Rod did not outright confirm Scott's account. In fact, you have to parse it very carefully just to hope that it could still accord. It was meant to cast doubt on what Scott said, and not reveal any particular reasons beyond what had been said at his last sermon.
Of course, Scott was correct. Rod wasn't going to a paid pastoral position at another church. And he wouldn't be there long either. He wasn't leaving for something.
Scott proposed meeting him at another church in Catonsville. We came, and surprise, surprise! there were other Hope members? Faces I recognized, three, four families?
And Rod and his wife. I panicked, figuring he was there coincidentally and would relay back to Leake who was meeting with Scott. I didn't want to be seen as part of a church split. I thought I was just meeting with Scott and his wife.
But Rod was there to meet them. When we spoke after the sermon he was a little more candid, though still reserved, about problems he'd had.
His email had done damage to me. I had a hard time respecting him, now that I began to hear from others that he had been suffering in this. That dream of becoming a pastor seemingly now far out of reach.
Rod and his family couldn't stay, so we said goodbye and they left.
The kicker came when Scott took the group out to lunch. Now that we were out, it wasn't divisive to speak openly. And Scott, who had hinted before that he had documentation for what he said (so he was surprised how the elders could say what they said), showed us.
To be clear: I can't say beyond surface impressions how he actually was, but Rod doesn't strike anyone as a particularly pugnacious or controversial person. He appears laid back, generally principled, and had earned a lot of respect from people. No one knew why he had come back from Baltimore Bible Church as suddenly as he did. He had left to help the pastor there keep growing.
=====================
Letter 1: Pastor Leake writes to George Lawson, BBC, in support of George, castigating Rod for not submitting properly to the senior pastor, effectively removing support for Rod being there and recalling him to Hope. Not like normal submission in love, but this was a treatise on basically the senior pastor calling the shots and others falling in line. It was not loving by any stretch of the imagination.
Worse, this was written in the name of all elders, by Leake alone, to which Scott objected strongly because these weren't his feelings on the matter.
=====================
Letter 2: Again, in the name of the elders, a letter detailing Rod's failure to submit to Leake, and now demanding his resignation from Hope, shortly before Rod did.
So much for Pastor Leake having been such a wonderful friend and mentor to Rod as he claimed. So much for Rod's insistence about following God's purpose out of the church (true, but not in the way we read it) and he was leaving to help a friend.
=====================
When Scott mentioned that on two different occasions Tom Leake had thrown up his hands after a particularly difficult meeting (including one hinted at in Tom's Appendix), he appealed to Alan saying it's either "him or me", once for Scott, once for Rod, I can believe it, having read these letters.
The idea that Rod left on very good terms that everyone believed and was told, disappeared when I read this. And Tom Leake in writing is not the same as Tom Leake in person, to a stranger.
And worst, Rod could have just told the truth, even part of it, that he was being kicked out. Rod didn't benefit from it. After all that, he didn't get Tom's endorsement for another church (so I'm told) nor did he come back to Hope to speak at conferences. Leaving quietly didn't help him any. It just let Hope claim to be the good guys while pushing another out.
Tom Leake no longer appears humble and sweet, kind and serious, but vindictive and a minor tyrant.
Short of attempting to claim that those emails were fabricated, that is about as hard a proof that we were not told the truth in an attempt to influence decisions and paint Hope in an otherwise undeservedly good light.
It's the first time I saw this in a church I really believed had been so great. And this Senior Pastor idea... I have a hard time saying that without some disgust, seeing how that now worked and was used against people.
No comments:
Post a Comment