Do Tell....

Lately I have been feeling alot of turmoil inside. But over the past couple weeks that feeling has been replaced with peace. That is surprising to me because up until a couple weeks ago I was very angry, vengeful, demanding God for justice, and wishing that I could wish (with a clear conscience) bad things on a few people. But now, I just feel very peaceful.
So now I'm going to write my version about what went down with our church. And since I feel at peace with it, my thoughts won't be clouded with hate and I hope I can portray that as I write.

I know that some people are confused about what has happened, some people are concerned, and some people are just curious. So this is for you, if you are one of those people who want to know.

Brace yourself. This will be long. Maybe you want to go fix yourself something to eat.....

In November 2006, Cris was called to a council meeting. Cris was told they just wanted to check in with him and see how the youth ministry was doing. That's cool. You see, the youth ministry was community based. Out of the (approximately) 50 kids involved, only 3 had parents in the church. So the youth group was comprised mostlyof unchurched kids whose, in most cases, only connection to The Church was through the BC3 youth ministry. So the people in our church didn't see much of the youth ministry at all since none of it happened on Sundays and only 5 kids from the youth ministry regularly attended our church. So this was a legit reason for the council to hold a meeting with Cris.

At the meeting, Cris gave a full report on how the minstry was doing and answered all the questions. They all seemed satisfied. BC3 Youth Ministries was very successful. As the meeting came to a close, it was brought up that some of the older people in the church had been offended by Cris. Cris' response was to find out who these people were and to meet with them and work things out and reconcile with them. His attitude was that if someone was hurt by him, he needed to know who so he could find out what he did that hurt them, apologize, reconcile, and prevent it from happening again. The council would not disclose any names. Okay, fine. Then Cris said that the council needed to bring these people to Cris if they would not come to Cris themselves or if Cris could not go to them himself because he didn't know who they were nor what he had done to offend them. That was the end of the meeting. My response to Cris was, "Who cares if you've offended some old fowgies in the church? You aren't their pastor." Ahhhh...what great pastor's-wife advice. I had just seen so much good come out of the stuff that Cris was investing his life into. I love it when the runaway teen, who even though they have made it clear that they don't want to follow God, will still call us and come stay with us until they can work things out with their parents. I love that 7 previously unsaved youth had accepted God's saving grace. I love that teenage new christians constantly ask questions and that Cris is able to teach them. I love that Cris was intensely mentoring and discipling many youth. And the rest of the church didn't get to see much of what God was doing in the youth of our community.

Then early January, the Sr Pastor, Dave, said to Cris "I've been avoiding you. There are still murmurings within the council about you." Cris told Dave he had to stop these murmurings and help Cris get to the root of the problem. If the council wouldn't help Cris reconcile to any of these people then Dave should help him by bringing these people to Cris.

On January 16th Cris had a meeting with Dave and RW (a council member). They talked about the weather for a couple minutes, then RW handed Cris a letter and said that it was time for him to leave. The letter said that Cris had two options. Either he would be terminated without cause effective immediately (that day) and be give 3 months severence, or he could resign and his last day would be January 31st and he would get 4 months severence. Wow. Where did this come from? It came from out of the blue.

Cris' response (amidst the shock, anger, hurt, disbelief) was that he needed more time than that. He felt that practically speaking they were asking him to do the impossible. He asked for an extention. His first preference was that he leave the end of June. It was a natural time of transition at the end of the school year and it would be easier on the youth ministry. He was concerned for the youth that he was mentoring and counselling regularly. He said failing that he needed at least until the end of February. They came back and said his last day would be February 14th. They took away his option of resigning but still offered 4 months of severence. The reason for this was because he could not collect EI if he resigned and they felt as though it would be better for him to have his employment simply terminated without cause.

Cris then called Head Office and talked with Pope John. Now, he actually is not a Pope, but that is what everyone calls him. The Pope had not been informed that Cris' employment was being terminated. He had not even been informed that there was a problem, nor was he nor anyone else at Head Office consulted during this whole process (or lack of). Everything was a surprise, a shock, to him as well.

