OUR ALIEN ABDUCTION

Last week, I finally wrote about my abrupt firing from my previous church and the devastation it caused. Today, after seeing the stats on my website go through the roof and being overwhelmed by the stories of other abused ministers, I need to speak clearly as to why abrupt firing for a minister is so specifically cruel and hateful.

Frankly, the number of responses I’ve received have left me nauseous. I pray none of you ever have to tell their children that their church has told them to go away and never come back.

Every year, hundreds of pastors and their families suddenly go missing. It’s never reported, and strangely enough none of their church members seem to know what happened to them.

No one, that is, except for the power-brokers who sent them packing.

No, they weren’t abducted by aliens. Instead, some wealthy and influential bullies, usually due to some personal preference of their own, decided they had to go. 

How do the bullies manage to pull this off without being pariahs in their churches? Here’s a play-by-play of how it happens most all of the time…

The minister is brought suddenly before the church Personnel Committee, or maybe the Deacons or Trustees, and told something like this:

“Last Sunday was your last day in your position. At this point, nothing you do or say will change that.

Now…you need to sign this resignation letter, or we will fire you on the spot. 

If you choose to resign, a severance will be provided for you over the next several months.  But you will sign this agreement (commonly known as a “Non-Disclosure Agreement” or “NDA” for short) promising to not say anything disparaging about the church or why you resigned.

If you keep your mouth shut, the money will keep coming for a while and you can feed your family. 

But if you breathe a word of what we did, we’ll cut you off without a cent.”

Why do pastors sign? These bullies usually know one strategic thing about pastors:

• They know ministers are considered “self-employed” and are NOT eligible for unemployment benefits. You read that right – zero.
  • So instead of fighting for himself and his reputation, the pastor will have no other choice than to take the money to support his family while he looks for other work.

These committees know that to minimize any “blow back”, they need to cut off all communication from this former “employee” to the congregation. The NDA does that perfectly. The minister knows that if he talks to a church member, they will inevitably ask him why he resigned. And if he says why, his severance will stop and he will have no way to support his family. So the minister, and his wife, and his children, crawl away in the middle of the night like criminals. Many are so humiliated by the experience, they never reveal what was done to them.

This is the next thing the committees know: the minister’s side of the story will be kept from the congregation during the period of the severance. Without the minister gone, the congregation will conclude one of two things:

A. The minister must have received a better opportunity and didn’t care enough about them enough to even wait and say goodbye.  

B. The minister was caught doing something wrong, most likely sexual immorality or financial indiscretion, and stole out of town in shame.

Whichever of these reactions the congregation chooses, it is a win for the power-brokers. Word may never get out, since pastors are encouraged not to say anything for “the good of the church” (as if covering over abuse is ever good for a church). But if word finally does get out at the end of the severance, by then the whole thing is water under the bridge. People who loved the minister are told to rally round the church since, “We don’t follow men, but the Lord”…even though by agreeing to this they are really just following the bullies.

Eventually church members just move on. Then soon another bright, shiny candidate will be in front of them to fill the empty position and help them forget what happened. That’s when denial sets in, and they tell themselves, “Maybe this one won’t tick off the power brokers. Surely they wouldn’t do it to another man?”

Right. As they say, “Denial’s not just a river in Egypt”.

In my research, I’ve found that most of these firings are rarely about one man. On the contrary, they are evidence of a continual pattern in a toxic church environment. In the article Six Common Patterns in Toxic Churches That Fire Pastors at ChurchAnswers.com, Southern Baptist leader Thom Rainer lists the following common factors: 

1. There is a power and control issue behind the dismissal.
2. Reason for the firing are often not given to the congregation.
3. The pastor is given a severance package in return for his silence.
4. The pastor’s family is at least implicitly threatened if the pastor does not leave quietly.
5. The power group demands that the past exit quickly.
6. Most church members will not question or get involved in this injustice.

From the deja vu I get while reading through this list, I should gain some solace that at least I was not alone. This didn’t just happen to me. It is an epidemic among many churches today. 

And it is a sin.

Here is the dirtiest secret of this whole process: 

 – When you fire a man this way from a secular job, he will likely turn to his church for spiritual support. He’ll go sit down with his pastor, he’ll join a men’s discipleship group, and he’ll attend services each week and worship with his brothers and sisters in Christ.

BUT WHEN YOU FIRE A MINISTER, THEY LITERALLY HAVE NO ONE TO TURN TO. 

NOR DO THEIR WIVES.

NOR THEIR CHILDREN.

Truly, if you were looking for how to efficiently destroy a whole family in one massive blow, I can’t think of a better way to do it! In that one moment their spiritual family, the ones we are all urged to lean on for spiritual nurture, abandons them. They are quite literally BANISHED. In fact, they are often told (as I was) if they show up on the premises again, they will be escorted off the property by security.

Cue the choir, singing, “There’s a sweet, sweet spirit in this place…”

So when a committee decides to fire a minister this way, they are taking away the minister’s friends, his wife’s friends, and his children’s friends. All they will have left are relatives, who they will often feel embarrassed to tell because of the implied shame. Even loved ones may assume you “must have done something wrong”.

