CREEDE HINSHAW: Cussed out in church

His wife told him, “You can preach in another congregation if you choose, but I’m not following you there.”

That sounds like a pretty harsh ultimatum, and maybe it was, but the man who told me the story clearly empathized with his wife’s pain.

Some churches lay waste to pastors and their families. To be fair, some pastors lay waste to their churches, too. And for all I know, the story I’m relating here could be a little bit of both. But that’s not the way I heard it.

I was preaching out of town and staying Saturday night in one of those motels where breakfast comes with the price of the room. Sitting in the lobby early Sunday morning, drinking a cup of coffee and reviewing my sermon notes, I was drawn into conversation by the friendly, apron-clad man who was stocking the breakfast bar.

“What brings you to our city?” he asked.

When I told him I was a pastor who would be preaching in the city, he responded, “I’m a preacher, too.”

I figured I wouldn’t have to wait long to hear why he was stocking doughnuts and making coffee when the pulpit was a-waiting. With only the slightest encouragement, he was off and running with his story.

He had apparently found success in his first two congregations. It was that third church that prompted his wife to vow, unlike Ruth, that, “Wither thou goest, I shall not go; thy people shall not be my people.” She was fed up with the church and I think he was, too.

On his last Sunday in that fateful congregation he had been summoned to the most powerful Sunday school class where, accompanied by his grandchildren, he was “cussed out” for having invited a black family to church the previous week. He was either fired or walked out; I hope it was the latter.

He described other details of his tenure there, behavior that sometimes creeps into the church: character assassination and power struggles couched in the holiest of language. He made reference to some of their other complaints about him, but I had no way of knowing if they were groundless or reasonable. His adult children had left that church because of its meanness and his wife, wounded by what had taken place, would no longer support pastoral ministry … at least not any time soon, I suspected.

As I suggested earlier, maybe there’s another side to this story. Maybe there are many more sides. Maybe the storyteller was a na