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"As a church we love Bruce [Nelson] very much," Montoya said quietly. "We are just grieved over his behavior … and want to see him come to repentance."

What behavior was that? I asked.

"Contacting the newspaper to run a story," he said. "He has black-eyed the church by making it public."

Likewise, Montoya said, "Carey [Baird] is an awesome brother." But when asked if Baird was really dismissed as elder simply because his letter of reference was quoted, Montoya said, "We know that without church discipline, the church conforms like the world. It's internal, and that's where we want to deal with it."

When repeatedly asked if there was anything factually wrong with the Sun's reporting, Montoya did not say that there was. The problem, he said, was that the issue was in the newspaper at all.

Actually, the church and society would be far better off if there was more reporting like Greenberg's. His July 31 article could have savaged Calvary Chapel Rialto. It could have been filled with quotes from experts on employment ethics and law. It could have quoted critics of Calvary Chapel ecclesiology, which puts all authority in the senior pastor. It could have focused entirely on Nelson's dispute with his church.

But it didn't. Greenberg did not write about one man's crusade against an injustice perpetrated against him by his church and employer. He wrote about one man's struggles to understand his faith amid suffering. His employment woes are only one part—albeit the major part—of his trials. The kicker of the story is "Dengue fever," not "Ill will." The headline: "A Test of Faith," not "Fired for Infirmity."

There's no explicit politics angle to the story. A different reporter might have focused on the church-state elements in the story: Why doesn't the EEOC get involved in church cases? How much employment law must churches follow? Is teaching that it's sinful to go to court really a power play? That's the stuff of most religion coverage right now.

But it's not really getting the story. Greenberg has reported a story that captures what's at stake for the people in it. For Nelson, this is a story about faithfulness in suffering: What are the duties of the sufferer? What are the duties of the church to the suffering? For Calvary Chapel Rialto, it seems to be a story about acceptance: surrendering to the will of an omniscient God and to the decisions of the senior pastor as he seeks to be led by God.

For Greenberg, this should be a story that raises his profile significantly as a religion reporter.

More articles

ELCA convention:

• Lutherans to vote on mushy proposal | Policies have the consistency of potluck supper Jell-O. (Bill Wineke, Wisconsin State Journal)
• ELCA pledges unity before tackling sexuality issues | The Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America passed a resolution this morning pledging to stay united despite disagreements and then recessed to worship before tackling controversial proposals regarding gay-and-lesbian ministry (Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.)
• In an hour, ELCA delegates condense the issues | After years of prayer, polarization and liturgical politics, members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America boiled down their roiling debate over human sexuality to an hour of heartfelt testimony Thursday (Minneapolis Star-Tribune)
• Church to vote on gays in ministry | Study recommends no change in policy (Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.)

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August (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49