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I started this blog ¹ with the title “Recov­er­ing Lutheran: Here I Stand” as a way of assist­ing me in my recov­ery from life­long Lutheranism. Actu­ally, I also needed to recover from life­long Protes­tantism, vol­un­teerism, and church mem­ber­ship as a gen­er­al­ized principle.

Why I needed to recover is one of the top­ics explored here. I donated lit­er­ally thou­sands and thou­sands of hours to the work of the church, serv­ing as a musi­cian and wor­ship leader, web­site cre­ator and admin­is­tra­tor, Sun­day School teacher, church coun­cil mem­ber, call com­mit­tee mem­ber, and newslet­ter edi­tor, just for starters. I was also a paid part-time staff mem­ber for many years.

Churches are man-made insti­tu­tions, erected, pop­u­lated, and man­aged by “weak, puny, and sin­ful” (Mar­tin Luther’s words) human beings. There­fore, churches are inher­ently flawed organizations.

That being under­stood, I, how­ever, had the mis­for­tune of belong­ing for a good num­ber of years to a toxic con­gre­ga­tion led by a nox­ious pas­tor. ² I left that con­gre­ga­tion — and orga­nized reli­gion as a whole — when I knew that to sit in a pew and allow that indi­vid­ual to preach a ser­mon to me would con­sti­tute an act of extreme self-loathing.

The typ­i­cal weekly “pewsit­ter” doesn’t fig­ure out the inner machi­na­tions and con­gre­ga­tional pol­i­tics. But I did.

I might have stayed there indef­i­nitely and blindly had I not had the (good) mis­for­tune of becom­ing so active in var­i­ous ways that I was able to see how things really worked. I’m find­ing over time that I stand in good com­pany among for­mer mem­bers of var­i­ous orga­nized reli­gions in mak­ing that claim.

I can’t say that I wasn’t warned. I was told that NP and I would even­tu­ally clash as a result of his man­age­ment and lead­er­ship style. Specif­i­cally, I was advised not to agree to serve on the church coun­cil because I am nobody’s “yes man” but the coun­cil mem­bers are picked for the pur­pose of being just that. Basi­cally, the coun­cil exists to rub­ber stamp his deci­sions, ideas and agenda. The speak­ers turned out to be right in say­ing “[t]his is not God’s church, it is [NP’s].” I nei­ther believed nor heeded those warn­ings, to my own detriment.

I should have left more than three years ear­lier than I did. At that time, it became clear to me that, as evi­denced by his teach­ing and writ­ing on the ques­tion of whether or not gay per­sons should be ordained and mar­ried by the church, not to men­tion the mind­set of the major­ity of my fel­low parish­ioners, homo­pho­bia ran ram­pant there. More­over, women occu­pied what should have been posi­tions of author­ity and lead­er­ship, but were empow­ered with and exer­cised nei­ther. Upon closer exam­i­na­tion, it was clear that they were just tools to assure adop­tion of NP’s agenda.

And in ret­ro­spect, I can now iden­tify many other times when I should have had the courage to leave. But I didn’t. Shame on me.

I kept try­ing to “make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” I tried in vain to find ful­fill­ment, inspi­ra­tion, and mean­ing in the count­less wor­ship ser­vices I led or par­tic­i­pated in — to no avail. I tried to feel bet­ter about things by serv­ing more and more and more … giv­ing not just my time, my tal­ent, my intel­lect, my lead­er­ship, but, even­tu­ally, my phys­i­cal health, as well.

Finally, after I spent more than a year pray­ing the same ques­tions over and over — “Why do I feel this way? What should I do?” — the sit­u­a­tion came to a head. The Holy Spirit was in con­trol, of course, and dic­tated the tim­ing of my enlight­en­ment and departure.

