The Impact of Forced Pastoral Terminations

[00:00:04] Welcome to the STOKE IT UP podcast, everybody. A podcast encouraging you and your journey with God. I'm Alan Stoddard and I'm your host, our guest today is Dr. Shelby Hazard. He's the pastor of Parkway Baptist Church in Samarna, Tennessee. He did his doctoral research on Forced Terminations.

[00:00:25] But then the Southern Baptist Convention context, so we're going to ask questions and dig into the conversation from that angle this week, and then next week we will have Bill Holderids. We're going to do the same topic, but from a cavalry chapel angle.

[00:00:40] And here's the reason why we want to have healthy churches, and we don't need forced term donations, where some group of people try to run the pastor off, and there's associated things with that.

[00:00:52] So we thought let's have this conversation because it's a conversation that doesn't get brought up a lot. I would love to hear what you think about this topic.

[00:01:01] We want you to be stoked up and Kindle LaFresh in the gift of God that he's given you for this season of your life. And let's join the conversation. Let us know what you think, and I'll meet you on the other side.

[00:01:19] Well, all right, Shelby. Welcome to the Stoketa podcast. It's good to see you again. How are you doing, brother? Alan, I'm doing good, man. It's good to see you too, brother. There's been a long time since the prayer group at the edge case,

[00:01:33] the theology of education building in Fort Worth, Texas. It's been a long time. Yeah, Darrell Eldridge put a lot of that. That's right. That faculty lounge table at Southwestern exciting. That's our oldies years. It got me through, man. It was a good time of encouragement. I guarantee you.

[00:01:51] I was brand new and you got, I think it was Kenneth Priest invited me to that group. I went to Travis Avenue, I think to, I don't know. I can't remember if I was interviewing for a job or something,

[00:02:01] but I went there and he immediately invited me to the prayer group. And I don't regret it for a second. Wow. Yeah. Kenneth is out of pocket today, and he's usually on here with me as the co-host. And we're talking about things of spiritual formation

[00:02:18] and things that shape people's lives. And I've always wanted to do this with you, because the topic of your dissertation at Southwestern seminary was biblical pastoral terminations. And the Southern Baptist Convention and a strategy to reduce them. Yeah, man. Real positive title, huh?

[00:02:37] Well, what's up with you trying to start fights into church? Well, both of us have been forced terminated, we would call it, or just fired from your church. But I like the phrase forced terminated, because it communicates a reality, and I wanted to pick your brain

[00:02:54] or just topic. So can you provide us with an overview of what are pastoral terminations? Yeah. I know you're coming at it from a Southern Baptist angle, but I'm going to try to flavor it with some non-genominational things that I've seen and I know you have also,

[00:03:12] but we give this an overview of what pastoral terminations are. Yeah, a pastoral termination is his win the congregation, or most of the time it's really not the whole congregation. Most of the time, it's a very small group within

[00:03:29] Baptist circles as typically decends that have for whatever reason and determined own their own that it's time for the pastor to leave. The pastor is not being called away. The pastor is not leaving on his own accord. The pastor is trying to follow the will of God, preaching,

[00:03:52] teaching, building up the church. And that has made somebody angry or somebody's being territorial or somebody who will lose control or any number of other excuses they use. And then they pretty much behind the pastor's back will get a group

[00:04:11] of other men together that are like-minded power players in the church, so to speak, and they will come up with some reasons why they want you to leave that are most of the time lies and they will call you into a private room

[00:04:29] and they will list out their grievances to you and they will say we want you to leave and you can do one of two things. You can give us a letter of resignation and you can have three months

[00:04:43] severance, three months insurance or you can not give us a letter of resignation and you get one month's insurance and one month's severance. Either way we want you gone by the end of the month or right now or whatever

[00:04:57] and if you don't, things are going to be very bad for you so that they do it in a very threatening, very mean way, they'll threaten your family, they'll do anything they need to do

[00:05:10] to scare you into leaving. That's basically what they do. Wow. Yeah, it gets pretty nasty. Very mean. To our listeners, Shelby has been through two of these and you told me it was back to back for you. Back to back, yes, one was in 2004 and one was in 2009.

