Trouble In Paradise

Throughout my early years in student ministry I was blessed to work some absolutely amazing Senior Pastors.  When you are a youth guy like I was, you are pretty low on the congregation's respect scale, and the support of your pastor is crucial.  David Robinson, the pastor at Centre Friends Meeting who first asked me to lead a youth group, was a great encouragement to me, as was Ben Hurley doing my short stint at Cedar Square Friends Meeting.  Then beginning with my move to New Garden Friends, the pastors I worked with became much more that supportive.  David Bills, Max Rees and John Willis were major influences on my life and my ministry.  As a matter of fact, if you click on any of those names you can read posts labeled "influences" that detail what these men meant to my life and my ministry.  They were my teachers, my mentors and my friends.

When John Willis was moved to Tallahassee by the Florida Conference of the UMC in June of 1999, I had no reason to doubt that our new senior pastor would continue this line of great men with whom I had shared my professional life.  I was confident that a strong, growing church like FUMC-K (pictured at top) would get a forward thinking leader to guide us into the future.  I was wrong.  I am not going to mention his name; I do not wish to cause anyone grief.  But the Pastor Who Shall Not Be Named (sorry, Harry Potter fans) almost immediately started leading us backwards.  I have previously mentioned the building project he helped to halt.  He also began to dismantle our efforts to make one of our worship services more contemporary.  When I took him to lunch to talk about how this was impacting our youth, he agreed to think about the changes he was making.  A couple of weeks later, he instructed our worship leader, the brilliant Andrew Lewis, to stop doing so much praise music.  We were headed the wrong way, and the fake tears he shared in worship most every week were not soothing our fears. 

By the end of summer I was in a quandary.  I loved FUMC-K, and we loved living in Kissimmee.  The Youth Ministry Team was an amazing group of adults who loved our young people.  I had an awesome group of youth to serve.  The class of 2001 was a no-brainer Hall of Fame group, with Colleen Martin, Jay Lynes, Matt Lupfer, Erin Augenblick, Kristen Landry, Chrisy Weaver, Lauren Carr and so many others.  The class of '04 (Kelly Jeck, Lindsey Lupfer and friends) was another stellar group, and the class of '05 (Bethany Esry, Julia Pribyl, Isabelle Davis, Matthew Rogers) had the potential to be an all-time favorite.  I didn't want to leave.  But it was becoming more and more difficult to give a positive answer to the question I had always asked myself:  If I didn't work at this church, would I attend it?  The rest of the church staff was as frustrated as I was.  My office, because it was upstairs and away from the main offices, became a place of refuge where staffers would come to crash and complain.  Things were not good.

Upon returning from what would be my final Last Gasp Summer Blowout, I put my resume online in the Youth Specialties Job Bank.  Offers began pouring in.  I didn't want to leave, I wasn't ready to leave, and God's call in my life was very unclear.  There was trouble in paradise, but there were also stories still left to write as I shared life with an amazing staff and those incredible youth.  The Pastor Who Shall Not Be Named (and his henchman) wanted me gone.  The autumn of 1999 was going to tougher than I could even begin to imagine.  And yet, God was still in control, and there was still ministry to be done.  Tomorrow we get back to those stories.

Because of Jesus,