As we count down the Top 40 articles ever published in Leadership Journal, we come to this troubling account from 2010.
My lawyer said, "Just follow my lead and answer the questions he asks, and everything will be okay." I clung to his advice as I entered the smartly decorated boardroom lined with towering bookshelves. The first thing I noticed was the videographer and stenographer setting up their equipment. Then the opposing counsel, who to me represented evil incarnate, walked into the room.
"Please state your full name for the record." His tone and mannerisms suggested this was strictly routine. For the others in the room, this was just another work day. They pushed buttons on the camera, they typed on the stenograph machine, they served coffee, they represented their clients—this was a 9-5 job for everyone in the room. Everyone, that is, except me.
I cleared my throat and said, "Ralph Webster Neighbour III."
"I am sure your lawyer has explained to you the deposition process, but let me explain it again for the record …"
There was that phrase again—"for the record." I thought: This is high stakes. The church's reputation and my future are on the line here! I also knew this deposition was just the beginning; we would walk at least another year through this legal maze.
I couldn't believe this was happening to me—a seventh generation pastor. But here I was, giving a deposition in a sexual misconduct lawsuit. This was not what I signed up for!
The dream
With the help of the Church on Brady (now called Mosaic), my wife Pam and I planted Inland Community Church in Chino, California, in 1984. Within five years we averaged 200 attenders, and then we went into overdrive.
At a "How to Break the 200 Barrier" conference, I heard John Maxwell say, "I'm praying for 1,000 churches to reach 1,000 in attendance." Immediately I knew that was my goal—I wanted to lead one of those churches reaching 1,000 people for Christ. I started doing the necessary things to grow the church.
Step one was to "staff for growth." My first hire was a high-octane organizational genius. He had a knack for identifying a trend, programming to it, and rolling out events for our target group. He did an amazing job.
Soon our Awana ministry was attracting more than 200 kids, the youth ministry was almost that size, and we attracted thousands of seekers with special events like the drama "Heaven's Gates and Hell's Flames." We brought in speakers such as Oliver North who spoke to a packed house and helped create a positive buzz about our church in the community.
By 1998, we reached a peak attendance of 1,000. We added more staff and planned for a new building. The sky was the limit. I was living every church planter's dream, or so I convinced myself.
Dream turned nightmare
During the summer of 2000, one of our staff members was having problems at home, and we mutually agreed that he should do something other than church ministry. What I didn't know then was that within the next seven months, we would have to dismiss two other staff members, and one of them was the executive pastor who'd done so much to help us grow.
Looking back now, I realize I had ignored the warning signs. But his productivity was so high that I overlooked them. Yes, he got a lot done, but he did it, in a large measure, by running over people.
Eventually even my son noticed. "Dad," he said, "I can't keep coming to church here if you continue to let that man hurt people the way he is." Only then did I learn that much of the staff was ready to leave because of this man's approach. I knew then that the confrontation couldn't wait. So I had the difficult conversation and let that staff person go.
After he was gone, the dark cloud lifted. Really. For the next few weeks, we experienced a sense of freedom. Unfortunately, the dark cloud wasn't the only thing that was missing.
In January 2001 our financial administrator went through the staff member's expense account for the previous year and found major inconsistencies.
"Ralph, we can't account for a lot of these expenditures, and some of them are major!" she said, and detailed more than $30,000 that she suspected the executive pastor had taken from the church. I tried to contact the former employee, but he wouldn't take my calls.
The right thing to do was to turn the information over to the police and let them investigate. So we did.
I didn't sleep well. It wasn't easy terminating someone like this, especially when after he was gone, even bigger problems showed up. It increased my workload. Here we were, short-staffed, spending valuable time cooperating with the police department investigation, trying to minister to the people we'd reached, and administer a new building program. I was rarely able to relax.
But one night in February was impossible to forget. The phone startled me in the middle of the night.
Good grief, I thought, It's after midnight. Who could that be? I fumbled around on the nightstand to find the phone: "Yes, this is Ralph … no, that's okay." It was the wife of our youth pastor. "What's wrong? Please … calm down and just tell me what happened …. Say that again … the girls are accusing your husband of what?"
The charges proved serious. The following Sunday I told the church that we'd dismissed the youth pastor because of "inappropriate sexual behavior" and asked that people let us know if he had acted inappropriately with anyone else. And, sadly, there were more.
I hated that he harmed young people under his care. I hated what it would do to our church. I hated that it happened on my watch. I hated how alone leadership under such circumstances makes you feel.