[00:05:34] Man that is just most pastors I would say do not survive that. That was that was that we still love the Lord and want to do ministry is amazing. I would say as I listen to you that in non-denominational circles which you know I'm a

[00:05:56] Calvary Chapel guy now with the Calvary Boulevard Network, although non-denominational and Calvary Chapel church fellowships do not operate on a congregational government model. There is still that tension place of there's a group of people that could show up and

[00:06:19] this start pressuring you. Yeah, relief. Yeah. That's why Chuck Smith came up with the Moses model back in the day one of the reasons. But it's he believed that a pastor should be able to

[00:06:32] lead the church and no one can hire no one can run him off and he would say in part I'm going to be Caripel Hall at describe it. He would say that the congregational system turns a pastor into a

[00:06:51] higherling in a sense. Yeah, I'm careful with that because people regardless of your polity will vote with their feet and with their funding. So there's no perfect system. That's right. What is the Bible say when you did your research? What did you come across as far as

[00:07:15] why pastor or termination's happened? And then what does the Bible say about the grounds of the terminated past? Yeah, well, I mean it's very simple. It's not a complicated and that's probably the most disheartening thing about it is that it's not complicated at all.

[00:07:36] A pastor should not be forced terminated unless they are caught in some gross moral failure and some people would argue that you don't terminate them, that you try to be redemptive

[00:07:47] and try to love them and get them counseling and maybe give them a sabbatical or a leave of absence and try to care for their shepherd. But it depends on what the moral failure is obviously.

[00:07:58] If it's something that involves children or something, obviously, the guy has got to be terminated. So moral failure is probably the biggest thing, unrepentant, heresy. If you go outside the bounds of the orthodoxy of your denomination or your church estate

[00:08:17] and a faith, I mean those are the two primary things that you look for. Of course, you could always go to the pastor or the piscals for all that and Timothy and Titus are first

[00:08:25] Peter 5 and a pastor is not supposed to be domineering. He's supposed to be a servant in the same vein as Christ was and so forth. But most terminations are nowhere near that. Most terminations are, you know, in my experience, in our first church in the Mississippi Delta,

[00:08:47] it was literally the preaching expositional preaching of the Word of God. I had one man in that church that after being in the book of Romans for maybe four months, five months, just began to come unglued. He started to get up. Like through the worship service would come

[00:09:11] down, it would be the offering prayer and then after the offering would be the preaching and the preaching at that church was anywhere from 30 to 40 minutes. So the amount of time I put into

[00:09:22] the message began to be criticized, the fact that I stayed in the same book for weeks at a time, began to be criticized. The fact that I wasn't making him feel good began to be criticized. He began

[00:09:33] to want me to be more like Joel Oesteen and some of these other televangelists preachers. You know, he just said he was tired of leaving church feeling bad. He just felt bad when he left

[00:09:44] church. And I mean, that was spiritual conviction is what that was and because the man probably was not born again, I don't know that obviously but it certainly seemed that way over time.

[00:09:55] His daddy was the music minister and so they and their farm was very close to where the church was and so I was the outside or coming in preaching and I was messing up their club.

[00:10:08] I mean, I was preaching the Word of God. So for me, it was preaching the Word of God in the first church and preaching in the second church but what happened was it was

[00:10:21] too very strong authoritarian figures in the church began to in my opinion that they since. It wasn't true. I wasn't trying to take control of the church that had nothing to do with it.

[00:10:35] I was not trying to do that, but that's what they used to begin to criticize me with. Well, he's trying to take control of the church. He's trying to take control of the church. He's trying to

[00:10:43] take control of the church. No, I'm trying to give God control of the church is what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to preach the Word of God and build up saints. So basically, to answer your question,

[00:10:53] term, a termination of a pastor should be if he's caught in some horrible moral failure, an affair, pornography. I mean, stealing from the church, from the church budget, whatever. I mean, let your mind run wild at the different moral failures that a man can have.

[00:11:15] Or he is saying that the Virgin birth is not true or that the resurrection is not true. Something of that nature, those two things, those are grounds in my opinion for a pastor to be

[00:11:27] disciplined and to be asked to be removed from his position. Beyond that, they mean there really is not in my opinion, but according to what scripture says, the bit I'll give you one stat from

[00:11:39] the from the research that that was very telling in my opinion. The passage in Timothy where it says, do not accept a testimony against an elder unless there are two or more witnesses. Okay,

[00:11:54] I can't it's second Timothy somewhere in second Timothy. I specifically put a question in that research about that and I got an overwhelming response that nobody that was terminated ever knew really were never given the opportunity to address those that were accusing them of these

