Apomo

I thought I’d take a minute to write down why I decided to leave Sanx. I hadn’t done it to this point and I figure it’ll help me somehow to do so. Somehow writing stuff down helps me bring closure to stuff. I can’t explain it. It’s therapeutic somehow. I never said anything before because R said he read my blog. But now that we’ve changed addresses and he can’t read it I can what I feel w/out hurting his feelings or offending anyone unnecessarily.

There are three major reasons I left. There were alot of things that happened but I guess I can say they all fall under three catagories or reasons. There are prob some misc issues as well but I’d never make such a major decision based on misc stuff. Misc stuff = That’s just life.

First reason: I felt from the beginning that the issues between the main church and Sanx was due to a deep personality conflict between R and J, the two pastors. (I’m typing their initial just because I’m too lazy to type out the whole name over and over. not trying to be secretive or anything.)

It started with J just trying to get rid of R via his “support” of Sanx. J didn’t give a rip about Sanx, he just wanted R gone from his paid staff. R retaliated to this insult by being passive aggressive in his work at the church. This led to further anger on J’s part as it “confirmed” what he thought of R in the first place and it gave in ammo to assassinate R’s character in front of the board. Both guys wouldn’t say what was really bothering them; they just sniped at each other pushed each others buttons until finally J felt he had cause to fire R. Of course this action caused and uproar and it just went on and on as more and more people got drug into it.

I advised R to tell our side to keep their mouths shut but they didn’t and before long both “leaders” escalated the situation into an all out verbal war. Stupid, dumb, poor leadership on both sides. For about three months there it was just one volley after another. This angers me and causes me to want to leave because neither side will give into the other, neither side will turn the other cheek, neither side will take the high road. In other words both side acted like a bunch of little spiritual children when they should have acted like spiritual adults. It’s as if it gives them meaning and purpose to wallow in the mud.

This was a major issue with me because here we are saying that we’re starting a church based on the law of love and the pastor is behaving in such an unlovely manner. Even when it was brought to his attention on several different occassions he insisted on behaving immaturely and selfishly as his continued obstinence caused damage to the very church he was trying to birth. To me, this is inexcusable. If Sanx survives, this reputaton as a maverick, rebellious, mean spirited church will dog them for years. I think this is a tragedy and was completely avoidable if the pastor had conducted himself with honor and dignity; especially in light of the repeated efforts by me and others to advise him in this area.

Second reason: This brings me to my second reason. I do not feel that R has the aptitude or the spiritual gifting to be the pastor or spiritual leader of a church. I don’t believe this is his calling and it’s evident by the complete mess of things his leadership has wrought on this church. In fact, in a survey I conducted as part of a seminary assignment the top 10 leaders of the church (including R and all his family and the board) the weakest link in our church was scored as leadership. I think that’s telling.

When we started out I thought we had a cohesive vision for the mission and direction of the church based on the numerous, exhaustive conversations R and I had over the previous 2-3 years. However, once I discerned that this vision and mission was not actually happening I quizzed R on two occassions as to his vision for the church and on both occasions his answer was “I don’t know.” The last time I talked to him about this I asked him what his vision was for the next five years, the next year, the next 6 months and everytime his answer was the same, “I don’t know”. I applaud his transparency but this is not a good thing to hear coming from your leader. Especially so when you personally know EXACTLY what you would do if you were in charge.

He had no plans even in general for the spiritual formation and discipleship of the members we currently have and no plan for growing the church. I was astounded to say the least. Especially so since I had given him innumerable ideas over the last six months for both of these issues and when asked he acted as if he had no idea what we should or could do. I could only shake my head in disbelief. How can a guy say he’s called to lead and pastor when he has no vision or future mission of the church he’s called to pastor? How can he act as if he’s not even thought about spiritual formation? I’m confounded by this reality. On top of that he doesn’t have the natural abilities to organize, plan, and manage his time and resources effectively to bring to bear any plan that he has. He’s good about talking about ideas, but not so good in actually doing something. He’s creative, but it doesn’t seem like he wants to do the work necessary to make creative things actually happen.

Third reason: When we talked about this plan for all those months before we started the church it was always in the context of he and I leading the church as co-equal partners. We felt (I thought) that this would model a new way of leading a church as his giftings and weaknesses and my giftings and weaknesses are complementary. In other words we’re in many ways yin and yang as far as our giftings and talents. The idea (I thought) was that we’d defer to each other in our giftings and discuss the misc stuff.

