MIAMI – Hundreds of congregants have left a pioneering megachurch in Florida to form their own congregation because they were unhappy with leadership at the church that's seen as a bedrock of the religious right.
The action by the unhappy members at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church was the culmination of a feud between loyalists to an evangelical luminary, the Rev. D. James Kennedy, and his replacement as pastor, the Rev. Tullian Tchividjian, a grandson of the Rev. Billy Graham.
The new congregation met for its first service last Sunday, and organizers said more than 450 people attended. The people who formed the new congregation had lost a Sept. 20 vote to fire Tchividjian. Organizers of the still unnamed church said nearly all of their attendees had been among Coral Ridge's roughly 2,000 members.
Coral Ridge said it's not worried about maintaining its membership after the departures. About 200 people enrolled in a class for new members after Tchividjian took over in March.
Still, the move is a dramatic split. Kennedy's daughter, Jennifer Kennedy Cassidy, joined many longtime Coral Ridge members, including church elders, the organist, choir director and hundreds of choir members, in deserting the congregation they helped build.
This whole situation has been tragic. I don't think that either the dissidents or the supporters of Tullian handled this in a terribly Biblical way, by which I mean a self-denying, loving others as yourself kind of a way. The gathering of the church too often turns into a power play over money, music, styles, preferences. I know we have left churches over petty stuff sometimes in the past often led by my own pridefulness. Let this be a lesson for small, simple gatherings: being bigger is not better and often creates more headaches than it is worth.
3 comments:
Isn't it interesting though how people claim to want to follow the constitution and demand the issue be taken up for a congregational vote----yet when the vote doesn't go their way they get mad and leave?
In other words, "we don't really believe in congregational authority, we simply want our own way."
This sort of thing happens quite often when the pastor was sort of a celebrity.
And much of the church is centered around him (or her)instead of the Word.
I agree with Steve. Every once in a while a very charasmatic individual happens along, he gives great sermons, he is a great organizer, good leader, very likable, everyone wants to be around the guy. Word gets around and the church grows, and grows, and grows, until the the charasmatic leader either dies, retires, or moves on, and once gone they leave disaster in their wake. Adult children of the charasmatic leader seldom are able to fill the shoes of their father, and if the leader moves to another church often times much of the church membership leaves with him.
That being said, is this church, or was this church ever about God,and Worship of God, or was it all about the charasmatic leader and idol worship of him? I sound very synical, but I believe it is the latter. This story repeats itself again, again, in community after community, congregations take sides when the departure is messy, there is often times scandal involved, people hurt, huge debt, and a colossal church campus(probably mortgaged to the hilt)abandoned, and all because so many put their faith in a charasmatic personality and not our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!
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