[00:12:13] things and to ask them questions in return. It was just a termination they were asked to leave and they were never given the opportunity to explain themselves to address the issues they were just

[00:12:23] kicked to the curb in a sense. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that's happened twice to me. I had a church in Arlington Texas that did it and I was still young enough in the ministry to think, well we're just going to

[00:12:39] power through this. You know, I were just going to go army on it. We're just going to win. Well, I didn't win. And then in 2017, late 2017, I had a small group of people that came at me once again

[00:12:54] and circumvented the process and basically the deacon said, hey, we think it's time for you to go. What was most disturbing is it showed me the how broke the system was and we were in the midst of

[00:13:12] revival. So the enemy was in and just wrecked it and it would have all worked out. And I I'm manageable. I would have been manageable, but the manner in which these men executed this,

[00:13:28] I said to myself, I am not going to do this. This is not godly. Yeah. It wasn't their questions that they had. They were actually good questions. It was a revival. So there was some

[00:13:41] there was this stuff but they thought they were losing control. That's exactly what it was. They decided, hey, it's time for you to go and the way they did it was so wrong, I had just gotten a

[00:13:54] great performance review from our personal committee. And then now you're going to do this, I'm like, okay, what do I do with this? Let me ask you this at this point. How did

[00:14:09] being forced terminated and what do you, I know you're seeing it in other places? How did that shape you? What were your emotions after it happened? I mean, you know, getting out of the ministry,

[00:14:21] how did it affect your family? Yeah, yeah. It was um well it was, it was, when I can tell you McKinney when I was in McKinney that was the first one was the little church

[00:14:35] in McKinney and that one was somewhat unique in the sense that we had already resigned the church because we were going to we had been called to another church back near our home

[00:14:50] Angie had we had had our first child, our first born Logan was was born and then she was pregnant with our second child, our first daughter and we really wanted to be back home close to

[00:15:03] our parents because my grandmother was ill and my father had had a stroke and we knew they weren't going to be on earth much longer and we wanted to raise our kids around them as much as we could.

[00:15:16] And so we had another church had had contacted us and called us and so our resign the church gave two weeks notice and then we were going to go to the Mississippi Delta. Well, there was a couple and there was some serious division going on behind the scenes

[00:15:31] between me and the music minister and his wife at that time at that church and so you know we were glad we were leaving but I mean we weren't running from the conflict we've never

[00:15:40] God's never enabled us we tried but God forced us to stay at the church and deal with the conflict but there was a couple that that church that had six children and they had just joined and they

[00:15:51] were a younger couple then we're just great Angie and I loved them. We still stay in touch with them but they were he was he was a graduate from moody Bible college and he was very theological very

[00:16:03] smart very very general just loving God I don't know a lot like you that that God was and he came to us and because I told him we were a resign and we've got to be really good friends and

[00:16:13] he understood us want to move back and all that but he he told me before he said before you leave we really need to we really need to have a meeting and get everybody together so that we can

[00:16:24] sort out this division that's going on right now that involved the previous music minister in his wife because at that time he had resigned and they had left and it'd been maybe I don't know two or three months

[00:16:33] they've been gone and I said okay we can do that so I sent out a letter to the church we call the de Hienerty meeting and the purpose of that meeting was really to try to kind of wipe the

[00:16:42] slate clean get everything out in the open so that we could move on so they could move on as a church when I left well I don't know if I was nuts or what but I really thought that it would be

[00:16:54] a positive thing to do whether it had the exact it had the adverse effect I sent that letter out and I mean everybody was livid I mean livid they're like how dare you you you've resigned from this church

[00:17:07] you're leaving in two weeks and now you're going call a meeting and try to sort out whatever you know who do you think you are why you doing this cancel this meeting and so forth and I'm like whoa

[00:17:18] whoa this wait a minute no we're not trying to stir up trouble long story short we have the meeting biggest crowd on Wednesday night the church has ever had there were people at that meeting that

[00:17:30] have not I'd been there three years I didn't I didn't know probably a third of the people that came that meeting I mean I'm serious and one of the guys it was there I who I thought was a friend of mine

[00:17:43] him and this other woman made a motion to have me terminated immediately and so they asked us to step outside so we stepped outside and they argued for 45 minutes in this group of about 20 people

[00:17:55] comes out and leaves didn't even speak to us just left and I mean I knew all of them they were all regular attending church members they all came out and plus the other third of the people that

