Coming Clean: Dirt on the Ex-Pastor

If you got here from reading this post, perhaps you are one of the people who attended LAC while I was a pastor there.  This is a post more specifically for you to offer some explanation of my leaving the church, and an honest peel-back-the-layer look at the person I hoped you'd never really see - the real me.

1.) I always hated praying out loud. But I did it anyway. I hated prayer meetings and devotions and generally anything else that was forced "because that's what Christians do." Christianity has always felt uncomfortable and unnatural to me, and I suspect it does to many others as well. I could have never been a Christian on my own because without other people to tell me how to live and behave, how would I have known what I was supposed to do?  I would cringe every time someone asked me to bring my guitar to a small group meeting. Because it's just bloody weird to me. Sitting in a small group. Singing. It's weird to me and I never liked it. And having religious reasons to make me do it was very uncomfortable to me. That's the truth, and I can finally be honest enough to admit it now.

2.) Despite where I am now, I was very sincere in my ministry. I was very sincere in my worship and my understanding of whatever that was back then.  However, it was entirely motivated by people pleasing, meeting expectations and virtually no will of my own. I often got asked why my worship leading was so effective.  To this day, I have no idea. Likely because I was an okay musician, but I was an epic people pleaser.

3.) I wrote worship songs for the church because it would have been weird to write secular songs and I hated 98% of whatever other worship music was available. The songs I wrote were equally sincere as the rest of my ministry, but had I not been a pastor I never would have bothered making a worship album. 'Still Hallelujah' and 'Stay Here With Me' are the only two songs on that album that truly came from my heart, but neither of those were really meant for the church. Still Hallelujah is a cry for help and a picture of my blind dedication to God in the midst of drowning in depression. Stay Here With Me was written from a broken heart of watching my wife's agonizing pain in dealing with childhood abuse. The rest of the songs were quite literally systematically pieced together from other people sermons and catch phrases and to this day mean little to me. Incidentally, the song, All Creation Bows Down was written by repeatedly flipping open the Bible and dropping a finger on a sentence and seeing if I could fit it in musically.  The sad thing is some people would call that divine inspiration. *Facepalm*  To this day I can't stand listening to worship music.

4.) I would have left the church years earlier if I wasn't so afraid of what I would do with my life outside of it.  I was utterly dependant on it.  Security was worth more than freedom to me then, and as usual, fear was my guide. After reading Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola, my shaky faith began to unravel. It happened against my will, mind you, but once you open Pandora's box, what can you do?

5.) I did (and still do) personally care deeply for all of you. No matter how awkward Christianity felt, you were like family, and being forced to leave, and the awkwardness that it caused between us tore a huge chasm in my heart. When we needed you more than ever, you were the one place we couldn't turn. We wept buckets. We felt monumentally alone. A lifetime may not be enough to heal that wound. We had a huge support network and it crumbled in a matter of days. And for this I also despise what churches can do to people, to relationships. Even well meaning, grace oriented, generally happy churches.

*on a side note, there are those very few of you who stuck by us as though nothing had changed, and you are amazing. There are also those few of you who actually turned on us and became condescending and hurtful. I can only shake my head and feel sad that it's probably just religion that does that to people. I hope you find a better way, and I'm over it now.

6.) When I was told I would no longer be working at the church, the elders could not give me a reason why I was being let go except that God told them it was time for me to move on. I was bitter about this for a long time because God had told me no such thing. I would have understood if it was a financial concern or something, but being told, "Hey thanks for 10 years, see you later. Sorry, it's just orders from the boss... Good luck finding a new career".  It's a tough pill to swallow.  To be fair, I think it was tough for them too.  I'm now grateful that I was pushed out of the nest, and I wouldn't trade where I am at today for any chance of going back. I am putting all of this experience into my basket, learning from it and moving on.

And now I shall go live my life.