I all for this idea (and still am) but from the get go he claims that the prophetess said he was supposed to be the pastor and not to be afraid to call himself the leader. My first mistake was to go along with this even thought I had a strong feeling it wasn’t correct. But he said we’d still operate as a team like we discussed so I went along with it. Big mistake. Turns out the prophetess denies ever saying this to R. I’m not sure who to believe. However, I do know that he’s made a mess of things and that can’t be God’s will.

I also know that I am gifted in leadership, exhortation, teaching, administration, and prophecy and none of my gifts were used in this six months except to a small degree my gift of administration. However, I’ve always been pigeon-holed as and administrative weanie and I refuse to allow my other gifts to unused. That line from Buckingham’s book really struck my soul, “Discover what it is that you don’t like to do and stop doing it.” I took that to heart. God gave me other gifts and he intends for me to use them. If my current situation won’t allow me to do so then it’s my responsiblity to wipe the dust off my feet and move on. That’s what I did.

Case in point, R has no vision for the church. I could vision cast my vision for the church for hours at a time. R has no passion for spiritual formation. I all but begged to be allowed to start a small group and to create a discpling course for the current members. I was discouraged from doing so. I know exactly what I would do in this regard. I could go on and on about specific examples of where I tried to use my gift of leadership in the last six months and was ignored.

It’s difficult to exhort and/or teach the members if you’re never allowed to speak to them as a group. I was never asked to speak on Sun the entire time even though the last two Sunday’s R was overwhelmed and/or sicker than a dog reacting to pain meds. If ever there was a time to ask me to help out that would have been the time. But he insisted on doing it himself and the result was mediocre at best.

In the area of prophecy I prophesied to him on at least five major occassions that if the message had been heeded much heartache and suffering would have been minimized if not outright avoided.

I remember in Oct, long before our first service in Jan or even before anyone even knew of our plans to start a new church, I told R that I felt strongly that it was imperative that he, I, J and all our wives sit down and talk about this thing and get everything figured out beforehand so that when we launched it that we all were on the same page. I knew that if we didn’t we’d all have different views of the project and it’d produce confusion. There were three things I said we needed to resolve: Is it a church, a church w/in a church, or an alternative service of the main church? Who is in charge and how does this relationship work and how will the lines of communicaiton be set up? Finally, how is the money to be handled?

As it turns out all three of these issues became thorns in our flesh and were the issues the divided J and R and the two churches over the last six months. Why? Because all three parties involved had different views and expectations of the project. I all but begged the two guys to sit down and talk but they both shined me on. And confusion reigned.

The second time I just got a strong feeling that something bad was going to happen w/the money between the two churches. I told R that we really should ask Ramona to count and keep track of the money because something bad was going to happen w/the money. He ignored me for two months and sure enough one day he was all upset because he felt that J ripped us off and there was no way for us to prove or disprove it because he’d never asked Ramona to keep track of the money. And this money issue is still a bone of contention as Sanx feels they got ripped off and J feels like we’re crazy for thinking so.

Then when everything blew up and he got fired and everybody was pissed off and throwing verbal bombs at each other I strongly advised R to gather everybody from our side together and tell them to vent in private in this gathering and then ask them to stop talking about it in public and to not bring anybody else into it. I felt this was wise in that we’d not implicated in further acrimony and all the negative stuff from that moment forward would be from the other side. But I was ignored.

Another time I told R that we needed to sit down with Z and S and tell them what was happening w/the two churches. R said he didn’t want do it. I told him I felt strongly that this was important (for reasons I stated in an earlier post). He said no and so now Z and S are leaving when I believe we could have avoided having them leave.

Then I also told R that I felt the Lord really wanted us to do something positive for the other church and for J in particular. I felt this would help put a salve on the ill relations and would help us shape our reputation instead of letting our enemies shape our reputation. I brought this up several times and was quashed.

There are several other times I spoke prophetically like this and was ignored and exactly what I said would happen happened. Again, I have spiritual gifts given to me by God and I’m not being allowed to operate in them by a micro-manager, control freak, ministry hoarding pastor. So, with all the ways God wants to use me and I’m not being allowed to operate in my gifts here leads me to believe it’s time move on.

About two months ago I sat down with R and outlined many of these concerns and said I thought we needed to revisit the co-pastor/partner thing with the two of us. I was very positive in the way I talked about it and didn’t say anything negative about him. He said he agreed and we devised a plan of action as to how we were going to make this happen and make the shift to me being much more visible and much more influenctial in decisions and ministry. In the following eight weeks he did absolutely nothing to make this happen. I took that to mean that he didn’t want to do it. If so then I must move on because I am too old to wait around and serve in the gift of helps, a spiritual gift where he scored very high and I scored very low.