Later that week Cris had a meeting with Dave during which Cris asked a lot of questions. The answers were vague and did not resolve anything in our minds. Cris wanted to know why he was being fired. Dave's answer was because some people found Cris offensive. Cris wanted to know why the proper biblical process was not followed in dealing with him and why he was not offered the option to reconcile with these people. Cris wanted to reconcile with these people even though he was leaving because he cannot stand broken relationships. He gets physically sick when he knows he is in broken relationship with someone, even if he does not know who that someone is. Dave's response was that there was no one who he needed to reconcile with. No one was specifically hurt by him, so there was nothing to reconcile over (This is where I got real confused). No one was angry at him or felt bad towards him and it wasn't anything specific that Cris had done and it wasn't any specific person who was hurt. So, no specifics. That was where my mind got all jumbled and I don't remember much more of the meeting.
Cris wanted to know if it was a performance-related problem, and Dave have an exuberant "No!" And expressed that the church thought Cris was doing a great job leading the youth ministry and reaching out evangelistically.
So then what was it??
Cris did speak his mind. He said that he felt that Dave had betrayed him. He said Dave could have at least had the decency to let him know what was happening. He said that during his 3 & 1/2 years Cris had always stood up for Dave when it came to the council, but Dave didn't stand up for Cris. Cris felt as though Dave should have had his back. They were supposed to be partners in ministry. He felt as though Dave had failed him in a big way.
I didn't say anything for the whole meeting. I wasn't really addressed by Dave, which is a good thing, because I would not have had anything nice or appropriate to say and it is quite likely that only curses and profanity would have escaped my lips. Not only was I deeply hurt, but the man I love most was hurt - even more deeply.

We still don't really get what went down. The whole story is not being told. And as more is revealed to us, I get even more confused.

Some history:
In the summer of 2006 Cris and I had a few brief discussions about whether or not we still belonged in Bragg Creek church. We talked unseriously about looking for other pastoral postings in the area. Our end response was that we just liked it here and we would wait for confirmation outside of us before we would move on. I never dreamed the confirmation would come about the way it did. What gets me is that Cris talked openly about this with Pastor Dave. He said to Dave in July or August 2006, "You know, I'm wondering if it isn't my time to go." Dave's response was "I'm not willing to go there yet." So we figured this was confirmation that we should stay longer. Little did we know that Dave would "go there" just 5-6 months later without even discussing it with Cris. It has been confusing and almost suffocating to emotionally work through what happened and how I'm feeling about it.

At a later meeting with Dave in February this year, Cris asked again why he was being fired. Dave opened up a little more and said something about some people thinking that Cris was arrogant. Now, I live with the guy. He's not an arrogant man. Yes, he is aggressive. Yes, he is passionate. He is outspoken. He is a to-the-point kind of guy. He is confident. But not conceited. And not abusive in any way. So the perception of Cris was faulty in my opinion. And we still don't know who perceives Cris in this way. And Cris still cannot rectify it with anyone who was hurt.

The letter the council gave Cris said that the Elders were in full knowledge and support of this decision to terminate Cris' employment. We later, in talking to an elder, found out that his "knowledge" of this was that he got a phone call from GH (council member) saying that they just wanted to let him know that they were terminating Cris' employment. This particular elder was not asked what he thought nor if he supported it. He was surprised but due to the history between Elders and council members he knew he didn't have a say because they were a very "stand-offish" closed group who wanted to run the show by themselves. And I guess legally speaking, the council is the one with the power. So I have a hard time believing that the Elders were involved in the decision-making. And to be honest, if I was in a position of leadership and someone else in a position of leadership told me that they and a few others thought so-and-so should leave the church, I wouldn't question it too much. Because if you have someone in spiritual leadership over you who is not wanted even by a small percentage of the leadership of a church, it doesn't make sense to fight for them to stay because there will always be people who are refusing to follow and it will just create discord among people who have differing opinions. And why deal with conflict when you can just get rid of it? I'm not saying it was the right thing to do...but it does seem like the easiest thing to do. But we are still faced with the unanxwered question: what was the conflict?

The letter the council gave Cris also stated that all the information contained in the letter surrounding the details of his employment termination and severence would be held in the 'strictest confidence'. A week later my friend (who is linked closely to a council member) says something about how it was good that Cris had 4 months of severence so we were okay financially for a while. Neither Cris or myself told her anything about any severence nor the amount of severence. So my trust in the council was not only shaken, but now I am feeling really sick about it because the leadership of this church who make decisions for the church that is attended by many many many people who I dearly love, cannot even follow their own guidelines or keep their own oaths.
Now, I don't care if the whole world knows that we are getting 4 months of severence. Let the whole world know. I don't know why it was supposed to be some secret in the first place. And I don't view it as a great wonderful act on the part of the council as some people do, because the laws of the land say that they are required to give us that much (well...they are actually giving us half a month more than they legally have to, so I guess that is big of them).