I prayed and hoped that we could overcome these setbacks. I knew we'd made the right decisions on these personnel matters. We didn't attempt to downplay anything. We notified the child protection agency, procured legal counsel, talked to our insurance company, and notified the congregation. We had responded promptly and decisively, and I knew our motives were pure.
At my prompting, the elder board decided to push forward with our plans to construct a new building and to do our best to weather the storm. We trusted God to turn things around for us. We knew he could.
Two years later, we were beginning to regain some momentum. We were doing our best to lead the church into its future, but it wasn't the same.
Then the nightmare sequel occurred—yet another allegation of sexual misconduct. This time, a 16-year-old girl accused one of our church's elders, a key leader in our building project, of molestation.
It just can't get any worse than this, I thought. Once again, we notified the congregation and the authorities. Soon disenfranchised people were talking and rumors were being passed all over town. A stench was in the air.
A few weeks later, I knew our leadership team needed to get away. So we headed out to Hume Lake on retreat with our elders. These were men of courage and faith who had walked together with me through the fire. We needed time to pray and face the future. While we were there, one of the elders got a call from his wife.
"I just picked up the paper," she said. "It isn't good—the church is on the front page." As it turned out, the 16-year-old victim was a sister of one of the victims of the youth minister two years before. Their stepmother was a paralegal and organized the other victims to join them in a lawsuit against the church.
I had suspected it might happen, but I couldn't believe the irony of the lawsuit being announced while we were on retreat, trying to escape the madness. I was hoping the pressure would let up. But it didn't.
The perfect storm
Meteorologists say it takes three convergent weather patterns to make the perfect storm. By my count, I had three: the lawsuit, the rapid decline of the church, and now a mysterious illness was plaguing my daughter, Ruth, causing her a severe weight loss. It was overwhelming.
The negative publicity took its toll on church attendance and giving. It is amazing how fast a lifetime of work can unravel. We had an exodus. The negative momentum sucked the life out of our gatherings. Inland Community was no longer a fun place to be. Just surviving Sunday morning became my weekly goal.
Normally I am a people person. I'm energized being around them. Even when I'm preparing my sermons, I don't want to be holed up in an office. I take my laptop to Starbucks and write my sermons surrounded by people. For most of my ministry I arrived for the gatherings early and stayed late. Then I'd want to go out for coffee with friends.
Not anymore. Most Sundays I wouldn't arrive at the service until it was time to take the platform, and then I'd leave during the closing prayer. I hadn't stopped loving people, but I dreaded Sundays.
And by the look of the dwindling crowd, I wasn't the only one. We began an attendance death spiral. The decline began before the lawsuit and accelerated afterward. As our numbers plummeted, so did our hopes to complete the building project.
We'd already put so much money into it, I felt we'd already crossed the point of no return, but frankly, I wasn't sure how we could go forward with it either.
One morning I was answering email and clicked on one from Bob, a special friend and long-time member. In the early days of the church plant, I'd prayed with him to receive Christ and baptized him. Later I walked with his family through the death of a child and had the privilege of bringing him into leadership.
He knew I was going to the doctor with my daughter today. I expected an encouraging word from Bob—like I'd always provided to him when his child was ill. I opened the email.
"You're a total failure," he wrote. "You've disgraced yourself and the ministry. I can't believe I ever trusted you!" I was stunned.
How dare he! I thought. How could he say these things to me? How dare he say them now!
Our church was no longer a fun place to be. Just surviving Sunday morning became my weekly goal.
I pictured the scene in the movie "The Perfect Storm" where the captain handcuffed himself to the helm, and in the final scene of the movie, he went down with the ship. I resonated with what the Captain did—I was determined to do the same thing—to go down with the ship. I told myself that it didn't matter what Bob said, I wasn't going to resign.
Six months later I gave my deposition. On the ride home, I prayed: "God, I'm 52. This is not how I want my life work to end." I was numb. If there ever was a need for a miracle, it was now!
Any salvage value in this wreck?
Soon after that prayer, my wife Pam and I drove to a park in Diamond Bar that overlooks the valley.
"Pam, I am wondering if perhaps it's time for us to find someone younger to take the church, someone without history here. For the sake of the church." To my surprise, she agreed.
"I hate to admit it, but I think you're right," she said. Over the years, I've learned the hard way to take her counsel seriously. We hashed everything out. We decided that for the good of the church, I needed to relinquish control of the helm.
Maybe I shouldn't go down with the ship, I thought. Maybe I'm sinking it. And it can survive without me.
I didn't want to abandon my people. A good shepherd would never do that. But maybe Bob was right, and I wasn't fit for ministry. I needed to begin planning for a smooth exit.
Not knowing where else to turn, I approached our "mother church," Mosaic, to see if they might want to do a new church plant in Chino with our assets and people. What I didn't expect was the response from Mosaic's pastor, Erwin McManus.