So, like Mar­tin Luther, “here I stand” because I took a stand after intense, prayer­ful dis­cern­ment. The Divine Cre­ator ³ answered my prayers, telling me, “Go to that church coun­cil meet­ing and speak the truth as I have revealed it to you.” I had no idea that NP had been manip­u­lat­ing peo­ple and the sit­u­a­tion behind the scenes. I was totally duped. And I fully admit that I did not see it com­ing. The facts lead to one incon­tro­vert­ible con­clu­sion, how­ever: I was played skill­fully, art­fully, “like a bass fid­dle.” I was com­pletely blind­sided, ambushed.

As I sat there in a state of utter “shock and awe,” I was viciously, sav­aging attacked by another mem­ber of the church coun­cil who screamed at me from the other end of the con­fer­ence table (and I am para­phras­ing), “Who are you to think that you know more than Pas­tor ____? You need to go along with what he is rec­om­mend­ing because he is the pas­tor and he knows best. If that’s what he says we should do, that’s what we should do.” [4.Refer to dis­cus­sion above about the hand­picked Church Council.]

Worse, as he attacked me, all the other mem­bers of the coun­cil sat silent, let­ting his tirade go on.

And worse still, the NP sat silent and, as the coun­cil mem­ber was spew­ing his venom at me, I was busy study­ing NP’s face. He was smirk­ing.

He did not stand and assert his author­ity, as the pas­tor, to get the meet­ing back under con­trol. He did not admon­ish the coun­cil mem­ber attack­ing me to stop, call for a break, direct that we all take a deep breath and pray before the meet­ing went any fur­ther, or take any other action that one would expect from a pas­tor.

And at that moment, I rec­og­nized the spirit that was con­trol­ling that meet­ing. I knew its name and face because I have seen it before in other cir­cum­stances. I have stared it down in other sit­u­a­tions and come out victorious.

All was revealed to me. I knew to the core of my being that evil was dwelling in that place at that time, con­trol­ling that meet­ing. I heard the Holy Spirit again whis­per to me, “Do not cast your pearls before swine! ((It had been show­ing me that verse for weeks, but I was try­ing to ignore it.)) Your intel­lect, your lead­er­ship, your time, your tal­ents are all wasted here. Go now!”

I got up qui­etly, walked out of the meet­ing and will never again set foot in that building.

Undoubt­edly, some­one has made a remark to you that hurt your feel­ings. Hurt­ful com­ments not only make us feel bad, but also cause us to ques­tion why the speaker would make the remark. They cause us to ask our­selves, “Am I really … ?” or “Do I really …?” Thus, the hurt caused by the remark some­times leads to intro­spec­tion, self-evaluation and, per­haps, an admis­sion that, although the act of mak­ing the com­ment was out of line, there is a small ring of truth to some part of it. Such inci­dents bring self-awareness that allows us to grow into bet­ter, stronger human beings.

But there are other times when a per­son says some­thing that seems, at first blush, to be cruel and hurt­ful. Yet, upon closer exam­i­na­tion, it is clear that the com­ment is not an accu­rate state­ment about the per­son being dis­cussed, but reveals vol­umes about the speaker’s per­sonal char­ac­ter­is­tics such as integrity, verac­ity, ego­cen­trism, and, often­times, reflects an inner lack of self-esteem and self-confidence. Some­times such com­ments are so patently out­ra­geous and ridicu­lous that the intended vic­tim and oth­ers can only laugh at their absurdity.

So it was with the part­ing shot fired at me by the afore­men­tioned for­mer pastor.

As I was tak­ing my leave, he wrote me an e-mail in which he declared that he was “at an end of patience with the neg­a­tive and dis­rup­tive spirit you bring.” ⁴

Upon see­ing those words — in an e-mail, ⁵ no less — I sat in stunned dis­be­lief for a few moments. And then I began laugh­ing. And every time I look at them, I laugh again, heartily and with the kind of free­dom, relief, and aban­don that only some­one who has been impris­oned for a very long time can appreciate.

It is as though the Holy Spirit is sit­ting on my shoul­der like Jiminy Crick­ett, say­ing, “See, I told you to get out of there. Now aren’t you glad you finally lis­tened to me?” When I tell peo­ple what he said to me, their mouths drop open and they say, “The pas­tor said that? Boy, did you make the right decision!”

