Conflict and Transition

Note: All the names of individuals and churches have been changed to protect the identity of those involved.

St. John’s Church of Louisville

SJPC came into being as the daughter church of a traditional and well-established church in a different part of Louisville. However, according to the founding pastor, David Evans, it was really more of a “splant,” sort of a plant and sort of a split.

According to David, the group that formed the church was a tradition-based remnant of a church that had folded some years before and that had been biding time in another local congregation that had been given funds to oversee the eventual plant.

Once the decision was made to initiate the plant, the recruitment process moved quickly, and David was unanimously elected by the core group to serve as the founding pastor. At the time of his arrival, a few dozen people had committed to the work. 

But David was concerned about the church drifting too far away from their cultural context.

“I was really trying to cast the vision of ‘We’re not going to be a Reformed enclave. We are going to be outward-focused,’”

which he indicated was a challenge for the traditionally oriented core group of that church. 

Over the next nine years, much of David’s vision took hold, and the church grew to over 200 folks while also initiating efforts to purchase property, build a new facility and also become a church planting center for the region. As he put it,

“I envisioned myself moving to Louisville, planting SJPC, building the church to about 600, and then planting again.” 

Unfortunately, problems began to crop up at SJPC, at first with an associate pastor on the church’s staff, and then ultimately, with the session. As David put it,

“We had an associate pastor leave to go pastor another church, and when he departed, unbeknownst to me, he had talked with some of the elders about concerns regarding my leadership style and asked that they do an intervention with me.”

At this point, David was already becoming aware of some of his own leadership flaws and beginning to have some “personal aha moments,” seeing that he had created an “unhealthy system.” These insights set him out on a course to discern how he could “begin to undo this.” 

However, in spite of the internal struggles, David was still liked by the congregation. According to Ben Gibbs, a ruling elder on the SJPC session,

“We had a lot of folks who resonated with his style. It’s not like he trampled over the congregation . . . but on the session, that was a little bit of an issue.”

About five years into his tenure, as David was beginning to face weaknesses in his leadership style, he sought permission from the leadership of the church to enter into a Doctor of Ministry program to help him develop better habits in shepherding the ministry culture at SJPC.

“It was a really a significant time of growth and personal change for me when I realized, ‘Ew . . . I love crisis and an anxious system; I’ve created an anxious system.’ So, I started a D.Min. on a topic related to this.”

At the same time, the church was experiencing obstacles to some of its larger plans to build on the property it had acquired, and David, in his words, “was losing his passion to preach” which, according to him, was “terrifying” because he wanted to remain at the church for the next twenty years. 

In order to complete the course work for his D.Min., David was granted a sabbatical, but just prior to the beginning of his sabbatical, another situation blew up, this time with another staff member and members of the session itself. As David relates it, he and an assistant pastor had had a significant conflict at a session retreat, which initiated a series of meetings between him, the assistant pastor, and members of the session. Just before leaving for his sabbatical, David gave one of the ruling elders the assistant pastor’s personnel file along with some notes he’d taken that included observations about the ministry style of the assistant pastor, some of which were positive and some of which were negative. As David remembers,

“There were multiple times in that file that I had written down, ‘Does he really want to be doing ministry?’ My hope was that during my sabbatical the session would read my notes and meet with him and try to figure out a way forward.” 

But while conversations between the assistant pastor and session went on during David’s sabbatical, it turned into a one-sided situation, according to David, in which the session allowed the assistant pastor and his wife to “air their grievances against me.”

According to Ben, the session had a slightly different perspective on what occurred. As one of the elders involved in the conversations, he indicated that he was trying to mitigate the tension.

“I was saying, look, when David gets back, we will sit down and work on this.”

It didn’t take long after the sabbatical ended for things to come to a head. As David recalled,

“The day after my sabbatical ended, I met with the session, and in that meeting one of the elders said, ‘We’ve come to the belief that you have really created a toxic work environment here.’”

The next few weeks were difficult, but as David recalls it, his desire to preach was strangely “re-ignited.” Even so, he couldn’t escape the angst related to being at odds with the session.

“That’s when I began to wonder for the first time, ‘Lord, are you calling me away?’”

Within a few weeks the presbytery shepherding committee had been called in to help mediate the difficulty between David and the session. Ben believed that they were entering into the mediation in good faith and that he and the other elders remained hopeful that things could be worked out. However, this was not to be. Ben described the shocking moment when he and the session learned that David was resigning.

“It was when we were having our first meeting with the shepherding committee that five minutes before that meeting David announced to us that he was leaving. To that point it was never discussed, it was never on our minds. It came way out of left field.”

In the days leading up to his decision to leave, David began to believe that the problems at the church were deeper than he had feared and that even his wife was coming to a point of clarity when one of their closest friends in the church had decided to leave. On top of that he said,

“It was my assessment that there was still no real willingness among the leaders of SJPC to take responsibility for words said and actions done.”

Adding to the complication, David had been offered another ministry opportunity elsewhere. For David, all these things tipped the balance toward leaving.

“So that’s when I took the final decision to move away. So, we felt a calling away and a calling to.”

As for the session’s consideration of transition in general and transition away from the ministry of a founding pastor, according to Ben, they had “never talked about it.”   

The next few months were a painful dance of separation that ended poorly and took a heavy toll on everyone involved, especially the founding pastor and his family. When asked how he would describe the relationship between himself and the session, David said,

“Broken.”

Interestingly, Ben used the exact same word to describe the current relationship:

“Broken.” 

David reflected further on how his wife felt about things.

“At present my wife has no intention to ever go back to Louisville. There was a farewell party for us. The elders were there, but none of them spoke. That was really painful.” He added, in a somewhat philosophical muse, “You know, there’s just a lot of loss in transition, and someone is going to have to absorb it, and if folks aren’t willing to really process it in a healthy way, someone is going to have absorb the unhealthy remnants of it.”

No one believes that conflict will lead to the departure of their founding pastor, but sadly, conflict can become one of the primary reasons a founding pastor leaves the church he planted.

Often, this conflict is simply the result of an individual who is gifted at planting churches being forced into a role in which they are needing to maintain a church.

Church leaders should carefully assess the long term viability and giftedness of their founding pastor to determine whether he believes, and they agree, that he can thrive in an environment that is less entrepreneurial than a first generation plant.