Before I go any further, I have to preface something. This is not a bash session, this is not a blog of hot tea of what happened from May 2020-December 2021. I will not divulge on details of situations that occurred or specifics to some of the things that happened. My goal with this is piece is my heart. The truth. This may be lengthy but I hope and pray it may find someone in the same position I was in and currently working my way out of and would be an encouragement to keep trucking.
But to understand the reasoning for this blog, I have to start in the beginning:
May of 2020, I was still serving as Student Ministry Pastor but felt my time at that church was rapidly coming to a close. We were in the start of the pandemic, my son had just been born, and my wife was craving Panera Bread. While driving to pick up our carry out I was examining the current state of my spiritual life, empty, confused, and mentally exhausted(story for another time). A change was needed for my newly growing family. A change that I had envisioned for some time, but before I can go there I need to explain a little of my backstory. I grew up in your typical southern religious baptist church. Where legalism was taught to the point of rebellion. I had a false sense of what salvation truly was and was pushed into a fear based relationship with Jesus, which in turn caused many poor decisions for myself in high school, college, and my young adult life. It wasn't until I was about 22-23 when I learned true Grace and who Jesus really was. I felt as though I had wasted so much time, I "felt the call" to enter into ministry and knew I was here to serve the Kingdom. Fast forward, and after years of figuring myself out, preaching, traveling, and serving as a student ministry pastor, it was time for something I felt God call me for some time.
Driving to get Panera, I hear, "It's time to start a church"
An immediate rush of adrenaline hit me, to the point I had to sit in the parking lot of Panera to calm myself, collect my thoughts, get our food, and go home to announce to my wife it was time for her and I to start a church. She took it, ummm well? My eagerness was pretty overwhelming, there was so much to do, so little time, but that's just the thing. I felt as though God had given us a date for launch, well off from where we were. So we soon turned to prayer, endlessly. I turned in my resignation at the church I served at and in the mean time Jessie and I were going to attend a church we LOVE and adore(more on this later) and now was time to plan and build!
From the beginning I never felt as though I was called to be the "Lead Pastor," nor did I feel I was ready for a position like that. I feel as though God had and has granted me the gift to teach, so my official title was a "teaching pastor." But I also felt as though a church should have a team of pastors, to encourage one another, build from one another, sharpen one another, be there for another. So I began to pray and reach out to close friends of mine who I had encountered in the ministry in the past and after some time and prayer, the decided to join the journey with Jessie and I and serve as another teaching pastor along side with me. I had also been in communication with an individual who had served as a "lead pastor" before and was interested in joining this journey and vision God had given me. While holding the title of lead, still being equal with the rest of leadership as one united front instead of a dictatorship as many southern religion churches I had seen and witnessed, this individual accepted the position of "lead" to shepherd our leadership team. While I was the original founder of the church, God had supplied a leadership team that could really pack a punch. We were thick as thieves, with a growing worship team and worship pastor with so much talent. It seemed as though God was building something truly special through Hillside Church of Knoxville. We were a church based on the principal of the Gospel, everyone was welcome, amazing worship, great teaching, shame was to be left at the door, and no legalist pharisetical mindsets, so I thought. It was running as smooth as it could go, granted anything that includes man, will also include mess ups and tension. Things were going well, so it was decided and voted on to push the date of the launch up to September of 2021. We had less than a year to prepare...
(With this decision that was made, Jessie and I felt as though we needed to let the church we were attending know that things were rapidly speeding up and mutually agreed to step away from the life group we had help start with an amazing couple and a great teaching pastor at Fellowship Church.) This was hard, gut wrenching.
But back to Hillside, we began to have events, our team was growing, our elder board began to form, and we were gaining momentum heading into our pre-launch season(June of 2021). As I said, anytime flesh is involved, chaos is surely to be there. The enemy was at work, daily. But we felt we had a good grasp on our team, on the plan, and on the vision God had given. But as the summer progressed, things got pretty tough and rocky to say the least. The vision began to split into different ideas, murmurs began to get louder, jealousy began to creep in, and the idea that we had built on began to quickly fade away right up to the day of launch.
Sunday, September 12, 2021, a day I will remember forever. After months, over a year, of planning, blood, sweat, and tears, and a few heated moments but also glorious moments, we opened and launched a new church in Knoxville, TN. It was a very hectic and scary day but we finally got through it. I wish I could say it was a great memory but to be honest, it's a painful memory. By this point division had been sown between a majority of leadership, our elder stepped down the week before, we had other members of leadership stepping away and losing interest, the tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. But we persevered and pushed forward, unbeknownst to any the internal struggle happening in leadership. Things rapidly changed, declined even quicker. The team that we thought once stood strong was crumbling. As I said, I will not go into details but I will be honest when I say division was being sown in leadership, spiritual abuse was being dished out left and right, narcissistic attitudes poured out, and deceit was around every turn. You didn't know who you could say anything to.