Since I had already left, his part­ing shot was “too lit­tle, too late” and obvi­ously intended to viciously cut me to the core of my being. The arrow flew far past the tar­get, though. I sum­moned all of my energy to strive for a “win-win” res­o­lu­tion for all con­cerned, while the pas­tor shrewdly manip­u­lated the sit­u­a­tion, sab­o­tag­ing my efforts and scape­goat­ing me in order to turn other church mem­bers against me and assure the adop­tion of his agenda.

Sadly, he had done that many times in many sit­u­a­tions over the course of sev­eral years. I did not want to see it. But now I have no choice but to see fully.

In the end, I finally had to accept that bang­ing my head against the wall of the sanc­tu­ary (ironic name for that cold, cold room) over and over was des­tined only to get me yet another bloody forehead.

He also accused me of bring­ing his “integrity into ques­tion.” When I found myself reply­ing to his e-mail, declar­ing that his words and deeds were, in my esti­ma­tion, com­pletely lack­ing integrity, the undo­ing of our asso­ci­a­tion was sealed.

Any­one who refuses to stand silent in the face of wrong­do­ing, hurt­ful behav­ior, injus­tice or even plain, old-fashioned stu­pid­ity and short-sightedness must be pre­pared to be fired upon. I’ve been in that sit­u­a­tion count­less times before and have fre­quently been the per­son who breaks loose from the mob men­tal­ity and gets tagged a “trouble-maker,” “agi­ta­tor,” “bad actor,” “insti­ga­tor,” “nui­sance,” and, in cruder, street-like jar­gon, the “shit dis­turber” or “pain in the ass.”

Thanks to the work of the Holy Spirit in my life, my integrity, feel­ings of self-worth, and self-esteem were never in jeop­ardy and remain intact today. I have the “peace that passes under­stand­ing” about all of it. I fol­lowed my con­science, asserted my belief in equal­ity and jus­tice for all per­sons in all things, and uti­lized my God-given intel­lect to con­duct my own analy­sis of the issues and reach my own con­clu­sions, irre­spec­tive of the choices that would have made me pop­u­lar and part of the clique.

If that means that I have or am, in his or any­one else’s eyes, a “neg­a­tive and dis­rup­tive spirit,” I am more than happy to wear that mantle.

The fact that a pas­tor could make such a state­ment to a loyal mem­ber of his/her con­gre­ga­tion who had donated many years of faith­ful, devoted ser­vice to the church merely con­firmed the cor­rect­ness of the deci­sion I had made sev­eral days ear­lier to depart. First of all, he did not live up to the unequiv­o­cal respon­si­bil­i­ties imposed upon him by the church’s con­sti­tu­tion and bylaws, mak­ing no attempt to fol­low the con­flict res­o­lu­tion guide­lines set forth there in order to achieve peace, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and heal­ing for all con­cerned, as is man­dated by the church’s gov­ern­ing documents.

Beyond those for­mal­i­ties, how­ever … any pas­tor who repeat­edly scape­goats a mem­ber of his/her flock because that indi­vid­ual speaks the truth as he/she under­stands it and will not con­done behav­ior or deci­sions which he/she gen­uinely believes are not in the best inter­est of the con­gre­ga­tion or mem­ber­ship should, in my opin­ion, find another line of work.

And under no cir­cum­stances can such an indi­vid­ual stand in a pul­pit and preach to me.

So here I stand, ready and eager to explore my faith as the Holy Spirit reveals what it has in store for me.

This blog is one of the tools I am using to facil­i­tate and doc­u­ment that process. I invite you to join me on the jour­ney. Feel free to leave com­ments detail­ing your own expe­ri­ences — pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive — with orga­nized reli­gion. ⁶

Wel­come back to On the Hori­zon! So glad you’re vis­it­ing again. Be sure to leave a com­ment and add any posts that you like to the var­i­ous social book­mark­ing sites using the links just below the posts. Thanks for stop­ping by!

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