Godspeed

So guess what…I’ve moved.

I am now in the Atlanta metro area, leading worship at a wonderful church with a terrific choir and orchestra. God is good, and I’m so thankful. It is a place made-to-order for both me and my family. But there are a few things I want to get off my chest. Not just so I can vent, but because they are important for anyone to know who’s looked the other way when their church did something awful.

You see, I was fired from my church. Not for doing anything wrong or unbiblical, but for displeasing some very powerful people. They attacked me continually for an entire year, taking non-stop shots at me. I got threatening anonymous letters, notes placed in the offering boxes, with only two people ever talking to me personally. One choir member eventually told me I was “the talk of the town” – from the casual way she said it, I guess she didn’t understand how threatening it felt to hear that. 

Up until now I’ve resisted posting about my wonderful new church, out of fear the mob from my former church would try to ruin my future there. But the word is out, so I think it’s time to talk about what’s happened. Because what happened is important, not because it happened to me, but because it is happening way too much.

Let me start by explaining how all this works, a sort of “Destroying Your Pastor For Dummies” booklet.

First, when people attack a minister, my recent experience has taught me they don’t have to have any Biblical grounds to do so. To them, their disapproval of you is enough proof there must be something wrong with what you’re doing. It’s now their duty to protect the church from you…even if the rest of the church isn’t smart enough to see how awful you are.

Next, when you specifically attack a worship pastor, it’s always smart to start by acknowledging his musical skill as a backhanded compliment. “Oh, he’s talented alright”, they begin. “But the music is all about him”. Did you do something arrogant to make them think this? No, but you are standing on a platform every Sunday, and it doesn’t seem to bother you to be in front of hundreds of people. That must indicate you’re an attention-seeking egoist who values people’s approval more than God’s. 

PRO TIP: it’s not necessary to prove any of this. Enough people resent the attention leader’s receive, so the accusation will surely gain momentum. You simply need to say it often enough until it becomes “common knowledge”.

That’s the next step – “The Campaign” . Use your Sunday school class as a forum to attack him, or  stand outside the sanctuary door just long enough so people realize you’re not going inside to worship. In addition, you can use your local business as a venue to influence any church members who wander in. Also, target choir members and encourage them to stop serving so you can point to dwindling participation in his ministry. 

If you do all this enough, it will cause real dissension in your church while creating the appearance the worship leader is the cause. After your cauldron is brewing nicely, you say, “See, he’s dividing the church”, when really it was you who created the division all along. 

How ironic that In the 1st century church, anyone who caused this kind of “dissension among the Brethren” with their gossip would’ve been disciplined and put out of the church. But in your church, it is the victim of the gossip who’s kicked out instead. 

Don’t worry about your treachery being called out, because EVERYBODY loves to watch a good fight. Even many “spiritual” people won’t be able to resist joining in the gossip. But even those who truly see the damage you are doing won’t call you out on it. Cowardly leaders will stand by watching the carnage while giving in to the wealthy and powerful who pay their salaries. And the vast majority of “good church folks” will stand by, shake their heads, and then go on like it’s none of their business. They did the same thing when the last minister was abused and run off. “It’s just the way things are here”, they’ll reassure each other. 

Funny, they’ll probably never realize THEY are the main reason this is the way things are there. By not asking questions, by not speaking up, they offer tacit approval. “Evil thrives when good people do nothing”.

And no matter how bad it gets, those folks will keep on attending that church long after God has removed its lampstand and moved on to bless other churches. Those folks wouldn’t still be there if they wanted to be part of God changing lives in their community. They attend because it’s where they’ve always attended. They see their friends there each Sunday, and it would too much trouble to go somewhere else where God was actually working. So they’ll be just fine with Sundays devoid of the “activity of God” as Henry Blackwell phrased it. It will never seem odd to them when no one but the occasional small child ever becomes a Christian there.

