A letter to my church
I wrote this publicly because I was silenced by my fellow leaders of the church I was part of. Despite requesting an opportunity to share this with the church in a meeting that was held tonight. More will be coming out over the next few days.
I have been part of [the church] since 2007 after meeting T at university and deciding to make this church our home. We married in 2009, one of the many Centrepoint couples that married that year. Through this time I have served the church through helping with IT, teaching kids and youth, leading life groups, leading the men’s ministry, preaching, preparing couples for marriage, caring for people who were hurting, supporting friends as they or a loved one faced death, and throughout all this I have sought to serve Christ and reflect the gospel in how I lived.
R has grown up in this church and we as a family have been cared for in more ways than I can recount as you walked with us through R’s diagnosis. You have been so generous to us that we would not be in the home we are in without our church family. Your faith and love has held us steady through the hardest times of our lives.
I was asked to be an elder in 2016 by J and B under the oversight of M. As a church, you have supported, encouraged, prayed, discipled, and helpfully challenged me when I have been in the wrong. I have learned so much from you in terms of following Jesus and what it means to be an elder.
Last year the operations manager, L, asked me to support her in raising with the elders substantial concerns regarding a trustee. As elders we found ourselves needing support and we went to the overseeing organisation. At this point it became an official written grievance and we were advised to seek external advice. I was asked by the elders to support L while S, a fellow leader, supported the trustee and their family through the grievance process.
Unfortunately the process began to cause more hurt to L which led me to challenge the process and raise multiple concerns. I challenged the use of solicitors, Moore Barlow LLP, rather than an HR advisory firm as initially agreed. I challenged the change from an external investigation to an internal one without consultation with L. I challenged the impartiality of trustees, investigating trustees, investigating a trustee. I challenged that the trustee was not stood down from their respective roles while the grievance was being investigated, a standard practice to protect both parties in a grievance investigation. I challenged the repeated response that I needed to “trust the process” and “not interfere”.
I raised concerns that S and I were not able to see initial recommendations made by the trustees prior to a first appeal nor were any of the leaders allowed to see the final report. I gave voice to L’s concerns that the report neither represented L, nor her husband C, accurately. I raised L’s, and my own concerns, with evidence, that the report was biassed against her. There was no action to pause and review the process. There was no action to consult L regarding her concerns, even after L went on medical leave due to stress induced anxiety. Due to the unheard concerns with the process, I sought a means to find resolution by instigating meetings with the elders and the trustee to discuss known issues both relating to and external to the grievance. After two meetings with the elders, the trustee took responsibility for the hurt they had caused L and was seeking to repent and begin mediation if possible. Off the back of these meetings the trustee of their own volition stood down from their role.
The trustees as L’s employer, C as L’s line manager, and leaders as pastoral and spiritual oversight, had a duty of care for L. I identified we were failing in that duty of care but I was not listened to. The leaders have deemed my challenges to be quarrelsome, divisive, undermining the leadership, and undermining apostolic oversight. They asked me to stand down from all leadership positions in the church. I resigned my role stating I no longer have confidence in C’s leadership of the church.
Both T and I are hurt and incredibly upset to be having to reconsider if this is a place we can call our church, our home. There is a sense of betrayal and a lack of biblical process in what has happened to L and the way I was asked to stand down.
Thank you to all of you who have supported us through this mess, prayed for us, and fought our corner. I'll do my best to not post more while angry or lash out at anyone but injustice has been done in the church that I love and I cannot stay silent.
Phil
If anything in this post triggers you or resembles your own experience and you would like to chat things through, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. My hope in processing publicly is that others are able to heal.
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