Most all our readers seem to have an opinion about the news story I wrote last week about Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C., abruptly forcing the resignation of their pastor the Sunday before Thanksgiving and one week before the start of Advent.
Some of you are thankful for the coverage. Some of you are angry with me about the coverage. And still others of you simply wonder why we wrote about the internal workings of a local Baptist church.
Rather than write another news story, I’ve opted to write this opinion/analysis piece to address many of the questions you’ve been asking. This matters, I think, because what’s going on in Charlotte is endemic to the Christian church all across America today. This could be your church.
“What’s going on in Charlotte is endemic to the Christian church all across America today.”
I can guarantee you every pastor I’ve talked to who read that article knew instantly the same thing could happen to them — or already had experienced something similar. And emotions are running high far beyond Charlotte.
This one pastor’s termination — whether justified or not — has sparked responses from other Baptists outside the church, including a highly unusual statement from the Alliance of Baptists.
In my analysis, the first mistake the lay leadership at Myers Park made was to assume they are somehow different than every other church in America with declining attendance and declining giving — which is the vast majority of churches in America. More on that in a moment.
Why the story?
Some of you — including some of my friends — wonder why BNG waded into this matter in the first place. And some of you wonder why we didn’t just wait until more information was available after Thanksgiving.
That, of course, assumes more information would have been available after Thanksgiving. My 42 years of journalism and pastoral experience tell me had we not published that article the day before Thanksgiving, there would not have been more information provided publicly.
The bottom line, though, is we published an article because the situation already had been covered in the secular press, in the Charlotte Observer. What kind of Baptist news service would we be if we ignored such irregular goings on at one of the most prominent churches in our small circle of kinship?
And obviously people wanted to know about this story, because now it is on track to be one of our most-read articles of the year. Not because we made it a sensational story, but because the commonalities are so obvious.
“Anyone who knows anything about Baptist church politics and governance would understand that’s a red flag.”
The reasoning church leaders gave the Charlotte Observer for Ben Boswell’s firing just didn’t seem to jive with the appearance of having called an emergency meeting of the Church Council and the deacons at such a peculiar time. Anyone who knows anything about Baptist church politics and governance would understand that’s a red flag.
Does BNG poke its nose into all church personnel decisions everywhere? No. We couldn’t even if we wanted to. But sometimes, the inner workings of a particular church are so peculiar that they rise to the level of news. These fit the old definition of what makes new: When a man bites a dog, not when a dog bites a man.
So that’s what I was thinking in writing the story.
What were they thinking?
The bigger question, to me, is: What were church leaders thinking by doing what they did the way they did it? Did no one think this chain of events would look suspicious to people both inside and outside the church? Did no one consider the oddity of calling an urgent emergency meeting via Zoom — that might have worked during the pandemic but not now — when there was no apparent emergency?
Marcy McClanahan
In her comments to the deacons that fateful Sunday evening, deacon Chair Marcy McClanahan said there was no single precipitating event that led to the recommendation to fire the pastor. Instead, she said, this had been nine years in the making.
She reiterated the same to me in a statement Dec. 2: “Ben’s departure was not the result of a hasty decision or a sudden precipitating event. Rather, it was the culmination of many months of prayerful consideration by both the HR Deacons and Church Council, who ultimately concluded that a change in leadership would best serve the interests of the church. Once a decision was made, the Church Council and board determined it was in the best interest of the church members and staff, and of Ben, to act promptly on that decision.”
OK, then why a hastily called meeting on Zoom?
“Ben’s departure was not the result of a hasty decision or a sudden precipitating event.”
I’m told by church insiders there were reasons for this bad timing, but those cannot be made public.
Reasonable people who know Baptist polity would ask: Why could you not wait until you could have an in-person meeting away from a holiday week? Why would you remove your pastor a week before the start of Advent, one of the two most intense periods of worship leadership in church life? What was the hurry? Acting this way implies to outside observers that there’s something else wrong, that there really was some unspoken urgent factor.
Even some church members I’ve talked to who are not upset about their pastor being fired have said, upon reflection, they now see how the external optics aren’t great. This could — and should — have been handled differently.
I will say the same for our coverage. Had this not been on a short week heading into a holiday, would that have created a different article? Perhaps, but it’s hard to say because our article did not misstate facts.
Benjamin Boswell
Critics of the article, including McClanahan and some other deacons, say we presented “misleading narratives.” The root concern is that the pastor was somehow fired because of his bold preaching and being ahead of lay leadership on racial justice issues.
