The Modern Epic, Pt. 6

As our local readers will already know, Takoma Park now has a new senior pastor, Henry Wright. He started at Takoma Park on May 17, 2014, but rumors that he was the selection swirled for months ahead of time. Pastor Wright had been the senior pastor of another church in the Potomac Conference for a number of years, during which time it experienced substantial growth and planted two other congregations. It is clearly the hope that someone with such a track record will be able to replicate his success at Takoma Park.

Pastor Wright began his tenure by establishing regular office hours on Thursday afternoons during which members are invited to drop in to discuss any issues they feel exist within the church. There’s just one catch: the pastors (past and present) are off limits as topics of these discussions. This is like saying you are to go out and witness, but aren’t allowed to say anything about God! The pastors may not be the totality of what is wrong, but by the nature of their roles as leaders in the church they cannot help but be involved in the issues (for better or worse) and refusing to let them be mentioned therefore precludes any meaningful discussion of the whole situation.

In other pastoral news, Pastor Warfield was ordained in Takoma Park on May 31, 2014. This is mildly interesting in the context of his having run Takoma Park all this time without having been ordained, but it becomes far more intriguing in light of the rumors that circulated about him for about nine months prior to his ordination. Specifically, it was asserted that he was secretly ordained in a ceremony in the church center which was held in the fall of 2013 on a weeknight. What possible reason there could be for such an action is beyond our fathoming, but it’s equally difficult to fathom how such a rumor could get started unless there was some kernel of truth in it somewhere. Given the secrecy with which the lay and pastoral leadership of Takoma Park operates these days, it is unlikely that a straight story will ever come out regarding this rumor. And therein is the relevance to Takoma Park’s governance issues—it highlights once again the absolute lack of transparency.

In October of 2015 Pastor Warfield was called to be head of the Human Resources department of the Potomac Conference, and now is gradually transitioning out of Takoma Park. This brings the potential for new things at Takoma Park, not only because it leaves a pastoral vacancy but because Mrs. Warfield will be moving south with her husband and leaving open the position of church secretary. Her status as “temporary” church secretary had evolved into a permanent position without any discernible oversight processes beyond the approval of her husband. (Yet another highly questionable governance action for which there has been no accounting.) During her time in the position she only came to the office a few days a week, and when she did come in she brought their young children whom she is homeschooling and would proceed to conduct class in the office. It has seemed that what she was best at, so far as conducting the work of the church, was maintaining the wall of secrecy between pastors and lay members. The departure of both Warfields, then, is a great opportunity for improvement in the function and transparency of the church administration.

More generally, church attendance has been gradually creeping back up toward the attendance counts that were typical before these governance issues started. It hasn’t quite made a full recovery, but it’s getting close.