I prayed about it and the Lord spoke to me in different ways through several people , sermons, books, and such that let me know it was time to leave. I’m disappointed but what can I do?

I think R is a great guy. I think he loves God and really wants to do what’s right. I believe that he’s tremendously gifted both naturally and spiritually. But I think he’s trying operate outside of his giftings and the results are showing it. I think he feels the pressure from within himself as it regards unmet personal expectations in ministry and I feel that well-meaning people around him are pressuring him to be something that he’s not. He’s a people pleaser and thus is easily pushed into things he doesn’t really want to do. There’s more to it than that but I think this is a large part of what happened. In fact, I think so highly of him and his gifts that if I’m in a position in the future to hire him on a church staff w/in the area of his giftings I’d do so in an instant. He brings great value and skill to the ministry, but just not as a senior pastor.

Unfortnatley he thinks more highly of his leadership abilities than he ought and I think he should re-think his role as pastor. But I didn’t feel he’d take all this from me and I felt that if I explained this stuff to him that in the re-telling of it to his closest friends and family that my side would suffer in the telling and I’d be made out to be the bad guy. So I just told him I felt was time to move on and left it at that. That’s true enough.

To protect myself I told most of this to four key people who are still involved in all that mess, two on each side of the debate. My hope in doing so was that they’d be people of integrity and stick up for me in the event that I am slandered somehow in private. It was also too that I hoped that somehow it would help fix the situation, although I’m not exactly sure how. I guess my thinking is that the truth of the matter needs to told to people of influence and then let the chips fall where they may.

In all this I’ve tried to behave with kindness, gentleness, diplomacy, wisdom, and honor and I think that for the most part I’ve accomplished this goal. My last round with this bunch of people went badly in part because I behaved badly and reacted poorly to their mistreatment of me. But I’ve not let this happen this time and I feel I’ve passed the test. From here on out I’ll not talk about it unless asked about it and even then my response will be limited according to who’s doing the asking. I’m just going to try to move on, forgive R for his mistreatment of me and the church, and try to keep our relationship positive. I think he’s going to need a friend in the next few months. I gotta feeling about that.

There are lots of other things that bothered me but they were basically just that misc stuff that goes with the territory of church work. But these three areas really are what comprised the proponderance of evidence that caused me to leave.

Ok, I feel better for typing it out. Whew.

I had the music guy from Sanx over for dinner Tue night, along with his girlfriend. I felt I owed him an explaination for my departure seeing as how I was the one that got him involved w/Sanx. I didn’t feel it was right to bring him in the front door and then me go out the backdoor w/no reasons given.

Well, they both seemed to appreciate my efforts and our discussion went well. They said they didn’t know all the particulars of what had been going on but they knew there was alot of tension between Sanx and the other church and it bothered them. Funny thing is that as we were talking it confirmed another prophetic feeling I had that I told R in Mar or Apr that we ought to sit down and talk to Z&S and tell them what was going on because if we didn’t then it would affect them negatively. R said he didn’t want to do that and sure enough this non-communication affected them negatively and they have all but decided to leave as well. Z said that he has no motivation to learn new songs and his songwriting creative juices have shut off again and it has been since about the same time I told R we needed to talk w/them. Had we done so I believe we would have had a different outcome w/Z. But we didn’t and he’s just about gone too. That’s such a self-defeating way of doing things in my opinion.

People don’t like being left in the dark, if they have the correct information then they can make informed decisions about stuff, and in this case they would have understood the real situation and not have felt as negatively toward R and Sanx. But, we allowed the other side to define the situation which obviously in this situation means Sanx looks bad. I just don’t understand the logic of not keeping our ministry team informed. And, as I said would happen, Sanx is going to lose it’s biggest asset. But I think this error flows from the reality that we were a ministry team in theory only.

R knows Z is prob going to leave. He mentioned it the other day. Again, if I were in charge and I knew my music guy was prob going to leave I’d be proactive and try to open the lines of communication to tlak to the guy and try to salvage the situation. But R won’t talk to him. I don’t know why. He’s already got a plan B lined up in case Z leaves. The prob is that R’s plan B isn’t God’s plan A and plan A is walking out the door because of R’s mismanagement and not becuase God wants it to happen.