[00:18:05] I've never seen before came out and then there was about 30 people left in the church and so he asked us if we want to go back and talk to them and I said sure I'll go to I've nothing to hide

[00:18:14] somewhere back in there and talk to them for probably 30 minutes and some of them had questions and some of them were mad and I just just told him the truth and when that was over they gave

[00:18:23] me they had voted me out so they gave me a severance check and so we left the church that day and so we had two weeks so I had resigned then they fired us and so we had two weeks before

[00:18:34] I had we had to move back to Greenville so that was really strange I don't remember what I now have gotten so carried away I don't remember what I was telling you about but

[00:18:43] so I asked you how it shaped you and you're getting there got you yet so so that was I can't believe this just happened because our heart in that what there was no vindictiveness there was no bloodlust there was no nothing in our hearts

[00:19:07] we we said we had labored in that church for almost three years and seen it grow from like 25 to 45 or 55 people and then all this division between the music minister and his wife had

[00:19:19] happened and it had grieved the spirits movement in the church and so we really wanted to leave it unified and good so we could leave in good conscience and but I'd never would have dreamed

[00:19:34] that the viciousness and the anger so it it made me realize that that made me realize you know not everybody has the same mindset about this that that we do you know we we we we want to

[00:19:49] try to bring love and forgiveness and unity but these people were out for vengeance and to and to kick the pastor out of the church to keep me from testifying to the truth

[00:20:02] of what had happened because it implicated some of them so to hide the truth to keep the truth hidden they got rid of me and it part of that made literally made the Bible come alive in my mind

[00:20:19] like when Paul says they suppressed the truth for a lie in Romans one that is exactly what those people did supposedly professing Christians suppressed the truth so alive would prevail and it just

[00:20:35] it it just it made me weep I mean I wept I mean I couldn't believe it so we go from there to the next one the next church that one was fine for about two years same scenario music minister this time his son

[00:20:48] they began to descend against me and after about I know two and a half years it became very obvious that we had major problems with leadership in the church and I was completely betrayed by the

[00:21:00] pastor search committee chairman who is now deceased he like acted like he was my best friend acted like he was going to help me in the church his wife got sick he didn't attend for about a year

[00:21:10] and a half but but yet I still went to him with questions and everything but but like at the night that the deacons voted me out when I was not present he was at that table and voted to have

[00:21:22] me terminated and when I found that out it was just like I cannot believe I mean that man knew the truth he knew the truth he knew that I wasn't making decisions on my own and that I wasn't trying

[00:21:36] to control this church because I went to him with every decision that I made and asked him what he thought about it and then he comes into that meeting and agrees with everybody else that I'm trying to take

[00:21:46] over the church and it was just like there are people sitting in these churches that will lie through their teeth that will absolutely lie about what they heard and about what's happened and so

[00:22:04] as far as shaping me was concerned from that point forward I really realized you really don't know who you can trust in these churches you you don't know who you can trust and and that was hey I want

[00:22:18] hey I want to say it can I take that or should I wait okay go ahead hey I have two one six eight six six three two one six eight six three did you get it okay I'm on a podcast

[00:22:49] huh what did you say okay I'm back so it shaped me it it I will tell you that that I did deal with with I did deal with a lot of a lot of bingefulness in my heart and I had to repent of that

[00:23:31] it and it took me it took me about a year of being kind of in the wilderness so to speak like not having not being a pastor kind of working three part time jobs my youngest son was born

[00:23:49] during those two years we live in a little shack in Leland, Mississippi and this lady and her husband like really really helped take care of us that year with those those two years which was

[00:23:59] really it was really a sweet time there but I mean God kind of pulled me God kind of pulled me out of the church for about about three years I mean I was still I was still doing some some ministry

[00:24:15] work because I was like a part to that I did get an apart time association or working my home county and some part time evangelism work from my home church but like I was not a pastor so it was just

[00:24:27] like like three part time jobs I was working and that gave me some time to kind of process what had happened and my wife really helped me a lot I mean Angie was just I mean she's probably

[00:24:41] all all ministers need their wives need if their wives do not understand the battle that they are in they're not going to make it as a couple and they're going to be they're going to be on the scrap heap

[00:24:57] of ministers if their wives do not understand the battle that they're in because this is a battle it is a war and if our spouses are not tough enough and they don't understand that you're going to be

[00:25:11] dealing with with hypocrites about 80% of the time you're not going to make it and she she was a great help to me those two or three years she encouraged me and she always has she's always been

