A Repenting Church - Christianity Today

As I drove into the church parking lot that Saturday morning, long forgotten emotions began to surge within. As a former associate pastor and 30-year member here at Redwood Chapel, I had been invited to this one-day leadership retreat called to deal with our current crisis.

My mind raced through the 53-year history of Redwood Chapel, the church I had known since my junior high years. We’d had a glorious past: in 1962 the church founded and has since hosted the Bay Area Sunday School convention (BASS). We’d enjoyed strong music programs led by people like Tom Fettke and Joseph Linn. We were the second church in the nation to have its own cable TV station and broadcast services (from the 1970s through the early 1990s). We’d planted vibrant churches in other communities. We had dynamic youth ministries, a strong missions program, and an exemplary educational program for more than 50 years.

But now, after experiencing two difficult pastoral transitions, we were reeling from the loss of nearly half of our church family. Like the peeling of an onion, more than 500 people had departed between 2000 and 2006, one layer at time.

My wife had recently quipped, “Redwood Chapel is the Kevin Bacon of churches in the Bay Area.” I quickly added, “But instead of six degrees of separation, every Christian in the area may have only two degrees of separation from Redwood.” How often I heard people around the Bay Area say, “I used to go to Redwood” or “I was raised at Redwood” or “My parents were at Redwood, until …”

I had joked with some pastor friends that, over the past 30 years, our church may have been the greatest contributor to the church growth movement in the Bay Area. Hundreds of former Redwood attenders had migrated to other churches in local communities, largely due to pastoral transitions, leadership chaos, or inward thinking.

As I walked to the conference room, I recalled my years here as a youth who loved this church, our pastors, the rich heritage, and my privilege of serving as youth pastor here for 12 years after graduating from Moody Bible Institute.

Those years were full of spiritual vibrancy, ministry innovation, creativity, church planting and the advance of the gospel around the world—all thrilling to recall. But painful flashbacks also emerged as I walked into the retreat meeting room. We had often sung “In This Very Room” during worship services next door, but as I entered this very room, all I could recall today were difficult and chaotic meetings, personal inquisitions, and divisive issues being debated with little grace and much anger.

There we sat, current and former elders and pastoral staff, with 53 poster-size sheets of paper lining the walls, one for each year of our history. Don Goehner, our consultant, opened the retreat, leading us in guided prayer and then framing the meeting. Our first exercise was to recount the highs and lows, joys and defeats of each year as best as we could. Here we go!

A small team had already summarized objective details from the annual reports: arrival and departure years of each pastoral staff member, worship attendance spikes, major breakthroughs, seasons of evangelistic fruit. Leaders joyfully added the launching of new ministries such as the cable TV broadcasts, annual prophecy conferences, weekly live radio broadcasts of Sunday Night Sing, stellar choir and music ministries. And on and on …

But we also listed many downers and hurtful situations: occasional moral failures among church leadership, decades-old conflicts that continued to fester, messy tensions between elders and staff.

After half a day together, all 25 current and former church leaders ended up on our knees, many with face in hands, some quietly weeping. We saw ourselves clearly: joys and defeats that cycled and recycled through our half-century history. We had been humbled, together.

Recurring negative patterns had become obvious and systemic. Most importantly, we called these patterns what they were—sin. It was obvious we had become practitioners of some “worst practices.” Instead of bringing glory to God, we had repeatedly shamed the reputation of Christ, skirted over touchy issues, or attacked the reputations of other local churches.

Around the circle we admitted that what little trust might have existed in previous years was now gone. Motives and vision were questioned. Discouragement, disillusionment, and tears were often shared among long-term church members and staff. Parishioners wondered aloud, “How could this happen to us? Does this church have a future?”

By the end of this leadership retreat, conclusions were obvious. We named at least four sins that had ebbed and flowed through our church over recent decades: (1) Arrogance, boastfulness, and pride, (2) Hydroplaning over issues; sending them underground, (3) Gossip, and (4) Gracelessness. Over the years, we had dealt with our issues only superficially, often allowing fear, avoidance, or denial to motivate our neglect.

As we closed the retreat, we were united as one; if there was to be healing, transformational thinking, and a clear vision that others could rally around, we would need to move ahead in repentance and humility. The next step was for the consultants to bring their report to the whole congregation.

Bracing for impact

Four weeks after the leadership retreat, the congregation braced for the report from the Goehner Group to be shared in the morning worship service. No elders or pastors were privy to the report before its unveiling. Dennis Baker of the Goehner Group spoke to the congregation, reviewing the process followed to gather facts and form conclusions. They had led ten randomly selected focus groups with no church leaders present, completed a thorough church-wide written survey related to spiritual growth areas, and personally interviewed more than 20 current and former pastors and elders, as well as 10 people who had left the church within the previous two years.

