The business of church…

I have a personality defect, I confess, it is true. I find it hard to work and play with others. If I am in a situation where, for whatever reason, I am forced to do so, I can quickly become very frustrated. You see, I am very serious about certain things. Deadlines, publication dates, fulfilling promises, all of these things weigh on me. So what, you say? That sounds like a good thing, especially if you are an editor!

Before I accidentally pastored my own church, I inadvertently became a staff pastor at another church. Now, I wasn’t your normal staff pastor, because I wasn’t paid. I was a volunteer. However, to make matters worse, I was the "executive" pastor.

The executive pastor is the guy (or gal) they bring in to straighten out the mess that the prior administrator, or the senior pastor, has made running things up to that point. Let’s not worry about why I was in this unusual situation, let’s just talk about the situation.

At the beginning of my tenure, the prior "executive" pastor, had just stepped down. He was the program director for weekend services, and expert in drama and lighting, and he continued in this ministry. His very large team would stage elaborate children’s stories (Imagine Noah’s Ark with all of the animals and an actual Ark) and flamboyant dramatic interpretations which frequently found one of the team depicting Jesus.

The senior pastor had a dream. It was a big dream, a multi-acre campus surrounded by pine trees with a dome-like worship center as its set piece. Most of the budget was spent on renting the facility where the church met on weekends. Whenever the staff would look at a potential new location, the drama guy would assert that the staging alone would be a million dollars. The senior pastor would say, "Where can we put the pine trees." Other members of the staff had other comments just as non-helpful.

However, this didn’t hold us back. We were going to move. We were making offers on real estate and putting it in escrow. We were seeking permission from denominational officials for creative financing proposals. The denominational rules required committee approval for any real estate purchase or lease. Local congregations were not allowed to own real estate or for that matter, to have any sort of corporate existence. In order to purchase with financing you had to have 50% of the money in hand, 50% pledged and then you had to get on a waiting list to get the financing that was only provided from a limited fund, no outside financing was allowed. We had a better plan that required committee approval.

The day arrived for us to make our presentation to the committee. As I sat down at the head of the table, I saw a letter from the entire drama team upside down in front of a committee official. It was easy to see that the drama team had written a letter opposing the real estate purchase and accusing the pastor and I of financial improprieties. It was also clear that the leader of the ministry knew all about this.

It was an interesting meeting, for sure. Answering accusations from people who were not in favor of saying yes in the first place. Amazingly, we did get a sort of tentative approval for our highly creative plan. However, the rebellion in our midst was clear. Our drama team leader, former administrator-executive pastor, had to go. We fired him, and over 100 people stopped attending the church.

More to come…