I would also like to state, not all the problems came from one individual. There was fault to be shared among all leadership on a few things.
We, as in my family, quickly reached a point that we were mentally, physically, and spiritually hurt and drained. In a meeting, I requested to take a few months off of teaching due to the birth of my daughter having major complications and the fact of everything going on behind the scenes. I couldn't stand on stage and fake my way through a sermon knowing what was happening behind closed doors. I didn't want and still don't want my flesh to get in the way of the Gospel going out. Stepping down those few months were refreshing but also eye opening, to not just myself but my wife and many of those around me who attended Hillside. The hardest part was fighting what I thought was my flesh but the thought of "I need to step down completely and step away.." WHAT!?!? How could I? A church that I started and planted!?!? How could I step down!? And please don't get me wrong, I was not the only one who built Hillside, as I said God created an amazing team of individuals who joined along side me in this vision despite some who just craved the image. But when it came to it, I made myself sick with these thoughts, these emotions for days, weeks, months. I attempted, more times than I can count to fix things, to the best of my abilities, but I couldn't. Things progressively got worse, to the point I despised going to the very church I planted on Sunday mornings. Not only had I been hurt, and spiritually abused. But my wife, my family, and even friends had come to Hillside and had been hurt and treated poorly. I can't count how many times individuals came up to me and would say "something has changed, this isn't the Hillside from the beginning."
I was crushed but also getting to the point I knew if I didn't step down and away, my family would have so much church hurt I didn't think we would ever walk into a church again. Fast forward from October to December(the hardest month spiritually of my life), so many situations happened that God was practically shoving us through the door to step away. So with prayer, and courage, we decided to step down, and away from the church we had just started and planted. December 27th, 2021, coincidently the Monday before the Sunday we were going to originally launch, was my last day as a pastor at Hillside Church.
I wish I could explain in words the emotions that I felt. I felt as though I had lost a loved one. I was angry, frustrated, depressed, anxious, sad, hurt, you name it. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't still grieving slightly. We(my wife and I) had no clue which way to turn. We had a pretty good idea but was still a little unsure, until one of the pastors from Fellowship reached out to me to go to lunch, to fellowship, to laugh, to be a friend, just to talk, a pastor. In that conversation I shared some of my thoughts, my feelings. In that he began to share the new idea that Fellowship Church was starting, "how to take your next steps with Jesus."
Honestly, I was so angry, I didn't care what was said. I wanted justice for what had just happened. I wanted to know the why to everything. God why did I have to go through that? Why did this happen to me. God why was this vision ripped away from me. Things were so good God, what happened? Seemed a lot of questions were surrounded by "me." So many questions but no answers. Thankfully, Jessie and I had already made the decision to come back to Fellowship. Because honestly, through the entire Hillside season we always felt home at fellowship and missed it so much. We craved the teaching, community, and people. We made the decision to come back home, which turned out to be the best decision. In the time we've been back, we've grown, not just spiritually but mentally, and emotionally. We started therapy and in that I learned a concept:
Pain->Meaning->Purpose->Joy
I've learned that through difficult times, through times of sorrow, sadness, and depression, we can sit in our pain. As a matter of fact, I think we are suppose to. But don't sit in it alone, invite Jesus to sit in it with you. Church pain is real, spiritual abuse is real, but don't let the affect of man diminish your thoughts on Jesus. That was man that hurt you, not Jesus. Sometimes going through the hard times are necessary for the times to come. To strengthen, to encourage, to disciple. A breakthrough won't always be there, but Jesus will be. And through a healing process with Jesus, while yes it may still hurt, those questions may still be there, but He gives us hope through the resurrection. We gain life through the sufferings of Christ, we gain life because of Christ. I've learned it's not just about me, it's about Him.
Why write this? Because maybe you've been hurt in church, maybe you've been spiritual abused, maybe you feel as though you have no purpose or you wasted your purpose. And there are some stories that don't even come close to this, I've heard AWFUL experiences and tougher times than this. So the phrase "it's easier said than done" can be applied, or "I've never walked in your shoes," and to that I agree. All of those are valid and don't let anyone ever diminish your hurt. I just want YOU to know you are not alone. I'm still hurt, I'm still disappointed, I'm still sad, but I've found a joy much greater than anything on this earth can supply. We have found a church, a community full of individuals who love our family and encourage our family, we found a place that promotes the Gospel of Jesus, not the lifting of man. There's a place for you, and don't be fooled. It doesn't take 4 walls of a building to find Jesus. It just takes an open mind. Find a community that builds you, not tears you down, find your purpose not in yourself but through Jesus. Sometimes the pain is too much, that's ok. Take time, rest, recoup, recover. Stepping down from something that was created in years of prayers and thoughts can be the hardest thing you do but sometimes, like this time, can be the best thing you ever do. If you're reading this, I hear you, I'm here for you, I'm with you.
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