[00:25:23] that kind of encouraged me I mean she even encouraged me to go to seminary and she helped pay my way through seminary so my wife was a big part of that and then I found I found some online guys

[00:25:34] I think you remember you ever heard a Bob ugly yes I found Bob ugly he got reborn he got rebirth his ministry got rebirth online around that time and I found him online and I found Don Hicks

[00:25:47] and then I began to realize that this termination problem was huge I mean it was huge and I think around that time was when maybe your first one happened because I think what when did your first

[00:26:00] one happen Alan it was in 2008 yeah yeah that was yours happened right before mine because I can remember you did some video some video live feeds around that time and I remember you

[00:26:15] said guys it's getting kind of gnarly guys it's getting kind of gnarly and I want to say that that Angie heard you doing that she said what's going on with Alan I said man I think he's

[00:26:25] encouraged I think he's experiencing some of the same stuff that we have you know but um but so so it was like realizing that that I'm not crazy you know I'm not nuts I thought that I was wrong

[00:26:41] and crazy and that I really believe the Bible is true and I really believe that these churches wanted what they said they wanted but then you get there and you start to do it and things just go

[00:26:56] haywire and and you got some people that are telling you yeah man you're probably not fit for ministry yeah you probably need to get out of ministry then you've got others like you and other man

[00:27:05] that have been terminated like Don Hicks or like no this is not you this is not you at all you're you're you're doing what is right there are just some of these churches are conflicted when

[00:27:16] you go in some of the people in these churches don't want don't want real revival they say they want it but when it begins to happen they really don't it's you know everybody's saying they

[00:27:28] want a leader until they get one and then they no longer really want a leader and so it was it was it was a combination of me feeling crazy and then we're the where the churches where you

[00:27:42] experienced forced termination were they revitalization churches um i would probably say yes to that i don't think we all i don't think we knew that went went at the time but knowing what i know

[00:28:00] about the revitalization effort that began what 10 years ago maybe in the SBC something like that something like that i mean i mean after you were because when it started i remember when it started

[00:28:14] and they brought in a hunt to to head all that up i got really excited about it because i thought to myself man if that had been available when i was in Texas and when i was in the last church in

[00:28:24] Mississippi i would have brought those guys in immediately you know to help me revitalize both these churches so the answer to that question i would say is yes um did the i guess the reason why i asked

[00:28:40] that is when you've been through forced termination and you go through all these things can it pre says if you're going to revitalize the church you need to be willing to lose your job sure

[00:28:55] and he's absolutely right let me let me shout out it yeah let me shift us to ending the podcast in a few minutes here and i don't want to come up short on what what are some strategic things

[00:29:10] that we can do in church life to redirt to reduce pastoral terminations the number one thing that i would say is to be extremely thorough in the call process extremely thorough ask them as many

[00:29:32] questions as they ask you be extremely clear about what you're going to do when you go there especially what kind of preacher you are if you're reformed tell them you're reformed if you're our

[00:29:45] minion tell them you're our minion if you're a pre tribulation rapture tell them you're pre tribulation rapture if you are going to reform the membership roles tell them ahead of time you're going

[00:29:58] to reform the membership roles if you are going to move that church to be more of an elder led church then a pastor staff led church tell them you're going to give them everything you can

[00:30:09] on the front end give it in writing give them to sign the document so when all hell breaks loose you can say look i was honest with you about who i am and about what i was going to do

[00:30:21] you were obviously not honest with me about who you are and the fact that you want to meet a be here i would also say that there really is nothing that you can do to completely assure that that

[00:30:36] will not happen but you can have a a covenant drawn up between the pastor and the church with some some transitional plan if everything goes south you know if if i'm here for

[00:30:53] you know after a couple years i'm here and you you guys just there's just like this up arisen it doesn't want me here anymore you know we need to have a plan for me to exit with that without

[00:31:04] my reputation being slandered you know in this community and in this area so that i can fat because i mean you can like somebody can go from one company to another and get another job pretty

[00:31:13] quick but but find another church as you will know that that takes months i remember in your research i read your dissertation i was looking for it again and i i must have deleted it or put it in

[00:31:26] somewhere but i remember reading there you said it takes eight up to eighteen months yeah yeah and that's that's done hits that's most of his most of his stats were still very current

