HBC Troubles: The Propaganda Letter, or Tom's "Word of Reassurance"

Entitled "A Word of Reassurance", I was shocked to read the following. It read like corporate propaganda. 

"Pastor Barao’s ministry at HBC will be missed, and we pray he has a fruitful ministry wherever the Lord leads him."

And then we go on to detail, point-by-point, all the great things Hope is doing, to prove Hope is fine, with particular concern for donors, parents of the church school, visitors (why would they be on mail lists). Maybe... maybe... benefit of the doubt. But it reads like corporate speech and people like me are conditioned to be skeptical when we run into such language.

Real people at Hope are hurting. We expect the pastors to be like us, real people who are hurt, but with wisdom. This... this is damage control.

In the middle of this crisis, touting HBC's achievements on paper seems both calculated and tone-deaf. It comes across as desperately wanting to prioritize the institution. This is what you write when that's what's on your mind. Scott became an inconvenience because he didn't accept everything before-hand and he didn't go quietly and now he jeopardized their plans.

After this letter we reached out to Scott. We smelled a rat.

Published Sept 29, 2017

Dear HBC Family and Friends, 

Please accept our apology for a recent database-wide announcement concerning one of our elders’ leaving HBC. The “Comments from Pastors” pages on our “Hopebook” church communication system was developed so that the elders can share some biblical thoughts with the larger database and encourage Christians by use of doctrine. It was not intended to make emotional announcements such as the kind you received earlier this week. We had no idea that that announcement was coming and found it improper to send out on such a forum.
 

Pastor Barao’s ministry at HBC will be missed, and we pray he has a fruitful ministry wherever the Lord leads him.
 

Our larger database includes missionaries, former members - many of whom are out of state or out of the country, donors, visitors, parents of our Hope Academy etc. … We realize many of you are not able to keep up with the happenings at our church so I just wanted to share a word of reassurance with you. 

By God’s grace HBC continues its 20-year practice of expositing God’s word, teaching doctrine, shepherding the people, worship, and outreaching with the gospel. A number of wonderful answers to prayer have been occurring over the past few years. I’ll share a few with you below:

• With the help of our region of pastors, we recently ordained Pastor David Mora to the ministry and he joined our elder board. David has been at HBC for 5 years and is a graduate of The Master’s Seminary. 
• Our daughter church that we planted, Baltimore Bible Church, continues to grow and become established in central Baltimore. 
• We continue to build the Grace Advance Mid-Atlantic (GAMA) region with the partnership of other like-minded churches in the region, including the continued development of our GAMA Bible Institute. 
• Our annual GAMA Bible Conference is coming up on Saturday, October 21st. Last fall we had our largest participation ever. This year we also anticipate a great time around God’s word as we reflect on the Biblical theme of faith and its place in the 500-year anniversary of the Reformation. 
• My health continues to be stable with no traces of pancreatic cancer resurfacing. It has now been almost 2 1/2 years since the surgery. Your many prayers have been felt and appreciated. 
• Our full deacon board is actively supporting many ministries, and we are continuing our training of 5 elder candidates. We look forward to additions to our elder board soon. We have an office staff up to 5, a growing women’s ministry, a fairly new AWANA program, a two day a week Tutorial school called Hope Academy and other ministry initiatives. 
• We now own our first church facility (55,000 sq. feet) and Lord willing will be moving into it this winter!! That is very exciting for our entire congregation. 
• Many of our men and women are joyfully working side by side to save the church money in order to provide some of the required retrofitting. 

The Lord Jesus as Head of the church is working, and He alone gets the credit for the work in our midst. Thank you for keeping HBC in your prayers. We are a growing church striving to be pleasing to the Lord and as dedicated as ever to follow the word of our Savior. Any fruit that comes from our efforts is clearly the result of Holy Spirit overriding our weaknesses to bring glory to the matchless name of Jesus Christ. 

For all the Elders of HBC, 

Tom Leake
Senior Pastor