"We will come on one condition," Erwin said. "And that's if you stay. You have too much invested here. We'll only do it if it is with you."
I honestly couldn't believe what he was saying. This man was putting everything on the line for me, and I didn't have a clue why. At best, I expected that he'd send a younger pastor over to rebuild the church, and maybe I'd help with the transition. In my wildest dreams, I never thought he'd want me to stay. For the first time in months, hope sprouted.
Our attorney told me that things were going well with the lawsuit, but church attendance and finances were still struggling, and Ruth was still sick.
Our elders had a huge decision to make, and they were divided over whether or not to merge with Mosaic. Some of the elders felt we could orchestrate a resurgence. We decided not to rush the decision. It was important to me to have everyone on board. I wanted unanimity. We prayed about it and discussed it but couldn't come to consensus. The decision process dragged on while the church continued hemorrhaging.
We couldn't continue;we had to have help. So we turned to our mother church.
Erwin preached on our campus a few times to communicate the Mosaic vision to our people, even before we decided what our relationship to Mosaic would be. One of those days, our family joined Erwin for dinner. He was sitting across from Ruth, and they began to talk.
"What's going on?" Erwin asked. Ruth told him about her health problems. For a brief time, everyone else at the table seemed to disappear as I listened to Ruth share her soul with Erwin. In a very prophetic way, Erwin looked her in the eye and told her, "It's going to be okay. Ruth, you're going to be okay."
Within a short time, the disease began to reverse and Ruth started her journey back toward health.
Then the tide turned with the elders. The church's insurance company sent us a letter telling us that they were going to drop our sexual liability coverage.
At our next elder meeting, I played hardball: "Do you want to continue on as an elder when you will personally be financially liable for whatever happens here?" In that moment, everyone realized that we were out of options. We couldn't continue on as we were—we had to have help—we needed our mother church. We unanimously decided to become the Chino satellite of Mosaic.
The tradeoff
We're now three years into the new relationship, and all I can say is it hasn't been subtle. Not in the congregation, and not in me. As I look across the crowd on Sundays, I notice two things: those who left, and those who came in—young adults. Life has emerged out of the ashes.
The texture of our Sunday gatherings changed. The wooden cross in the center of the room was replaced with a stage design that augments the theme of the current sermon series. We rearranged the seating into clusters of four or five to invite a sense of community. I share the stage with other communicators from Mosaic: dancers, visual artists, actors, poets.
The entire ethos of our congregation changed. It takes more than new music and lighting candles to reach a new generation for Christ. Everything we do is now evaluated by this question: Does this connect with people farthest from Christ and help bring them closer to a relationship with him?
Church is fun again. People want to bring their friends. We are seeing people coming to Christ, and we are seeing leaders birthing new ministries.
I don't want to give the impression that it's been easy. It hasn't. Not for either side. Mosaic inherited almost $6 million in debt, a tremendous burden during the economic downturn. Many of the people we'd reached over the years decided that Mosaic Inland isn't their idea of church, and they've moved on. Most have done so with a good spirit, but others have hurled acidic accusations at me and the Mosaic staff.
One Sunday morning early in the transition, an older member blurted out in front of a crowd of people: "All of you can drink the Kool-Aid, but we aren't! This is my last Sunday here. If any of you want to join me, you can."
One of our leaders replied, "If you want to disagree and leave, I respect that, but if you are comparing Pastor Erwin to Jim Jones, you are way out of line, and that statement is inappropriate."
Just try preaching after that!
I know that Mosaic has its critics—I get that. All I can say is that God used Mosaic to save my family and me. They've rekindled a passion for ministry in my heart and given me hope for tomorrow.
In Genesis, God declares that it is not good for man to be alone. I've come to understand that it isn't good for a pastor to be alone, either. I've learned the joy of being on a staff team, working with a community of others, truly sharing ministry.
There have been times when they've confronted me, painfully, and there have been comforting times when they've encouraged me. I value both experiences. I love being accountable to others and returning the favor at appropriate times.
My son, who was ready to leave Inland Community, is now on staff with me at Mosaic Inland. Ruth is married, healthy, and serving Christ with her husband. And Pam—I thank God every day for my wife—Pam and I are profoundly grateful for what we lost and what we've found.
I've lost control, but I've found authentic community. That's trading up if you ask me!
74 LEADERSHIP Winter 2010 Ralph Neighbour III is campus pastor of Mosaic Inland in Chino, California.
Jim Wilson is associate director of the doctor of ministry program at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary and author of Soul Shaping (LifeWay, 2009).
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