[00:31:38] when i did my work so i just decided a bunch of his in the seminary let me do that but what else would you do do you ever think let me ask you this you said on the front end when you go into a church

[00:31:50] make sure you do your homework that's what you said yes let me ask you this you ever think about hey it's time for me to plan to church so i don't have to go do this again sure i thought about it i

[00:32:00] sure have um i i for whatever reason i haven't been led in that direction we talked about it here when i first got here because the church at that time seemed to be more healthy than it really was

[00:32:13] and the longer i'm here the more I realize that that it's really it's needed some some slower work in different areas but overall it's it's okay there's just been some there's just been some some

[00:32:25] refining and you know in a couple of different areas deep deep in body specifically it's a lot better now than it was when i came here um but yeah man i thought about doing church plants and i have no i have

[00:32:38] i have nothing against church plants at all i just think that there's a special kind of pastor that has to do that and again the wife needs to be 100% on board with that because church planting

[00:32:49] is very difficult from what i've heard and uh the big thing is the finances the finances are just not normally as consistent as like an established church isn't so if you can if you can

[00:33:01] work a full-time job and then plan to church on the side that would be the you know the perfect case scenario I guess but um but i'm all for that in the primary reason you know i think the neama project started

[00:33:12] doing that out of southwestern with uh territory koi i think with sbt uh started that probably 20 25 years ago that was the big you know the reason why i ask it is sometimes just i can tell you i'm

[00:33:25] in a season where i'm like getting out of the southern Baptist convention and becoming calvary chapel has really been liberating for me um and we're not trying to get people to shift their

[00:33:38] allegiance is one way or another so don't hear that i'm not really no i'm talking about our listeners i don't want the listeners thinking we're uh that happened sometimes and it's been good for me

[00:33:52] well let me ask you this of you are asking strategies to reduce the pastor alternatives is there anything else you would say then i want to ask you one final question i would just say um

[00:34:06] probably because there's no way you're really going to know how the church responds to you until you get there i mean that that's just the cold hard truth about it um you're just not going to know

[00:34:18] i would i would say do all the research you can on the church as well talk to previous pastors if you can talk to the community if you can um and i would also say go some what slow when you go in

[00:34:34] one of the great disadvantages that we are at as ministers is that especially in the modern day church culture it is not like the first century jesus spent every day of his life every day of his life

[00:34:48] of three years with the disciples to replicate that time frame based on the amount of hours that people come to a building it it would take you almost 50 years to to replicate three years of one-on-one discipleship that jesus did with the apostles based on the current contemporary

[00:35:09] culture and so that's impossible because there's just there's just one of us we're not jesus he had 12 around him the whole time so what you've got to do is you've really got to pick and this sounds like

[00:35:19] it's discriminatory in favoritism but you've really got to pick about 10 or 12 guys or or less probably less than that and you have got to pour yourself into them you've got to

[00:35:33] make time to pour yourself into them for for the next five to 10 years um you've got a in a sense you've got a build a wall of leaders around you that understand who you are so that when the

[00:35:49] lies begin to be said about you in the accusations come these men can say I don't know where that's coming from that is not who this man is you need to stop saying that or you're going to

[00:36:00] have to leave this church I mean you you've you've got to have a group of men around you that are willing to die for you that are willing to put their reputations on the line to protect you

[00:36:10] and most churches are short on those type of men yeah I can tell you when I went through the last forced termination if it wasn't for those men you just described in my life

[00:36:25] it would have been way worse for me and my family matter fact I could have gotten out of the ministry if that wouldn't happen one of the things that happened for me was that the two

[00:36:36] forced terminations always turned into something better yeah so when I left in ten yeah when I left in 2004 as when it was it wasn't uh let's see 2004 2000 maybe it was 2004 is when the first one happened not 2008 I went over to cornerstone Baptist church with white

[00:36:57] mechizic that ended up being the best thing ever and then when I was forced terminated out of first re-do so I went over to merge with the Calvary Chapel and that church was revitalized in

[00:37:16] a moment because it was so messy but people decided if y'all are running our pastor off we're going with our pastor yeah and it's unfortunate I didn't want it to go that way that's really not

[00:37:29] no no but at that point I was like you know what I can't control any of this I couldn't even get a callback from key leaders to try to talk so I was like yeah you know what I'm gonna let me

[00:37:39] ask you this yeah moving forward yeah how has this shaped you to make you a better Christian and a better pastor yeah um I think that it has made the the scriptures absolutely be real