This is a highly emotional charge for members of a church that has prided itself for decades on being a trailblazer in standing for gender equity, racial equity and sexual orientation equity.
Critics of the pastor’s termination say these church leaders have aspirational values they don’t live out. That’s what the dissenting deacon I quoted last week meant when he spoke of “performative liberals.”
Others will have to be the judge of whether this is true or not, but it is a fact that conflict in churches often involves Christians who say they value things they aren’t willing to live out. Most often, this can be traced to the “all are welcome” sign that covers up the reality that when push comes to shove, not “all” are welcome and even if they are, not “all” are welcome into leadership.
This is an issue that had been raised at Myers Park earlier this year in the report of an outside firm hired to make recommendations on negotiating conflict in the church. Internally, this is known as the “Loftis report.”
“They see the enormous gap between our stated values and how our lay leadership operates.”
Bethany Johnson resigned as chair of a deacon strategic planning group after the report by Loftis Partners was issued. Among her critiques: “Members of the church (especially the 30-50 crowd) who joined because of our public statements and preaching on social justice issues retreat from participation after serving in leadership, including at the ministry level. They see the enormous gap between our stated values and how our lay leadership operates, often denying or obscuring this integrity gap to the detriment of the congregation and in service of our public reputation.”
What really happened?
Over the past week, I’ve talked to multiple knowledgeable people both inside and outside the church. It’s a little easier to piece together a narrative now, but even that is still incomplete.
What I can tell you is the Myers Park story is a universal story. The issues at play are well known in churches all across the land. That’s also what makes this newsworthy.
Myers Park is the tallest of tall-steeple churches — located in an affluent and influential neighborhood of Charlotte and with a history of some legendary preachers, none of whom have departed that pastorate easily.
This is a church whose reputation far outpaces its size. In recent history, it has not been a “large” congregation even though it has been well-known and influential. When Boswell arrived as pastor in 2016, the church averaged 350 people in worship, McClanahan said. That attendance more recently has been down to about 150, she reported.
“This is not story about chaos in a megachurch; it’s about conflict in an average-size church.”
That size congregation in Baptist life — both in 2016 and 2024 — is “average,” not “large.” Which proves once again why this is a story that matters to church leaders everywhere. This is not a story about chaos in a megachurch; it’s about conflict in an average-size church.
In her statement to deacons at the Sunday evening meeting, McClanahan cited three reasons why the Church Council recommended terminating the senior minister’s employment:
There are three areas that are unsustainable for the long-term health of the church. The first one is attendance. We have gone from approximately 350 members attending on average each week at service in 2016 when Ben arrived to approximately 150 members attending on average each week in 2024. We have seen a steady decline in attendance and we can’t expect things to change if we keep doing the same things over and over.
Ben has been given every chance to change his words and actions to appeal to a broader audience but has not been successful in doing so.
The second area is giving. We have seen year-over-year declines in giving. We have a very healthy set of assets at the church, considering property value and our endowments, but it is not sustainable for us to continue to decline in member giving.
Third, overall morale of the church and church staff. We’ve seen a large exodus of members and they’ve not been replaced with new members as we had hoped would happen. Excellent preaching is not enough to sustain us as a church. Additionally, we have heard from many on staff that the atmosphere in the church office has become very difficult for them. We are hearing from staff members who are very dissatisfied with Ben’s leadership and this is not in the best interest of the church.
There has been no inciting incident to prompt this but rather the cumulative effects of the last nine years has led us to this poor point. Therefore, I would like to call a vote to remove Ben as the senior minister at Myers Park Baptist Church.
Three key phrases
Three things immediately jumped out to me in that opening statement at the deacons’ meeting. And again, these have universal application.
The first is this: “We have seen a steady decline in attendance and we can’t expect things to change if we keep doing the same things over and over.”
The implication is this is the pastor’s fault and not the fault of lay leaders. The pastor is expected to change, but lay leaders are not expected to change. The Loftis report cited earlier pointed out a culture at Myers Park of lay leaders piling unrealistic expectations on staff members, who were vastly overworked.
The second is this: “Ben has been given every chance to change his words and actions to appeal to a broader audience but has not been successful in doing so.”
“Excellent preaching is not enough to sustain us as a church.”
For everyone who thought I was wrong to link Boswell’s post-election sermon to his soon-after termination, ponder this quotation. McClanahan told me she was among those who gave the pastor a standing ovation after that sermon, yet two weeks later she told deacons the pastor had not been able to “appeal to a broader audience.”
