A letter to the elders who fired my father (to be sent out on Aug. 1)

To the Elders of the Church of AH,

Greetings in the name of God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. I hope this letter finds you well.

I know that you have received numerous letters about your choice to ask my father for his resignation in January. This is mine. You would have received it earlier, but I didn’t want it to be considered castigating.

In fact, nothing is further from my mind. I have held you all very dear to my heart–we were family.

I have grown up with your children, learned from you in bible class, attended your family functions and gone to camp with you. I have known some of you since the first Sunday my Dad started preaching at AH, a few months before my first birthday. The rest of you I welcomed into the family with open arms.

So I’m sure you can imagine how devastated I was to hear about the way my father was treated. I admit that I cannot know all the details surrounding his “release,” but I do know one thing: regardless of whatever wrongs he committed and whatever faults he had, I believe he was treated unjustly, because he was treated as hired help and not family.

I believe this set a bad example to the flock (I Peter 5:3) and was not a good way to manage the church family (I TImothy 3:5).

It is my belief that you saw your church in danger, that you were–as the rest of us–watching it fall apart slowly, inch by inch. And so you made a rash decision, lunged out to save something you love. But instead, that decision, and especially the way you handled it, caused more problems and more pain than you anticipated. We all know it caused pain in the AH family at large, and I can tell you that it has caused unspeakable pain in my immediate family and especially in my own life.

My father, as you know, has handled this whole situation very stoically and has–true to form–spent his time trying to ease the pain of the congregation and help its people to move forward in the love of Christ. The rest of our family, however, is having a harder time.

Surely you can understand that I can’t imagine ever attending services at AH again. I believe doing so would have the appearance of my stamp of approval–would send the message that I agree with your decision and the way in which you enacted it. And I obviously do not. I am grieving the loss of my childhood church, the family I have known my whole life, at your hands.

I feel betrayed by you, the men of my own beloved church family, at the treatment of my father, who deserved better if for no other reason than the fact that he had served the Lord and His people at AH for 22 years. But he has also cared for your own families in times of grief, pain and loss as well as those of celebration. And he has done no less for the other members of our AH family, who have expressed their own grief and outrage at the events that transpired in January.

And so, Elders of AH, I write to ask you for an apology. I ask you to apologize to my family at AH as well as my immediate family for how you handled the firing of my father. I am confused as to why it has taken this long, but let’s face it: AH is still in trouble, turmoil and pain. I believe that nothing else but your humility and the love of God will heal the body of AH.

But I want you to know that regardless of what you decide, you have my forgiveness anyway.

So please, for the sake of the people who we all hold dear, consider my request prayerfully.

In Christ,