In our case, my dismissal came just a month after I had bought my wife’s “dream house” in the area. We invested much of our savings to renovate it and make it just the way she wanted it. But there is no way a committee just decides overnight to fire you. Still, they let us get into financial peril purchasing a home they knew we soon could not pay for. Ministers rarely if ever find a new position in the same city, especially with the gossip and innuendo termination brings. So they knew we would have to move and would need to sell a home within the same year we had purchased it. 

I don’t know anyone I dislike enough to wish that level of cruelty upon.

When you fire a minister this way, you also ignore that you’ve made it especially difficult for him to find a new church position. Other churches often assume he must have done something immoral in order to be fired so abruptly. I mean, what church would be that cruel to someone who’s innocent? Often, the devastation of this stigma causes the minister to leave the his calling altogether.

How could a man turn his back on his holy calling? Often, there’s not enough of the man left to keep fighting. According to Understanding Pastoral Termination (Part 4) at PastorsHopeNetwork.org, the research of Marcus Tanner, PhD (featured in both the Journal of Religion and Health, and the Review of Religious Research) lists the devastating results for the minister. Just a few of those are:

• Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder
• Depression
• Physical health problems
• Trust issues, especially with church people
• Long-term financial instability

These same problems often occur in the wives and children as well. Some wives report inability to enter a church building again. Many of the children stray from the faith, never to return again.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we have to stop this. If you are a church member, it is your responsibility to stop your church from doing “business” this ungodly way. We must stop doing church like the world! We must stop operating as if we really don’t believe in a God who will take this very personally.

“Then how do you terminate a pastor?” When my wife and I were talking about this recently, she recalled how her dad who was a pastor had to fire ministers on his staff from time to time:

 “Sometimes a minister just wasn’t working out. If Dad couldn’t find another place on staff where they fit better, he would bring them in to talk. I remember him giving several men 6 months or more to search for a new position, while still remaining on staff. In that time, they stayed in their position and the church continued to minister to their families. Eventually, the minister moved on to another church with his reputation and family undamaged.”

That doesn’t sound difficult, does it? But that’s not the way many churches are doing it. We say we are Christians, but in the church we often do business just like atheists. Or worse.

We have forgotten that churches are not corporations. We cannot treat employees like trash. A church is a body, a fellowship, a family. But my church never considered me a part of their fellowship. In fact, they made that very clear to me…

I remember the two people who actually came to talk to me about what they didn’t like about my ministry. One, a local businessman who is now on the committee to find my replacement, told me “You just don’t belong in this town”. The other one, a local coach, said my ministry was “all about me”. His proof was that I announced to the church a show I had written was going to be performed as the spring production of a local university. “Why in the world would you tell everyone this, except for arrogance?”

I felt a little stunned he would ask me this. “Because,” I answered, “I thought my brothers and sisters in Christ would be happy for me. I expected them to rejoice with me for such an opportunity to share Christ with our community.” But the equally stunned look on his face told me everything. He had never considered me his “brother in Christ”. I was just an employee, nothing more.

Do we seriously think this is the way the Apostle Paul or Peter would have done it? If “judgment begins at the house of God”, how severely will God judge churches for the devastation left by these practices? Do we really expect God to bless a church that operates in such a hateful manner? 

How many of our churches are dying now because they are being judged by God for how they treated His shepherds?

The good news is that over these past six months, we have felt God’s presence in our lives and seen His faithfulness in extravagant ways. For instance, my severance was for six months (after I walked out on their initial offer of only four). As a minister in my 60s, I was unsure I’d ever find another position at a church. Most are looking for sharp, young guys, not old guys who’ve already had the stuffing beat out of them.

But then, I heard about a church in another state that was very multi-ethnic, just like our family. We began talking, but the clock was ticking. I was praying nothing would happen to sabotage this great opportunity. Then, they asked me to come “in view of a call”, and I received a 98% positive vote (it’s a baptist church, so you know there’ll always be a few curmudgeons!). 

So…guess when I was put on payroll for my new job? Right in the middle of this month, exactly on the date when my severance from my last church ran out!

God was showing off, so that we would know He had met our needs TO THE DAY! And while I’m so thankful for God’s faithfulness, I’d be lying if I said my heart was healed from what was done to us. There simply was no practical reason for it, except for the hatefulness of a few people.

I remember reading Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” in high school, where a small town goes through a yearly ritual of choosing one person to sacrifice so their harvest will be plentiful. As I look back, I realize I was the one sacrificed in our small town, so that some could keep their own jobs, and so that others could get their ways. And it all happened because no one had the guts to stand up and say, “Enough!”

The fact God made a way for my family does not absolve our abusers for the destruction they’ve caused so capriciously. And it won’t absolve you either, if you stand by while it’s being done in your church.

Remember, the Church, including her pastors, is supposed to be the Bride of Christ. May we all muster the courage to stop worldly men from remaking her into the Bride of Frankenstein.

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If you have experienced the trauma of forced termination from a church, there are some wonderful people with resources to help. The PASTORS’ HOPE NETWORK is ready to come along you and your family members with advice, HR resources, and a listening ear, among many other things.

Don’t go through this alone. Please reach out to my friends there today!

PASTORS’ HOPE NETWORK WEBSITE