THE ELDERS chapter 174

As I drove back to the church I was very conflicted. Should I have ignored his behavior? Was it any of my business? Was I trying to bring down a man who I believed was entertaining, but not a good preacher? I considered everything I may have had against the man. I could come up with a fairly long list, but none enough to get him removed as pastor. He was well liked by most of the people. He was warm and friendly. He and I had little to do with one another and I would be leaving soon.

I knew he would not be at the church when I returned. I finished out the day and went to see one of the elders later that night. I had called Della to tell her what happened and that I would be home very later and why. I knew she would be praying for the meeting

I was tense that night. I didn’t really want to tell the elder what I had seen. I knew he and his wife would believe me. That was not the problem. Now they were going to be drawn into the whole mess. The matter was rapidly moving out of my hands.

The DS did contact the elders and set up a meeting at the District Office with them. Not all the elders knew what the meeting was about. Some did not know there was any accusation against their pastor.

The DS laid out the accusation without identifying me. It didn’t matter, as some already knew who I had started the ball rolling. Half believed the accusation and half did not. The meeting was tense. Suspicions were laid out. Facts were laid out. With the elder’s board split, the DS was troubled. The DS wanted absolute proof. Some wanted to hire a detective, but the DS was horrified at the thought. “We can’t do that to a pastor.” Two elders offered to pay for the detective. Still there was no agreement. How would they get absolute proof? Some through they had it with my observation.

The elders left with no decision or clear understanding of what would happen from that point on. Many were very frustrated.

The pastor continued as though nothing has every happened. Personally, I could not understand how he could hold his head as high as he did, but he looked terrific with not a look of guilt.

Complains continued to flow to the DS and he finally met with the pastor. No one knows what was said in that meeting. Several wondered if he was ever told of the accusation. The follow up was that several months later the pastor announced he had accepted a church in another part of the state.

The pastor’s knew something. She was angry and let a few know of her displeasure. She let some families know exactly what she thought of them. She made accusations directed at people she believed had a vendetta against her husband. It appeared that he had kept his wife in the dark and easily contained her so he could do what he wanted. She did not drive. It is virtually impossible to do anything or go anywhere in California without a car. He took her where she needed to go. He was virtually house bound.

It always felt like he was simply moved along. The real issue was never dealt with. A few of us were upset about that. I always felt bad that he was not stopped.

There is a follow up to this story that occurred several years later. This pastor served a couple of years in the South Pacific and then moved to Vancouver, BC. I never found out what he was doing in that city until much later, He was a shirttail relative of some people in the Tenth Avenue church. I was teaching at Canadian Bible College when I got a phone call at home from a close friend in Vancouver. She wanted to tell me what she had heard on the radio as she was driving to a fund raising for a para-church organization. He was in charge of that dinner. I had not given the man a single thought since leaving California. But this was hot news, or hot gossip, which ever.

Apparently the RDMP had broken up a sex ring of men with under age boys and girls. The ring consisted of two or three pastors and a couple of others. This pastor was named as part of the ring. The young hotshot reporter on the CBC had done some serious digging into the lives of all these men. The pastor had a history of intimate relationships with women in every city where he had served. This was the first any seemed to know of his involvement with underage youth.

He and the others were convicted and went to prison.

Rather than making me happy, I was heart broken. He was a talented man who had drifted a long way from his calling. My heart broke for his wife who always considered herself lucky to be married to him and never believed the accusations. My prayers went out to her. To my knowledge they had no children.