FORCED TO RESIGN FROM VINE CHURCH:

HOW SHARING MY PASSION FOR FLYING GOT ME LABELED "UNLEADABLE" AND FORCED OUT OVERNIGHT

• Author: Kendall L. | Staff Pastor
• Attended: Vine Church, Carbondale, Illinois | 2013-2014
• This story was published May, 2022

Note: This story is adapted from Kendall's comment on Reddit. The editors of Leaving The Network contacted Kendall to verify the authorship of the comment prior to publication.

MY EXPERIENCE

Kendall L. here, I’ve moved on from this years ago. I had no idea the amount of people who’ve experienced the same things in different ways.

I’ll share my experiences and not sure how much I’ll engage after, but my story….

After 1.5 years on staff, I went through about a weeklong fast. Just praying and fasting in which I felt God open my eyes to multiple things. But where things went south, I had a feeling that in my life I would be able to fly (as a pilot again) I wasn’t sure what it looked like but had felt God speak it to me. I shared that thought with Mike Stephens who at the time I would report to. I asked him simply to pray with me. I wasn’t quitting. I wasn’t asking to leave the church. Just simply shared that feeling.

Mike ran immediately to Sandor and I was called up for a meeting. During this meeting I simply shared I felt God told me I would fly again and that passion of mine wouldn’t go to waste. This came after a week of fasting and prayer. Sandor told me I was hearing from the Devil and I needed to essentially deny that was of God. For literally over an hour he was saying that I was hearing from “The Devil” and trying to get me to admit that..

I told him I wouldn’t. And pleaded with him to just take a week to pray on it and we discuss further after a retreat we had coming up the following week. This convo lasted over 2 hours. I was so confused that a simple “I feel I will fly again” would turn into such a big deal.

The most devastating part was realizing "The Network" only validates your faithfulness to Christ as long as you are faithful to "The Network."

After finally getting Sandor to agree to not discuss it further with me until he had an opportunity to pray for a week, the meeting ended and I went to my office. It seemed like maybe an hour or two after the meeting, Sandor came to my office and said, “I had a conversation with Steve Morgan, and as you are not LEADABLE, we are giving you until the end of the week to resign.

Well the rest went as you can imagine and seemingly as it has gone for others. They told their version of the story to make it appear as though I had some fall from grace.

Literally overnight, a family I had for years excommunicated me. A few people on staff (mainly non-pastoral) showed me the same love before and after and didn't buy the other version of the story. I'm grateful for them.

The most devastating part was realizing "The Network" only validates your faithfulness to Christ as long as you are faithful to "The Network." "Obey your leaders" trumps your individual convictions about following God. And throughout the whole process, even as a staff pastor, they didn't spend one moment of prayer with or alongside me about what my personal convictions were.

Takeaways, once I wasn’t a “Yes man” and wasn’t going to be “told how to think”, that was the end.

This was my experience.