[00:37:55] when Paul writes in Philippians for I make that I may know the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings um there in John you know the hired hand runs when the wolf rears has had but the

[00:38:06] shepherd gives up his life for the sheep it it it makes it makes the gospel as real as it's ever been because you realize they have persecuted me they will persecute you and that and even though

[00:38:24] you've got voices all around you saying you're crazy this is your fault your hard-headed your obstinate all this kind of stuff you know and you'll even have church like you just said nobody

[00:38:35] would even talk to you I mean that not a soul instead of Mississippi after I got fired reached out to me and tried to help me find a church not a soul and I know why because they because my

[00:38:46] name had been made mud because I was viewed as a troublemaker as an instigator as a you know somebody who couldn't get along with anybody and I might know I mean there's no way you can

[00:38:57] know that unless you went through everything I went through it and so when I look at the Bible I mean Christ was forced terminated the apostles were forced terminated I mean I mean every new

[00:39:08] testament I mean every every prophet in the Old Testament was terminated in a sense I mean so for me I saw myself in the typology of what the Bible had and I saw these other people

[00:39:23] really as politicians just trying to get along with their body we just don't rock the boat man just you know just do just do what they tell you to do I'm like no I can't do what they tell me to do

[00:39:33] I've got to do what God tells me to do and God is telling me to preach this word and to equip the saints for works of service and if that causes a big storm I mean it's just going to have to

[00:39:44] cause a big storm so it really it really brought the scripture alive in that sense that this really happens I mean when you preach the gospel you really turn hell upside down and demons

[00:40:00] really come after you because you are preaching the word of God the parable of the soar is real some falls on heart soul some falls in thorny ground some falls in rocky ground and how you know

[00:40:13] that it's true is when it produces a fruit 30 69 the I mean we have seen that time and time and time again and it's just in a sense it's it's affirming and wonderful and in a sense it is absolutely

[00:40:29] horrifying wow all right let's go into just a moment of over time here yeah what would you say let we got asked a fair a fair question here well what would you change what did you get wrong

[00:40:43] did you get things wrong in the process yeah my my relationally has that's when I was coming from on on talking about those those men relationally I did not spend the time that was necessary

[00:40:58] to to get to know the people in the church and and the reason why that happened is because I was a husband and a father of three small children and my time was very we it was just minimal the time I had

[00:41:12] was very minimal to actually spend relationally with the people in the church hindsight um I would have definitely spend spent way more time with with the decant body spent way more time that the second

[00:41:28] that I realized that there was an issue with a certain individual of the church I would have reached out to that person developed a much deeper relationship with that person tried to understand that

[00:41:37] person more not now now the result may have been the same okay but but but I would have spent more time with each individual person the issue with that is the way the modern day church is organized

[00:41:51] that time really doesn't exist yeah I I'm just sitting here in my heart and mine amenating all that you're saying and there's always so much more to it I definitely please why ask

[00:42:05] that questions I want us to also mention in this episode that pastors don't always get it right and we know that that's kind of a separate subject because we're talking more about the manner in which

[00:42:19] these forced terminations go down we're not talking well being someone who's teachable or correctable or any of that because we absolutely must be and their times where pastors have not

[00:42:31] been I have not been up in a little proud and it gets a little dicey I can actually after all these years look back and say criticize me on whatever you want I got probably I got no problem with it

[00:42:44] yet no I didn't do anything to deserve to be forced terminated that's exactly that's exactly as well I'll echo that with you no no one is saying that that there's no reason for pastors to

[00:42:56] be fired they're absolutely a reasons for pastors to be terminated that that's why the the the title of my dissertation was unbiblical pastoral terminations what you and I experienced was an unbiblical pastoral termination they did not they did not exercise church discipline they did not allow

[00:43:16] the facts to be told they did not allow credible witnesses to I mean I mean I mean good grief man that the judicial system in America works better than most churches you know I mean at least they

[00:43:26] have lawyers and have a judge and all the evidences brought forward and it's all weighed I mean they just cast us out like for trash well man thanks for coming on the podcast brother I'm

[00:43:39] very lucky appreciate it I know it's a pretty beefy conversation and I wanted to do this for a long while yeah and thank you brother I'm gonna go ahead and cut us off to our listeners we will see you

[00:43:52] in the next episode of the Stoke at a podcast know that we exist to encourage you in your journey with God and we look forward to seeing you then God bless and then