a loving God judge my friend so negatively, condemning them to hell for not believing in Jesus?”

Not long after, you began to question some other things you had been taught in youth group: whether Jesus is the only way to eternal life, the Bible is God’s Word and is reliable, it’s important to be in fellowship with God and with other believers, and the idea that Christ followers should live righteously, avoiding sexual immorality. The last idea really got in the way of things with your beloved who wasn’t taught the principle that sexual activity was reserved for husbands and wives inside marriage. They grew up in a culture that allowed everyone to do anything with anyone as long as no one got hurt. Pre-marital sex was about determining “compatibility” with your partner and having fun. Co-habitation is just a form of trial marriage, taking the car for a test drive before locking the buyer into a contract. And so, day by day, bit by bit, you surrendered your Christian values to your lover, adopting their world view as your own. You have a whole new notion of what “fun” is now – parties, drinking and hooking up with the one you’re with. The fun you experienced in youth group was nothing like this.

 It’s been a few years since you were my student, but I have watched you from afar, observing how you keep moving further and further away from Christ and the things I taught you. I still remember the faithful student who, like the Apostle Peter, promised never to deny Christ nor fall away from Him. I also remember telling you about seeing ones just like you make the same promise and show a similar commitment in our youth group but who later went astray from their faith. You laughed and thought I was just being cynical and pessimistic, but here you are. I know that deep down, if you truly were a child of God, you know the desperate state of your soul today. You know you are not right with God and there is a misery caused by the Holy Spirit’s conviction of your sin that no amount of alcohol, drugs or sex can really wipe away. I know you long for the joy of your salvation you once knew. I plead with you to come back now. The longer you remain away from God, the more your conscience is seared. When God can no longer get the attention of His children through kindness, He often uses more drastic means, i.e. as the Bible teaches, the Lord disciplines those He loves. I know this from personal, difficult experience. Please come back to the Father who waits for you with open arms.

If on the other hand, you were never really born again into God’s family and your “Christian faith” you demonstrated in high school was just a ruse to impress people, you are among the most to be pitied. How sad that you were that close to the saving power of the Gospel but did not grab hold of the eternal life freely offered to you. I’m afraid that my words here will have no affect on your soul since you were able to resist successfully the pleadings of God’s Spirit in times past. However, if you can hear what I am saying, now is the time to be reconciled to God. You have no guarantee of tomorrow, no one is. In either case, I’m here to point the way to Jesus.

Farewell to 2011

It's hard to believe that the year is down to its last few hours. So much has happened in the past twelve months -some good, some bad. We've said goodbye to some friends who are now in the presence of Jesus while we welcomed the new life of little babies into the world. I saw High School students grow in their relationship with Christ and in turn help lead others to faith as well. The world remains a fearful and unsettling place to many, some put their trust in Mayan visions of the Apocalypse instead of putting their confidence in the Lord of All. Others look for the government to solve their problems, but political solutions seem inadequate. Strong dictators come and go while people "occupy" and protest that democracy is failing them.
In the midst of all this chaos, God remains in control; nothing happens outside His notice. If 2012 truly turns out to be the end, it is good to know that He is "with us always, even to the end of the world."

Back to Blogging

Man, it's been so long since I last posted here. It's funny how I can blog twice a day during Lightseekers Camp, but can't find the desire or time to put into my own blog. Someone recently asked if I blogged and was surprised to hear that I actually had one. What can I say? Getting my MBA sort of pushed me out of the habit and then mindless pursuits have kept me away. Perhaps I shall try the shorter, more pithy sort of blogging that Laura uses, however I'm not nearly as prosaic as she is. Maybe I should just comment on how the world is behaving these days (not very nicely, I'm afraid) or even relate about my current reading assignments. I need to ponder this, but hopefully, I'll be back again soon.

Closing Out 2010

As I sit here in the mountains, watching an old movie, I pause to reflect on this past year. Yes, this will be my one and only post for 2010, but I promise to begin blogging on this site again. For one thing, I am now done with school, finishing my MBA in late October. It had been the sinkhole for nearly all my creative writing; in all my years of primary, secondary and undergraduate education, I hadn't written as many papers as I did these past two years. Even though my last assignment was done over two months ago, it's taken me a while to shake the feeling that some assignment is due in the coming week. Perhaps once I finally see my diploma, it will truly seem real.

School was not the only great thing on my mind; work has had its moments of joy, but there have been far more moments of frustration and anxiety. The remaining 57 months before I reach retirement age cannot come too soon, I fear. The state of the economy does not help, but adds to the pressure.

The good news is that I celebrated my 50th birthday this year, bringing me that much closer to the day I can retire. It was a wonderful party, attended by nearly forty of my friends and family. My family too is growing - my brother got married and now he and his wife are expecting a son.

There have been many births this past year in the lives of my friends as well as those friends who are no longer with us. The world changes, yet the one constant remains is the Lord who created it all. He is our peace, our hope and our life. When things seem to crumble, He is there; when we experience joy beyond reason, He is there too. As we move into a new year, may we know the comfort of His presence and the strength of His righteous right hand.