He said, “Here’s your reality, people” and listed a number of points, including:

You have departed from your his-toric calling and DNA.
Honest dialogue and processes are violated depending on the political agendas or prowess of individuals.
Gossip is rampant. Statements are often manipulated to make other people and churches appear unspiritual or to leverage opinion.
This is a church that does not honor confidentiality.
Many talk about the glories of the church’s past, and desire to “go back to Egypt.”
There is little ownership or accountability for the church’s current condition.
Tension still exists from the deacons-to-elders transition (10 years ago), but the greater problem is an ongoing lack of practicing the biblical responsibilities as church leaders.
Outreach is assumed to mean church events, but few take responsibility to share their faith personally.
Thirty years of unresolved issues will not go away merely by calling another new pastor. Previous transitions that have not dealt with the underlying issues still need to be addressed.
There is no current and clear mission or strategic ministry plan.
The church has lots of activity but little is aligned with a distinct mission and vision.
Redwood Chapel is not ready to call a senior pastor. To do so would be to merely repeat the past.

The consultants called our church to respond with commitment and dedication. The natural question on everyone’s mind, of course, was “So, where do we go from here?”

Goehner and Baker mapped out a clear course for renewal and integrity before we could ever move ahead in strength: “Certainly there is a need for forgiveness and restoration as to the past. But there is also a striking need for attention to the current and future ministry.”

Our marching orders

1. Develop a clear Ministry Master Plan, defining mission, values, and strategic priorities. We were warned that this must happen before a new senior pastor could be considered.

2. Clarify the elder role with external help to remove fear of personal agendas.

3. Call a Transitional Senior Pastor to assist during the interim and coach the elders in their role.

4. Schedule a Solemn Assembly for congregational confession, repentance, forgiveness, prayer, and open conversation.

John Vawter was soon selected as Transitional Senior Pastor and served in that role for six months. During that time he met with elders to consult, train, and deal directly with our sins and patterns of superficiality, casting blame, and gossip among our group in the past and present. In his preaching, he also challenged the congregation along similar lines.

The sacred solemn assembly

As elders, we committed five Sundays starting in September 2006 to a Sacred Solemn Assembly, something unfamiliar to our people and tradition. John Vawter and I were asked to preach the first two sermons as preparation, asking God to soften the congregational soil with a call to prayer.

As a newly elected elder, I was a little rattled when I was asked, “We would like you to preach the sermon of confession and repentance for our churchwide sins—calling our people to repentance and humility.” I was willing but overwhelmed: Lord, what do you want to say or do through this?

Eventually it became clear what I needed to emphasize: “Repentance is an ongoing process, it is not an event. We need to re-learn how we live and how we think; we need to repent from top to bottom and vigilantly watch out for the reoccurrence of these attitudes or habits.

Repentance is an ongoing process; it not an event. We need to change how we live and how we think. We need to repent from top to bottom.

“There are four sins we must deal with. (And I described instances of Arrogance, Hydroplaning, Gossip, and Gracelessness.) All have been observed in Pulpit, and Pew, and Parking Lot, and Public. These four venues describe our sins’ scope as we have seen these sins emanate from leaders and subgroups within the congregation; individually in the parking lot, and often displayed in front of the community—among non-believers as well as Christians from other churches.

“We are in the midst of addressing these sinful patterns internally among leadership and personally in our lives, and we are committed to confronting them among the entire congregation whenever we see them emerge in the future. And they will show up again. We cannot restore or experience trust until we live a life of integrity in these things, as leaders and as Christians. We will not have joy, unity, or vision as a congregation until we are restored in these areas.”

On the fifth and final Sunday, two significant signs of transformation impacted our congregation. During a communion service led by Dennis Baker, church members privately repented of any sins they had been holding on to, wrote them on a confidential note card, and discarded them in garbage cans that were removed from the sanctuary, never to be seen again.

At the conclusion of that Communion service, a former pastor and his wife who had resigned due to personal sin two decades previous, returned to share their journey of repentance and renewal. They were publicly restored and received in grace by the elders and congregation. Hearts were reunited as we celebrated the fruit of repentance, the grace of Jesus, and the advance of God’s kingdom.

Since that solemn assembly

After much congregational and elder input, the Goehner Group developed a senior pastor profile. Within a few months, with no announcement that a search for pastor had begun, the elders asked if I would be open to be interviewed for this role. I was caught off guard by this request. After weeks of due diligence and a number of sessions with frank give-and-take with the church family, I was called and affirmed as senior pastor on November 12, 2006, and installed in January 2007.