It seems to me if you’re a leader you should make people feel important and needed by fighting for them. If you’re a spiritual leader you should fight for the will of God to happen instead of meekly letting the enemy make a mess of your group. If you just meekly let them go w/out any attempt at communication and help then you’re communicating to them that they don’t matter and are unimportant. Ministry leaders are not commodities that are easily replaced. Z is the most spiritual thing happening at Sanx and Sanx can’t afford to lose him. This plan B is not a spiritual group of people that can lead people into spiritual worship like Z does so naturally. It’s just not good thinking in my opinion.

But, again, these are just some of the reasons I left. It’s discouraging to think about.

I made it my goal to lose 2-4 pounds a week until I lose all the weight I need to lose. I hardly even tried this week and I lost three pounds. Yippee! Now, just 97 pounds to go.

I was cleaning the carpets in our bedroom today when my wife said somebody was on the phone asking for me but wouldn’t give their name. I almost hung up on the guy figuring he was a telemarketer or something. But I took the call, and I’m glad I did. It was a guy from 5 years ago who kinda did me wrong and stole from me. No, it wasn’t my former pastor but this thing happened at the same time.

I had formed a stock car racing team to help mentor some teenage boys I knew who had poor or nonexistent role models in their lives. I bought a totalled out race car, got a place for us to put it, loaned all my power tools, recruited the boys, got sponsors…basically I did everything to get it up and running. A guy I knew got involved and we eventually moved our operation to his house and my plan was to give the team to him once I felt he could/would see it through. It was pretty cool. We completely disassembled the car and motor and rebuilt it from the ground up. We even cut off all the skin and reskinned it. Anyway, we got it out on the track and it was a cool deal. Some of the boys still talk about it when I seem them from time to time.

Anyway, this was going on the same time all the crap from my former pastor was happening. I got fired and the next week I handed the team over to my apprentice. I was too hurt and wounded to do anything for anybody else and I figured he’d keep it going. But, he didn’t. In a couple of months he dismantled it, sold the car and kept the money for himself and kept all my tools for himself too. I was pretty upset about it and so were the sponsors I’d brought on board. But I never saw him again and I felt I was too angry to talk to him face to face w/out ripping his face off. I was pretty messed up back then. So I ignored it and over time I just let it go. From time to time I’d remember it and just kind of sigh sadly. I’d heard he moved out of state and figured I’d never hear from him again.

Well, he called today out of the blue. He apologized and said he was really wrong from doing what he’d done. We talked about it and now it’s all water under the bridge. It already was in the past in my mind but it was good for him to get it off his chest. We talked for quite awhile and he promised to hook up for dinner when he comes back to town to visit his wife’s family. That’s cool.

I just met w/Rustin and ended my official involvement with Sanctuary. I just cannot in good conscience continue to support what I see happening there, plus I am not being allowed to operate in the areas of my dominant gifts so I feel like I really have no choice. Even so, I feel empty and sad about it. What can you do? I don’t have any specific plans at this point although my prof from last quarter told me there are a couple of church plant opportunities nearby that he’d like to talk w/me about. We’ll see. I’ll email him next week about it. I’m on the steering committee for the Community Ministry of the Baptisty church we’ve been attending the last month. I had lunch w/the Community Pastor last week and she asked me to be on the committee since I have ministry background and a fresh set of eyes on how things go at their church. Kind of weird to break up with one church over lunch and spend dinner helping another church improve their processes. Anyway, Rustin was really cool about it and I think that we’ll continue to be friends which is really important to me. I’ll continue to be connected there on an informal, occassional basis but not in an official way. Damn, it’s still a bummer. He told me he thinks Zach the music guy is leaving too. I think so too. That’s too bad. He told me that the other church is planning to start a Sat night “alternative” service and he thinks they’re trying to lure Zach over there. I think that sucks and I think their service will flop because they have no idea what alternative is and according to the pastor they have no vision for this type of service. So I’m not sure why they’re doing it. I talked to the other pastor yesterday and he never mentioned it to me. I’m having dinner with Zach and his fiance tomorrow night and I’ll make sure to tell him that he ought to stay away from the other church.

