Time to Move On, Pastor John

Thank you all for coming along to our latest church family meeting. We know it’s been all too long since our last meeting (which you can read about here) and we sincerely apologize for that, but as many of you know we’ve been having some issues with Pastor John that we have had to work out. You know, on strictly a leadership level…but it seems that the word of our decision has unfortunately leaked out, and so we the leadership council decided to call a more formal meeting to get it all out in the open once and for all. Let me take this opportunity, before we get into the meat of the issue here, to bring everybody up to speed. Those of you who came to the last emergency meeting we held a few years ago will recall that at that time, we took the drastic decision of calling for an emergency vote about Pastor John and his rebellious, unbiblical attitude. Back then it was pretty clear that Pastor John was trying to get out of work and let other people in the church do his job for him. If you remember, he had gotten hold of some new-fangled books on church leadership (unbeknownst to us on the leadership council, of course) and as a result the man was clearly trying to shirk his responsibilities. Despite the fact that we were paying him to run the ministries of the church, if you can believe it, he actually tried to put together what he called “ministry teams” and to get other people to preach from time to time. He even had the gall to complain that his seventy-hour work week was too much! We tried to compromise and generously offered that he should cut back to a reasonable sixty-five hours a week, with the promise of an unpaid sabbatical in a year or two—and even maybe a vacation! I won’t go into more detail, but suffice it to say that we on the council were significantly concerned enough that we decided to call that emergency meeting to sort out the issue once and for all. So if you remember, at the close of our meeting, after we had brought everybody up to speed about the problems we were having with Pastor John, we held an emergency vote: the choices were either to let him stay (with a reprimand and ceasing all the rebellious behaviour) or to let him go. Of course as you all know, as a result of that vote we all decided to keep Pastor John on board, but with a reprimand. I’ll tell you right now, that wasn’t a pretty meeting with Pastor John after the vote. But we on the leadership council were being consistent with what Jesus taught about conflict resolution in Matthew 18! At that time we had to sit him down and confront all of his bad attitudes and behaviours, and asked him to give up reading those leadership books. We told him that all he needed to know about God and leading a church could be found in the Bible and that perhaps he needed to spend more time reading the Word of God than taking the word of some so-called “experts” in church leadership. We informed him that what this church needed was a real leader—somebody who’ll do exactly what he’s told! Now of course as you all are aware, ever since that little rocky patch we had back then, Pastor John saw the light and knuckled right under. In fact we’d even go so far as to say that the last few years have been a real “golden age” for our church. Pastor John really put his shoulder to the grindstone, getting right to work trying to grow the church and be a loving shepherd for his flock—just like the Bible says a pastor should be—just like Jesus, the Good Shepherd! But as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. After four years of faithful leadership and good work, it appears that the old problems with Pastor John have resurfaced yet again. We thought that we’d put all those old issues to bed following that emergency vote, and it sure seemed that everything was coming up roses and the future looked nothing but bright. To cut to the chase—we on the council have made the drastic decision to let Pastor John go. Yes, I know that seems like a shocking announcement, especially after the last few years have gone so well for our church. Why, thanks to God’s blessing, we even picked up a few families, and our budget improved to the point where we even entertained the idea of giving Pastor John a pay raise, a vacation or even that sabbatical we had talked about years ago! But now it looks as if all that effort we put in was for nothing. Now, we’re not here to bad-mouth poor Pastor John, as that wouldn’t be what Jesus wants of us, so we won’t go into all the gory details. Suffice it to say that Pastor John has apparently gone back to his “crazy” ideas that we supposedly drummed out of him all those years ago about church leadership and ministry teams—all of that nonsense. You’ll remember that he went to a pastor’s conference a few months back (luckily on his day off so he wouldn’t miss out on his normal weekly routine). And of course, they brought in some speaker with some hare-brained ideas about “new paradigms of church leadership” and apparently Pastor John though he’d bring them back to our church. Well, after a few months of that nonsense we decided to nip it right in the bud. Since we’d already had this problem once before we knew there was no point in going back over old ground and rehashing all those issues once again. This time around we knew what to expect and so that clearly explains the reason behind our decision. I’m sure you’ll agree we’ve done the right thing to let Pastor John go. It’s best for him, and clearly best for this church. This way he’s free to move on and try out his new ideas somewhere else. We wish him all the best. We’ve decided to be generous, since he has served here so many years. He’s already packed his things and moved out of the office as of yesterday. We’ll give him two weeks’ severance pay and he’ll have until the end of the month to move his family out of the parsonage. The farewell service will be this Sunday and we encourage everybody to come and say their goodbyes. No need to give any financial gifts, of course, since we’ve already taken care of him financially. Also, just as a side note—since he’s no longer the official pastor, he won’t be preaching any more but I’m sure one of us on the council can be persuaded to give the message this week…thanks for coming out tonight. Oh yes, just as a side note: we'll be putting together a steering committee soon to start the search for our new pastor. This time we pray that God helps us to get it right, as we're sure he will.