Getting over it...with friends

Meeting with some old friends this weekend, I had the pleasure of catching up with our coming and goings over the past nine years. As with all really good friends, we just picked up from where we were before and ran the video of our lives fast forward to the present moment. The most dramatic was the growing up of our children. With our daughter on the cusp of turning eighteen, our friends expressed their surprise at how she had grown up in the past decade. Their own daughter, at twelve, is a maturing young lady who interacted well with our daughter. We were proud of both girls.

The current of our conversation, however, turned around a church we both worked at those many years ago. Our friend, Louisa, was the director of the after-school program and I was the pastor of a mainline Protestant church in Bayside, a neighborhood in the Borough of Queens in New York City. Our relationship with the leadership of that church led us into some of the most convoluted arrangements of power dynamics and relationships either of us had ever experienced.

Whether owing to the church's ruggedly independent past, or to its culture of internecine struggles for control, my friends and I agreed that the ways of doing things there were a virtual how-not-to of doing business. It was a case of many who wanted to be in charge with its perquisite recognition and honor. But at the same time, no one would claim responsibility for something gone wrong or a decision that was ill-received. Finger pointing was the order of the day after the multiple meetings, too many for a church under a hundred members. Louisa and I frequently got caught in the crossfire and more frequently became the fall guys for the know-nothing leaders who hastened to save face with each other. Not surprisingly, most of the congregation remained oblivious to these goings on among the elected leadership which elected itself off and on the various boards and committees, with perhaps a single exception.

Navigating this place could qualify as swimming with sharks on Wall Street only with the patina of piety attempting to soften the more egregious actions and motivations. I was the first one down. When it became clear to me that I had to choose between what I thought was a preferred path, the leadership, in the words of one of them, had to "put a stop to me and my agenda." Upon hearing this, I resigned in the Fall of 2000. Coaxing my wife and me into a kind of kangaroo court meeting of the entire congregation, one of the prominent leaders delivered an eloquent oration demonstrating, he hoped, how my ministry at this church was characterized by "an inauspicious beginning, an uncertain middle, and a disastrous end!" Indeed. One would have thought that I ran a prostitution ring in the parsonage, instead, I merely ran afoul of the various leaders who expected me to be both Rev. Rick Warren (a big shot megachurch pastor who delivered the protracted Invocation at President Obama's Inauguration) and the official church sycophant at the same time.

It was amazing any sane person could survive such a climate, but then I never said I was perfect or that I possessed clarity in this situation. A bully would have done better: kick ass and take names. This mild mannered teacher is no superman and so I flew out of there with my family intact before anyone could find a cliff to throw me off.

Well, it's nine years later and perhaps it's time to get over it. I landed in a nice pastorate afterwards and, after six years there, became a public high school teacher. I retain my ministry credentials and fill in for colleagues whenever the situations arise, however, my experience at this church has taught me a few lessons. One is never to trust churches that advertise themselves as "exciting," or employ the phrase, "God loves you and so do I." Another is, churches are not perfect; only Christ is perfect. Not that I thought this or any other church is perfect, but I went in expecting a higher standard of behavior than I encountered. A third lesson is, look before you leap. I went there initially to escape an unfavorable situation elsewhere and with the full knowledge of what happened to the minister who preceded me. He too left the pastoral ministry and now works in human resources. I would like to say that I should never have gone there in the first place, but that would be too self-serving and, ultimately, untrue to what I believe. A greater purpose lies out there, but then that's an entirely different subject which I am loathe to broach at this or any other time.