by Sarah
You may have already seen the article from The Roys Report on the Acts 29 network “discontinu[ing] partnership” with a member church whose pastors asked for more information regarding financials and governance.
I think it’s time to share more about our experience with the network’s Origin Church of Rocklin, then Roseville, then Sacramento, CA. David and I attended from early 2014 to late 2016, when Pastor Mark was senior pastor. When we first attended, it was meeting in a coffee shop (a non-profit that the church had founded and later set up to become independent of the church) in Rocklin. Later, it merged with another Acts 29 church, Redeemer Church* of Roseville, and took over their lease. And right around the time we left, the church moved to Sacramento and rented space from a Seventh Day Adventist church as a cost-saving maneuver.
Down the road, we will probably share more about our time there, both the good and the bad. For the moment, however, I’d like to focus on how the church handled financials and (to a lesser degree) governance, since that is the catalyst for a church recently being dis-partnered from the Acts 29 network.
Lack of an Open Budget and Ignored Warning Signs
Financial information was rarely, if ever, shared with members at Origen Church. After the merger with Redeemer Church, that church’s pastor was kept on staff and would periodically send out updates on monthly offerings and expenses. (For simplicity’s sake, I’ll call him the associate pastor in the remainder of this post.) I have no head for numbers (David does the budget in our household for very practical reasons), but I can tell when expenses are higher than offerings. And that was the pattern I saw fairly consistently, in spite of professions from the senior pastor that “everything is great!” So even though many in the congregation expressed shock, I was hardly surprised when the associate pastor had to step down from paid staff and become a lay elder/pastor (the church used the terms elder and pastor synonymously) because the church could no longer support his salary.
At the church-wide meeting where this was announced, the associate pastor commented that they knew how much money each family was giving in tithe. This was a little surprising to me, since most churches keep individual giving amounts private from pastors, so as not to promote favoritism. But I also knew that Mark Driscoll (now-disgraced former president of the Acts 29 Network) had promoted this way of operating, so just rolled with it.
Shortly afterwards, around May 2016, I started volunteering as an administrative assistant with the church and was given a church credit card. I asked the bookkeeper (also a volunteer) if she knew what the budget was, because I wanted to know how much was ok to spend on any needed office supplies. She told me the pastors were the only ones who knew that information. My understanding from comments made by various ministry leads in the course of normal conversation is that none of them knew the budget for their various ministries, but instead had to basically ask the pastors if there was money for purchases. Given that I had worked professionally as an administrative assistant at a very large organization and tracked our department’s budget, this seemed like a rather inefficient way to handle finances.
A few months later, in September 2016, the senior pastor announced at a (volunteer) staff retreat that the elders had just set the budget for the following year and were committing to paying me a monthly stipend. (The pastor hadn’t bothered checking with me before making his announcement, so it was rather awkward when I turned down the job, but that’s a story for another day.)
Maybe a week later, the pastor held an “emergency communication meeting” with all ministry leads. When I saw the email, I confidently predicted to David, “They’re financially insolvent.” David expressed surprise, since leadership hadn’t said anything about being in a tough financial spot. But I pointed out that the periodic updates for giving vs expenses continued to show expenses higher than giving. There’s only one way that can go.
Financial Disaster Strikes
At the “emergency communication meeting,” the pastor reported that the church bookkeeper had just told him the church didn’t have enough money in their bank account to pay both salaries and rent for the following month.
Let that sink in for a moment. Leadership had just gone over the budget and decided there was money to hire another person. Without realizing they didn’t have enough cash on hand to pay the people they already had on staff, which was only comprised of 1.5 positions to begin with.
And this was only a few months after having just laid off the associate pastor. This should have been a major wake-up call regarding finances for church leadership, but didn’t seem to have registered enough to make a difference.
The “emergency communication meeting” was a video conference that the pastor held a few different sessions of over the course of an evening. I was the only person present in my session, and also went back to watch the one he had recorded and sent out to any ministry leads who hadn’t been able to attend.
Early in the meeting, the pastor said that he didn’t want anyone to feel guilty. To which I didn’t really respond, because I didn’t feel guilty. Why would I? David and I tithed faithfully every month and weren’t the ones responsible for spending money the church didn’t have to spend. At some point, the pastor asked if I had any questions. I asked, point blank, “Is there a budget?” I was genuinely curious, because I was in problem solving mode and didn’t see any other way that the church could have arrived at this situation than simply not having (and following) a realistic budget. Seemingly taken aback, the pastor simply replied, “Yes.”
When watching the recorded video conference later, in which several ministry leads were present, I saw others respond to the pastor’s “don’t feel guilty” message with words of contrition, humility, and trust in leadership. Which I don’t fault them for, I don’t know their situations or motivations. But it dawned on me that this “don’t feel guilty” message was a subtle (and perhaps inadvertent) manipulation tactic on the part of the pastor to shift blame.
Lack of Leadership Repentance
The blame shifting was more obvious during the announcement to the entire congregation. “This is not because of neglect or error on the part of leadership.” The phrase was so shocking it is burned in my brain. To me, there are only three options. Neglect, error, or intentionality on the part of leadership. Personally, I think it is more likely the elders were neglecting or making mistakes with the budget. But the senior pastor did not accept any responsibility for bringing the church to the brink of financial insolvency. He did not even say, “I’m sorry for letting it get to this point. We should have seen where this was heading and alerted you far earlier, so we could correct course before drastic measures had to be taken.”
Instead, blame was placed squarely on the congregation’s shoulders. People were exhorted to give more, to give sacrificially. To stop giving to other churches (another topic for another blog post) and even to stop giving to para-church organizations or missions (with the exception of financial support for those families in the church employed by Navigators or Cru, naturally), so that one could give more to Origen Church.
