Monday, July 30, 2007

A Year Later

Last week marked one year since Bellevue Community Church, wanting to bring peace and justice to a toxic leadership culture, fired pastor David Foster for verbal and emotional abuse, abdication of leadership, deceit, and compromised propriety of church funds.
It was, all told, a good decision and a godly decision.

I don't have a long reflection for this occasion, but I do want to say how honored I am to be a part of a church whose leadership is willing to risk nearly everything to remain faithful to God and to take care of its staff and members. Our elders risked reputation, health, comfort, and even their own financial solvency to make a very difficult decision to exercise discipline. Even traditional churches these days don't exercise church discipline. In the sort of church BCC is, bringing it to bear on our popular pastor was like stepping out into a canyon and trusting the invisible bridge is there. But they understood reconciliation is not possible without repentance.

You can revisit the nuts and bolts of this brokenness in the archives here, as well as the devotional/spiritual reflections on sin, repentance, forgiveness, grace, and reconciliation the mess inspired.

A year later, we have largely moved on. Our new lead pastor David Perez was hired in March, and we are already 3 sermon series' deep into reforming the teaching vision of the church. The student ministry, now fully supported and amply staffed, is growing like crazy. Our children's ministry is being transitioned from a daycare format to a worship format. Our small groups are growing and maintaining momentum and increasing in the availability of Bible study. We now have a growing college and young professionals ministry. We are incrementally making the necessary move from a church that exists for the weekend service to a church that exists to exemplify the full reconciliation of the Gospel, a church that realizes God did not call us to simply make converts (much less simply to entertain people) but to make disciples.

I have been honored and blessed to have played a role in the process of growth and healing coming out of the mess. The response has been overwhelming to me, and months and months later I still meet the occasional person who says "Your blog helped me so much during that time" or "Your writing really helped me see the situation more clearly." That blows me away.
Thank you for the opportunity to minister to you in that way.

I am hopeful for our future.

So here we are, a year later. Watch this space for an announcement related to this blog. Will post it probably a week from today.

Grace and peace.

2 Comments:

At 1:42 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow, it's been a whole year... since.

Well, J-man... congrats on making Element a very awesome ministry... and for you patience and understanding with me... as an ex-BCC staff member that had their life caught up in the early upheavals that happened between 1999-2003... that ultimately led to the finality that happened a year ago.

I'm better for the experience there at BCC and here at BCC Is Broken. You've shared so much good information and biblical/spiritual knowledge to me and others... that, in spite of it all, are not as "broken" as we once were.

Thanks for being one instrument in changing the tune at BCC and be willing to tell it like it is and was... then and now! : -)

Kind regards,

C. Evan Leonard

 
At 10:53 AM, Blogger Chanda Canup said...

Well, looks like you have been busy around here...I had given up for awhile. Good to hear from you again. I was just thinking of another way to put off my synopsis writing when this site crossed my mind:) I'll be sure to check out the new one.

 

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