Yeah, I'm posting this a few days early, but I'm done writing it and I don't feel like waiting to post it.

The church, of all places, should be a good place to work, assuming, of course, a theoretically perfect world. The fact is that, just like the corporate world, the church is filled with examples of politics and backstabbing and poor leaders and people who feel that their high position implies permission to be a prima donna. And more often than not, the way that churches are set up structure-wise allows people in leadership positions to rampage unchecked across the church - in fact, nowhere else is the old cliche "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" proven with any more vivid clarity than in a house of worship. Without the oversight of a board of directors, or elders, or some other entity to which the leading pastors are held accountable, the conditions are just right for dishonesty and duplicity.

Enter Point of Grace.

From Jeff Mullen's self-promotion of his own CD (Using the tracks from somebody else's CD) while misrepresenting the source of the music by saying "I had the chance to go down to Nashville and record with some outstanding musicians...", to the stupid firings of Lance Thompson and Tom Clegg, the abysmal decisions being made in the name of "church growth" (i.e. spending $600K of money we don't have on an Ankeny campus) are to the point where working for them is no longer an option for me. And I can't really point to any one big bad decision that Jeff has made - granted, there have been a few, but for the most part what causes most of the unhappiness is the obvious lack of character that that man displays, and his utter disregard for the well-being of the staff under his leadership.

Take the firing of Lance. One day, after going through some paperwork with the pastor of operations and finance, he realized that for the past three years, his pension plan hadn't been active - he wasn't get paid. Since he had only a verbal agreement with Tom (Who was the lead pastor at the time that Lance was hired), he went to Jeff and explained what had happened - and Jeff told him "Well, it didn't happen on my watch, so we're not going to pay it.", and then refused to talk to him about it. Lance had, somewhere along the line, lost his employment papers, and though he eventually found them and Point of Grace back paid his pension, he remained very angry that the first reaction to his claims was to say "I don't know anything about that, so bugger off." - so Point of Grace fired him.

Yeah - that's the way to deal with an unhappy employee.

Then there's Tom Clegg - he was fired for two reasons, one, we no longer had the money to pay him, and two, we weren't using him. The big problem is the fact that he was fired - generally speaking, termination is a step reserved for employees who are guilty of stealing, insubordination, harassment or a violation of the law. Tom was guilty of none of these. Terminating them makes it look like they've done something to deserve getting fired - which Tom didn't. Usually, churches give somebody the chance to resign, and the violation of that standard was stupid, unnecessary, and ultimately harmful.

In fact, the whole situation is almost funny in its stupidity, like a big tragic sitcom. The situations leading to both employee's terminations should have never happened in the first place - Tom Clegg was never used as a pastor because of Jeff's "It's all about me!" mentality, and Lance should have never had his lead pastor say "Don't know, don't care." to him. And these situations highlight just two of the many many examples of Jeff's poor leadership that the staff of POG have to endure every week. There's Jeff not letting Jacob Moyer make decisions about the band, then telling him "It's your band, it's your problem." when musicians start quitting due to Jeff's treatment of them, or Jeff's habit of only coming back to the production offices when he wants something; there's his completely ignoring the failing children's ministry at POG due to lack of volunteers - yet going ballistic on Jacob Moyer and myself when we didn't have choir risers for Christmas. It's obvious that he cares only about "The Production", bling, flair, call it whatever - the only thing he cares about is that he looks good.

And I can no longer work for Point of Grace in good conscience.

To continue working for them would be to acquiesce silently to their treatment of employees, to their system of making the lead pastor untouchable except by a board of directors appointed by himself, to the poor leadership that will eventually drive the church into the ground if something doesn't change.

[edit: f-locked until after the 13th of May. And remember - it's not libel if it's true!]