HBC Troubles: The Knee-Jerk

Scott sends his letter. I was at work when I got it and I just sat, stunned. I don't know Scott. I interacted briefly with him. He seemed a caring personality and, as elders went, the most suited to anything caring focused. He led a somewhat powerful marriage seminar which impressed me. But he resigned and sent this letter, apparently not just to a few, but the entire congregation, or even the entire database.

And he sounded hurt, though no specifics were given.

Shortly thereafter, Rebecca and I remember seeing a response from Tom. Maybe just an hour later.  The Pastor had just returned, possibly from jogging, and had been taken by surprise by Scott's email. Our memory is that is sounded very angry, not so much hurt, like this had been an offense, a violation of protocol. It was harsh. I expected grace, a soft touch. This is what I expected from Tom after all these years where this is how he appeared to me. Not anger.

(Later I would believe that all this was simply consistent with someone's hand caught in the cookie jar. Good men are supposed to take the bullying. They are not supposed to end the game and send up a flare that warned others of what was happening. The Pastor truly hadn't planned for this. It was a new paradigm, and a light in which the leaders' carefully crafted image of holiness now sported holes.)

But (I thought then) he was human, he could be shocked and surprised. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. That was the right response.

I don't have that email. Neither does Rebecca. We have all the others. Strange to have a memory so strong but on this no hard documentation as with the rest. All this time I remembered details about it, a claim that he had been out, maybe jogging, when Scott sent it? and didn't see Scott's letter until a just then. Did we make this up?

But an earlier, written memory confirmed that something prior to the "Unity Letter" was sent. From my long account of this (posted later, herein):

Pastor Scott’s departure was sudden, and the hurt in his words was plain. But beyond the implication that he had been hurt, the public email revealed nearly nothing as to the cause of this hurt. Pastor Leake’s immediate reply volunteered far more than he should have in trying to convey that Scott had acted imprudently. He escalated when a wiser person would have produced a softer response. We chalked Scott’s email up to possible imprudence, and an error in sending to a wider forum than Delta, and we excused Pastor Leake’s email as that of someone caught off guard and raw with emotion.

However, Pastor Leake’s email focused very much on the principal offense of Scott as not having followed protocol.

He also revealed freely that there were disagreements ongoing and had been in the past. Maybe some knew, but for much of the congregation this was new information to cloud a sense of elder unity. The Elder Board was not truly unified, contrary to their usual insistence. He volunteered a real possibility as well that Scott may have been legitimately hurt as a result of a disagreement.

I think this was almost certainly a response written through the same HopeBook bulletin board that Scott had used to disseminate his letter, and likely as a direct reply/addendum to Scott's thread. I always got the first email in a thread, but had deliberately blocked subsequent responses to limit Inbox clutter. I believe, that the reason I had trouble locating it is because the entire thread has since been deleted.