When you think of it, that was the minister’s real mistake: to assume the people wanted God to work and to see lives changed. What they wanted was, quite simply, what they’d always had. To most of them, that minister was just another busboy at their religious country club. If he keeps serving them what they didn’t like, why shouldn’t he get the boot?

Now that I’ve got a wonderful new position at a church in a large city where the sky’s the limit, they will no doubt take my good news as confirmation my leaving was all for the best. “See”, they will say, “everything turned out ok”. Yes, it did, but only by the active hand of God himself. And only after months of painful silence from many people who said that they loved us with their lips, but couldn’t even bother to check and see if we were ok. 

I’m not proud to admit my hurt made me question whether staying in the ministry was worth it. The open hatefulness I experienced was actually disorienting, since I could never understand what I was doing to cause it. So after the dust settled, I started looking for other things I could do that would avoid being on a church staff. Why risk going through that pain again? 

But in the end, I returned to the basic truth that only God gets to say when I’m done. Not me, and certainly not those who use the witchcraft of their tongues to run their churches.

So to those people who gossiped in Sunday School classes, in hallways, in their local businesses, and to those who watched it happen and did nothing, I’d like to say, from the bottom of my heart…

Thank you.

Thank you for releasing me from a place that wanted my musical gifts, but never bothered to love me and my family. You treated us as outsiders from the very first day. But as a result, when we were cast out we never really lost anything of value. 

Thank you that you made worship all about your own preferences and not about God’s. Leaving a place where God was at work would have been a sacrifice. But leaving a graveyard was much easier. I’d almost begun to think God wasn’t working through my worship leading anymore, until I led the first Sunday at my new church and watched the faces of even senior adults light up (there I go, making worship all about me again!) Thank you for giving God the chance to reaffirm me so clearly.

Thank you for rejecting me before I could pursue the temptation to leave you. As a pastor, I feel responsible for every single person in the church I serve, so abandoning you would have crushed me. But your rejection helped release me from what had begun to feel like a prison sentence.

Thanks to all the people who should’ve come to make sure we were ok. Your glib goodbyes in short emails and texts from a distance made it easy not to waste time saying farewell.

Thanks that even in my advanced years, like a “Caleb” I get to make a difference in one of the largest cities in the world. I’m serving under a dynamic young pastor now who actually discusses the Bible with us in staff meetings. We pray together for each prayer need in our church individually by name. I haven’t experienced such Godly leadership for years. Wow, I’d never dreamed God would still give me such a fresh, Spirit-led opportunity!

Thank you for this glorious six month sabbatical I’ve had to be creative to my heart’s content. I never had enough time before to work on projects that didn’t involve you. But now I’ve completed a powerful new show with a gifted collaborator, I’ve reworked a previous show for a production this Spring, and I’ve started writing a new musical about one of the greatest heroes of our faith. I have been more productive in this half-of-a-year than in the entire last decade, all thanks to God taking what you meant for evil and turning it into good.

I truly don’t mean any of this sarcastically. These words come from the overflow of a heart brimming with gratitude to God. Being with you caused me to doubt God’s ability to work through me anymore. And Satan has recently thrown roadblocks in circumstances hoping to derail our new opportunity. I’m still a little fearful, because I don’t doubt the extremes some of my former church members would go to in order to hurt us: they did all this to us knowing we had just bought a house there. I’m only now talking about this publicly because it is clear we are finally home and with a church family who loves us.

Thank you for proving with your unfaithfulness that the only thing we’ll ever need is God’s faithfulness. He has been so good to us, and the darkness you brought into our lives has only served to make that goodness all the more obvious and shine more brightly in contrast. But when the next minister shows up one Sunday for you to vote him in, ask yourself this question:

Do I really have the stomach to watch this all happen again? Not just to a minister, but to his wife and children too?

If you do, then you are truly in the place where you belong. But if not, then Godspeed…

“And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them. But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.” – Matthew 22:6-7

***If you’re still reading, here’s more repercussions and the rest of our story…

https://davegipson.net/abducted-by-aliens/