And sure, there were probably members of the congregation who weren’t giving of their tithes and probably could/should have been if they considered themselves active members who wanted the church to thrive. But, again, it should not have taken the imminent threat of financial insolvency for leadership to be aware that there was a significant problem and to communicate this information to the congregation.
And while the congregation perhaps could/should have been giving more, they weren’t the ones spending money that wasn’t there to spend. That blame rests squarely on leadership’s shoulders.
At the congregation-wide announcement, leadership finally shared the barest outline of a budget in a couple of PowerPoint slides. To me (again, remember I have no head for numbers), it was immediately obvious where there were mistakes. For example, the future-growth fund was the same as the emergency fund was the same was the annual-summer-shortfall-in-giving fund. To a church that taught Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, this should have been embarrassing.
Keeping the budget hidden from membership prevented anyone from being able to recommend a course correction when it was obvious the church’s financial situation was increasingly perilous. I cannot stress enough how little of a head I have for numbers, yet even I was able to predict the associate pastor’s stepping down and the church’s financial insolvency. Instead of trusting any of the number of people in the congregation who were familiar with finances, leadership assumed (or at least acted like they assumed) that they knew best. When they clearly did not.
Epilogue
To the congregation’s credit, families dug deep and gave enough money that the church did end up being able to pay both rent and salaries for October 2016.
Within the next couple of months, David and I had left the church. There were a number of other factors that led to our departure, but how near-financial-insolvency was handled by leadership was the catalyst. My understanding from the email updates we continued to receive until we formally departed (and were cut off from all communication, another story for another blog post) is that, to their credit, leadership hired an outside accounting firm of some sort to help with finances. They also relocated to a Seventh Day Adventist Church with more affordable rent.
The church closed its doors in October 2020. By that point, Pastor Mark had departed for a different church in a nearby state, with the church’s blessing. I don’t doubt that the covid pandemic influenced Origen Church’s closure, but there were a number of warning signs that this is the direction the church was heading, regardless (again, another story for another blog post).
Origen Coffee, the non-profit coffee shop that the church planted, had already folded by this point.
The Ties to Acts 29
Other than simply being part of Acts 29, a network of otherwise independent and autonomous churches, why bother bringing up Origen Church now?
Because it is reflective of a larger pattern within the Acts 29 Network itself.
To start, Pastor Mark was not simply a pastor, but also a regional leader of some type, so had at least some measure of regional influence at the time. (As far as I’m aware, he’s no longer involved in regional leadership.)
In early 2016, after the pastor of the merged Redeemer church had to step down from vocational ministry for financial reasons, an Acts 29 consultant was invited to the church. He did a bunch of research and interviewed a bunch of people, both those currently attending and apparently even some who had left the church. David and I, still at the church at that point, participated in a group interview and heard multiple sentiments of burnout and lack of connection, sentiments we also experienced.
The Acts 29 consultant reported to the congregation that the church was healthy, even though there were numerous signs that it was not. He said he would give his final report to leadership and that they might share it with the congregation. If they did, I never saw it (and I paid attention to all church communications, as evidenced by my following of the giving vs expenses numbers). If the consultant said anything to leadership about finances (assuming he actually looked at them), whatever he advised was either ignored or was too little too late. Within the year, the church nearly became financially insolvent. The pattern of leadership either not recognizing or hiding signs of institutional weakness was repeated by the network consultant and not limited to our local church.
Lastly, Brian Howard, current president of the Acts 29 Network, did a one-day church planting conference at Origen Church that I attended. Two things stood out to me from the conference. The first, I might write about sometime in another post. The second was that Mr. Howard recommended planting churches by one’s self instead of with a leadership team, and then training up fellow leaders from within the congregation. To the best of my recollection, he intimated that you can never really trust another leader unless it’s someone you’ve practically grown up with. When I mentioned this later to David (who hadn’t attended the conference), he testily replied that this also insulates the church planter from accountability. And he was right.
It also sets up a backdrop of fear and mistrust amongst men who are supposed to be working in partnership for the advancement of the Gospel. And how is that healthy?
On their homepage, the Acts 29 Network claims “experience-proven training, guidance, and tools for planting churches designed to grow and thrive.” While I don’t doubt there were many individuals growing and thriving at Origen Church, the church itself was not. Origen Church folded. As did Redeemer Church, with which it had merged. As did Origen Coffee, which it had planted.
Origen Church leadership didn’t trust the congregation with much in the way of financial information, and it turned out they had something to hide. Namely, an ineffective budget that led to near financial insolvency.
Why doesn’t Acts 29 trust their very own pastors with the network’s financial information? The very pastors the network has screened, trained, and guided? What is Acts 29 trying to hide?
* Redeemer Church – neither David nor I can remember the church’s name for sure, but we think it was Redeemer.
Not far from the tree, indeed. While “testing the waters” at a local church I was unpleasantly surprised to sit through a slick Acts 29 promo video one morning. Frankly, given the reputation the organization is getting, knowing a church is affiliated with Acts 29 makes me hesitant to support it. Who knows where my donation would be going? Not to mention the patterns of unhealthy leadership.
I had not heard before that Acts 29 actively promoted solo church planters. This would seem to be poor judgement on multiple levels. Is this a widespread thing or was it possibly just one person’s pet idea?
I honestly don’t know if the idea of solo church planters was widespread or not. But even if it was just one person’s pet idea, Brian Howard was hardly a rogue actor. At the time, he was at least two levels up the chain of hierarchy from the position of pastor, and became president of the organization when Matt Chandler stepped down.