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Church fires pastor for being sick, elder for being quoted
It's worth reading each of Brad Greenberg's 2,329 words in a July 30 San Bernardino Sun article about former Calvary Chapel Rialto pastor Bruce Nelson, and the 400 words Greenberg wrote in Thursday's follow-up. But here's the story in a nutshell:

• March 17, 2003: Assistant pastor Bruce Nelson leads two-week church mission trip to Madras, India.
• April 2, 2003: Nelson returns to his church having contracted dengue fever, which leaves him with extreme fatigue and joint pain.
• May 30, 2003: After missing five weeks of work due to his illness (he was hospitalized), Nelson received an e-mail from senior pastor Terry Hlebo, which says, "Bruce as of Today May 30 we will no longer be paying your salary."
• June 2003: After criticism from the treasurer of the church's board of directors, the senior pastor says the salary will continue until workers' compensation checks started arriving.
• July 2003: Fearing a civil suit from Nelson, the church denies his request to "keep his lights on and his water running." Nelson says he has never intended to sue.
• November 2003: Nelson appeals to Calvary Chapel Outreach Fellowship, the umbrella body for the 1,100 Calvary Chapel congregations, but is told the fellowship has no authority over the decisions of the congregational leaders.
• April-May 2004: A workers' compensation doctor clears Nelson to resume work. Nelson's personal doctor says he remains unable to work. Worker's compensation checks stop coming. "Under California labor law," notes the Sun, "Calvary was [then] required to offer Bruce a job within 15 percent of his previous pay." The law also states that the church would have been required to offer him a position in which he "has the ability to perform the essential functions of the job."
• "Hlebo, however, said he had decided [Nelson] was no longer spiritually fit to be a pastor. To avoid having to pay him severance, Hlebo said, the church offered [Nelson] a job as a janitor." (The Sun)
• Nelson declines the job and files a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The complaint is dismissed over jurisdictional matters. (The EEOC rarely gets involved in church employment cases.) Nelson and Calvary then go to mediation.
• As part of the mediation, Carey F. Baird, a church janitor for 10 years and elder at Calvary Chapel Rialto, writes a letter of reference stating that Nelson "was one of the most diligent, reliable and hard working employees on staff" but that his illness surely prevents him from working as a church janitor.
• Spring 2005: Mediation ends.
• July: Nelson speaks to the Sun, which publishes his story July 31.
• Thursday: The Sun reports that Hlebo dismissed Baird as an elder because his mediation letter had been quoted in the July 31 article.

The employment dispute was shocking enough—one would think that a church would do all it could to support a pastor who got a serious disease while on a mission trip, but, as the Sun notes, these issues can be tricky. "The dispute depicts one difficulty of running a place where finite wealth and infinite needs collide," wrote Greenberg.

But there was an undercurrent of authoritarianism in the story—and when Baird was dismissed, something really seemed awry.

Weblog rarely does original reporting, but in this case it seemed worth checking out. Calvary Chapel Rialto seemed vindictive; surely there was more to the story.

But calling Calvary Chapel Rialto and speaking to assistant pastor Jack Montoya clarified things only insofar as it demonstrated that the church really does see being quoted in a newspaper on a church dispute as sinful.

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August (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49