Now, I have some conspiracy theories of what went down in the council. (I'm getting all CSI-ish now.) But I don't think I'll share them because they aren't factual. And what I would have to say is just not nice and down-right judgemental.
But something to take note is that some of the churched kids (council members kids included) failed to connect with the youth ministry. And it didn't seem to be a problem to these families, but you never know if there is underlying resentment or hurt if their kids didn't connect. Quite frankly, my attitude was "Who cares??" These youth are getting spiritually fed in their homes. It seemed so much more important to me for the youth ministry to reach the unchurched kids who were buying in, coming from broken homes and crappy circumstances. So why should Cris focus his energies on kids who 1) didn't need him, and 2) didn't want him? Especially when there were so many kids who both needed and wanted him.

I'm just winding down here...
The part that upset me the most was that I believe that Dave knew that Cris would have resigned if only they had asked him. First of all, Cris had talked to Dave about how he was thinking it was him time to leave, and second of all, no pastor in their right mind would stay in a church if the leadership team came to them and said "We'd like you to resign." They could have worked something out that didn't look so suspicious and that didn't cause a lot of questioning and hurt to the congregation, youth, and us.

I am sure that the council think they handled everything appropriately. I have a different view point. I have to think that they just don't see what was wrong with how they handled things. I still believe that the council is comprised of godly people. Someone told Cris last week that godly people can do ungodly things and still remain godly. I don't really know how that works, but it is true that all the people on council are human (well, to the best of my knowledge they are) and that humans are just that....human. We screw up all the time, right? That's why we aren't gods. Because we mess up too much.

The bottom line of everything here is that we don't disagree with their decision for us to leave. We had felt God's prompting as well, and now I'm starting to wonder if we were just disobedient in waiting for confirmation from the church instead of seeking God more deeply for confirmation from Him. Maybe this is our punishment for not pursuing God further when we initially thought it might be time for us to leave.
So, we don't disagree with the decision, we just thought the process was horrible.

In hindsight, I can see God preparing us for this - sort of. I'm sure it will get more clear as time goes on.
Over our Christmas holidays, I had checked on-line several places to see if I could find any pastoral opportunities in a few different churches...just to see what was out there. I don't really know why I did it. Also, this past Christmas when we were driving out of Prince George heading back home, Cris said to me, "I could live here." Which really shocked me. I mean, really shocked me! The only good things Prince George has are my parents, their friends, and my sister and brother-in-law and his family who live there, and a really great swimming pool with freakin' cheap admission. So God was preparing us mentally.

The support we have received from others has been overwhelming. Overwhelming in a good way. We have been reminded that God validates the call on our lives, not people. We have been advised that we will either go on to serve others out of brokenness or out of bitterness and we have already chosen to not carry bitterness away. I mean, it might take some time, but I can already feel such a change in my heart this week that has come about because God is so gracious with me. We have also talked to others who have gone through similar situations....all of them pastors except one.

If you are a worshipper at BCCC (I'm not sure if anyone from there actually reads my blog regularly....I think it's just sort of random for a few people), please remember that this is my version of what has happened. If this information is sitting uneasily with you, I urge you to speak with the council. (I hope I don't get in trouble for writing about this since I think they wanted to keep it all a secret or "confidential" or whatever you'd like to call it. We don't like secrets like this...things kept in the dark leave room for sin to creep in. If they are brought into the light, the darkness cannot exist in it.) I do believe that God's hand is on them and that they can still make right decisions even though I think they messed this one up. Don't withhold from God's church. BCCC is a great church full of totally wonderful people. God has great things in store not only for us, but for the church we are leaving behind.

I cherish the relationships I have made with many people in the church. Many friendships are continuing to flourish and strengthen even though I am not part of the BCCC church body anymore...even though we were asked (or told, whatever) to leave. I have never never felt as loved by a church as I felt loved by this church. We have been blessed in many ways. Many many ways.

Ha! Did I say a few paragraphs earlier that I was winding down? I guess I wasn't really winding down.....

Actually, now I really am winding down...

*whew*. I feel so much better having written all this. I hope this clarifies some things for the people who want to know what is going on with us. I know it has clarified some things for me. I have learned so much in the past 2 weeks. I'm glad that I can take some positive things away from this experience. And hopefully leave the negative behind, right?