Two weeks after I was called to pastor Redwood, another pastor across town (from a church where hundreds of Redwood folk had migrated) invited me to speak in their worship services about our renewed vision for Redwood. Our leaders and church family were amazed at the humility and grace expressed toward us from this congregation.

I took the first five minutes to confess and repent publicly of our sins, and then I expressed our ministry priorities and direction. The pastor there publicly gave permission to any of the transplanted folks who might be compelled to “return to their home church” to do so.

He blew me away when he then added, “And any of the rest of you who want to be part of rebuilding a church in integrity, grace, and truth, you are welcome to go assist as well. But don’t church-hop. If you go, be a vital part of the long-term future.”

That display of Christian unity and pastoral humility was huge and has paid dividends ever since in our community.

Repentance is ongoing

Those four sins we repented of still occasionally raise their ugly head. And we are committed to naming them, identifying them when they show up, and renouncing them.

There is an air of grace and truthfulness that has developed among our pastors and elders. “Permission to speak freely” is granted.

We found it easy to speak of the problems or innovations of other churches with a comparative, jealous, or condescending spirit.

I remind the elders annually of our past sins. We also speak forthrightly if we sense that other sins might be emerging among us. We agree that we must be “always repenting” personally and, when needed, corporately. We are learning that repentance must show in our internal systems, values, and relational practices, not only in words or occasional sermonic reminders. These sins had become systemic in our church; they were not just occasional or spontaneous.

For instance, it had been common for church leaders or members to compare one of our successful ministries with other churches in the community. Whether from leaders or lay people, it was common to hear things like, “We have the best music program in the area, our pastor is the most biblical preacher in town, we preach ‘the right’ way, or at least we don’t compromise like that church in how we attract people.” We found it easy to speak of the problems or innovations of other churches with a comparative, jealous, or condescending spirit.

Since 2006, we have written clear, biblically informed covenants for elder-to-elder relationships, senior-pastor-to-elder relationships, and elders-to-congregation relationships. Each includes clarity about how we will live together in truth, transparency, grace, love, honesty, and humility. We review each of them at the start of a new ministry year.

In my second year as pastor, we took all elders, pastors, a strong boomer Sunday school class, and about 40 middle-age and senior adults through Gordon MacDonald’s book Who Stole My Church? The highly energized discussion and interaction, mixed with tears and laughter, has done wonders in allowing different generations to learn from each other and consider the greater matters as we think about the future. This helped remove the temptation to gossip or hydroplane over issues that were obvious as we continue to make changes in the life of our church, as we look to the future and reaching a new and changing community.

As a congregation, we are still repenting. When needed, I remind the church family that we must continue to repent of our four signature sins. Last November, for instance, I preempted our regularly scheduled preacher to address some ongoing sniping, caustic comments, gossip, and gracelessness that has continued to fester since our Solemn Assembly three years earlier. “The Cancer of Traditionalism” message addressed underlying heart attitudes (our four sins) that had once again emerged among a small group of people who had privately and divisively promoted their personal preferences and manmade traditions throughout their decades of church life.

I ended the sermon with a picture of how repentance looks. “There is a godly, humble, Christ-honoring way to address your concerns. Go directly to the person(s) that gives leadership or has authority in a given area. Go humbly, truthfully, graciously, and forthrightly. But the way some of you handle yourselves is not the godly way. We will not let this go unaddressed.”

At times we have to confront such behavior individually, much of which has persisted for years without being addressed honestly and directly. Recently, two elders joined my wife and me as we met with longer term members who persisted in caustically gossiping about the direction of the church as we seek to reform, reorder, and reimagine our future course. Their accusations were stimulated by a mean-spirited pamphlet they passed around entitled, “How you know if your church is becoming Purpose-driven.” Ironically, we had never been to a PD Conference or read a PD book. Our changes in church direction had come from Bible study and prayerful dialogue among our leaders.

In addition, we have confronted and enacted spiritual discipline with another long-term member who over many years had made many younger women uncomfortable by his inappropriate hugs and comments. We followed up and attempted to shepherd all of the women we were aware of who faced this offense, including those who had left the church due to this unaddressed pattern of behavior in years past.

We are thankful for what the Lord has done in our midst. We believe that “learning to repent” is one significant reason we are becoming a healthy church. And there is now a wonderful spirit of unity, joy, and anticipation in our congregation. Many have said that they have heard things confronted and said out loud from the pulpit or from the elders that they have never heard in a church.

We are learning to live humbly, truthfully, and graciously with each other. But repentance is not a one-time event; it needs continual attention.

Doug Tegner is senior pastor of Redwood Chapel Community Church in Castro Valley, California.