We went to a couple more churches this morning. The second was our neighbor’s church. It just aigght. They’re a Saddleback wannabe and it was just ok. I actually liked the first service we attended at another church a little better. About halfway thru the preaching I was thinking to myself, “Hmm…the music was pretty good, the best I’ve heard in Lodi so far. Still not as good (read energetic) as I’d like, but still good. The preaching was a little long but still pretty good. The pastor is a little up tight but still good. The music balances it out for me. I’d put up with the preacher because I like the music.” Ok, so that was what I was thinking about the time he wrapped up his sermon. He ended his sermon and then proceeded to announce to the church of about 400 that he had made the decision to fire the music pastor. Dude! What a bummer!!! Now I don’t know if I want to go there. The pastor was really cool how he did it and he was very complimentary toward the other guy and the other guy gave a really good speech and it was all warm and fuzzy and we all gave him a long standing ovation. I thought he handled it extremely well for a guy that got fired. The pastor said it was a purely a matter of “style, fit, and the future of the music ministry of the church.” I actually appreciated how the pastor did it; I thought he did a good job although I wondered why he felt the need to let this guy go when he doesn’t have a replacement. He said they were in no rush to replace the fired guy but then I wondered why the rush to get rid of him? Basically I got the impression that the pastor wanted the music to be less edgy and “progressive” which I translate to mean they’ll ratchet it back and become less alternative worship and more CCM. Too bad. CCM sucks. I approached the fired guy after service and told him that I was thinking of starting a church and maybe we could talk. He took my number and said he’d call.

Over the weekend I went online and did 6 spiritual gift tests. I ran the gamut from conservative Baptist tests (Charasmatic gifts are verboten!) to the wildly charasmatic ones that had as many spiritual gifts as the Hindus have gods. Without exception everyone of them indicated my dominant gift is Leadership followed very closely by Exhortation, Teaching, and Propecy. Then I did the secular test I mentioned below and came up the same unwavering result in regards to leadership. In fact on the secular test I scored 100% on the Leadership scale.

As I do all this I am reminded of the impact of the concept of self-awareness as I discovered it in Brennan Manning’s writings affected me just a few months ago. I am coming to that self-awareness mindset and it’s kind of cool.

Looks like my good buddy N8 fixed up all my spamming issues. Thanks N8. At last count I had over 9000 comments to be moderated before he changed over the software and added some plug-ins (whatever that means) so hopefully my fan base of 3 people will be able to comment again. Here’s one for N8 (lifting beer mug and slopping some on my shirt).

I went on-line to all the major evangelical churches in our town and none of them do any sort of mid-week Bible study and none of them have a Sunday night service. The Sun night thing wasn’t all that surprising but I was a little surprised that these “Bible believing” and old school Baptist churches don’t have mid-week Bible studies. Everybody has small groups but in my experience those aren’t the same as a good ‘ol Bible study. Most of them do have classes on Sun morning, but that’d be the Sun School thing. Hmmmm….I know it isn’t earth shattering or anything but I found it interesting to note.

According to the Kiersey Personality Sorter I am what they call a Mastermind. Here’s how they describe my temperment.”

Of the four aspects of strategic analysis and definition, it is the contingency planning or entailment organizing role that reaches the highest development in Masterminds. Entailing or contingency planning is not an informative activity, rather it is a directive one in which the planner tells others what to do and in what order to do it. As the organizing capabilities the Masterminds increase so does their inclination to take charge of whatever is going on.

It is in their abilities that Masterminds differ from the other Rationals, while in most of their attitudes they are just like the others. However there is one attitude that sets them apart from other Rationals: they tend to be much more self-confident than the rest, having, for obscure reasons, developed a very strong will. They are rather rare, comprising no more than, say, one percent of the population. Being very judicious, decisions come naturally to them; indeed, they can hardly rest until they have things settled, decided, and set. They are the people who are able to formulate coherent and comprehensive contingency plans, hence contingency organizers or “entailers.”

Masterminds will adopt ideas only if they are useful, which is to say if they work efficiently toward accomplishing the Mastermind’s well-defined goals. Natural leaders, Masterminds are not at all eager to take command of projects or groups, preferring to stay in the background until others demonstrate their inability to lead. Once in charge, however, Masterminds are the supreme pragmatists, seeing reality as a crucible for refining their strategies for goal-directed action. In a sense, Masterminds approach reality as they would a giant chess board, always seeking strategies that have a high payoff, and always devising contingency plans in case of error or adversity. To the Mastermind, organizational structure and operational procedures are never arbitrary, never set in concrete, but are quite malleable and can be changed, improved, streamlined. In their drive for efficient action, Masterminds are the most open-minded of all the types. No idea is too far-fetched to be entertained-if it is useful. Masterminds are natural brainstormers, always open to new concepts and, in fact, aggressively seeking them. They are also alert to the consequences of applying new ideas or positions. Theories which cannot be made to work are quickly discarded by the Masterminds. On the other hand, Masterminds can be quite ruthless in implementing effective ideas, seldom counting personal cost in terms of time and energy.