Another deacon wrote me to complain about the article and said Boswell’s sin was he was dismissive to conservatives and senior adults.
The third is this: “Excellent preaching is not enough to sustain us as a church.”
That is both a sad truth and a questionable reality at the same time. The church I served 17 years as associate pastor had one of the top preachers in Baptist life in America, and I will testify that alone was not enough to bring people streaming in the doors.
However, on the opposite side, church consultants tell me good preaching is necessary for a church to maintain attendance or grow.
One thing everyone at Myers Park seems to agree about is this: Ben Boswell is a great preacher. The critique publicly voiced against his preaching is he did not “appeal to a broader audience.”
Here’s why that line will send shivers down the spine of every preacher who reads this: Those resistant to change in churches always accuse the preacher of being too narrow, too hung up on certain issues, not broad enough in appeal. And what that most often means is the people in the pew do not want to be challenged to think differently.
Folks at Myers Park swear that isn’t the case there.
“Ben is an excellent preacher, but there is more to leading a church than preaching,” McClanahan told me. “Over the years, the board of deacons has sought to advance all four elements of our strategic plan: Faith, church family, external community and sustainability. The board of deacons determined that while we will always continue to advance justice, new leadership is necessary to grow our faith, build our internal church community and ultimately sustain our church.”
Social justice
The thing that stung lay leaders at Myers Park about the BNG article and criticisms from other quarters is the implication their disagreements were about social justice.
“A central issue that needs correction is that Myers Park Baptist Church parted ways with Ben Boswell over issues of racial justice,” McClanahan told me. “This was never part of the discussion by the Church Council or board of deacons. As outlined in my previous emails, Myers Park Baptist Church has focused on justice issues, including an emphasis on racial justice, for over 80 years. We intend to continue doing so for the rest of our existence. Having a pastor leave does not change the core values or mission of the church. Also, as I said in a previous email, his leaving was not related to his sermon after the election. Preaching is one of Ben’s great strengths. He gave an excellent and well-received sermon that resulted in a standing ovation from the congregation.”
And yet, one of the lay leaders who wrote me individually to complain about my article told me church leaders wanted Boswell to preach more “Christian theology” and less “social justice.” To which I replied: “How can you separate the two?”
Another deacon who spoke at the Sunday evening Zoom meeting said he loves Boswell but the pastor preached 80% about social justice and 20% about comfort, when he thinks the percentages ought to be reversed.
People who have left the church in recent years are “tired of being indicted” because they’re white, the deacon said.
People who have left the church in recent years are “tired of being indicted” because they’re white, he said.
“I just want to come to church and be encouraged and to have the courage to do what I need to do to go into the next week,” the deacon said.
Leadership and staff conflict
Underlying all this, based on various documents I’ve read and interviews I’ve done in the past week, is an ongoing concern about the pastor’s leadership of the church and within the staff. Some accused Boswell of being a “toxic” presence among the staff, although the deacons were told explicitly there had been no allegations of abuse.
To reiterate what McClanahan told me: “Ben’s departure was not the result of a hasty decision or a sudden precipitating event. Rather, it was the culmination of many months of prayerful consideration by the both the HR Deacons and Church Council, who ultimately concluded that a change in leadership would best serve the interests of the church.”
And to reiterate my point: Clearly something had to have happened to force this vote in a rush, but no one is even hinting at what that pressure was.
What’s obvious from digging into the background here is a small group of lay leaders had been deeply involved in trying to move the pastor to lead in a different way and felt they had been unsuccessful. But there is no evidence the church at large understood that.
Which might explain why efforts were made to keep the question of the pastor’s employment from going to a vote of the full church.
When pastors get crossways with lay leaders, the matter seldom makes it to a congregational vote.
Again, this illustrates a universal theme. When pastors get crossways with lay leaders, the matter seldom makes it to a congregational vote. Even when pastors believe — rightly or wrongly — they would survive a vote of confidence, the damage already would be done. They most often accept a buyout of some sort, and their stories never are told.
That’s another reason the Myers Park situation has universal interest.
Look, I’ve been the pastor responsible for managing a large staff and taking the heat from all directions. That’s the toughest part of many a pastor’s job. I don’t know what the real situation was among staff at Myers Park, but whatever it was, you can be sure the answer is complex.
To be clear, the deacons, urged on by the Church Council, used their position as leverage to force a resignation. There was a severance package offered, I suppose in return for a nondisclosure agreement, although that point is not clear.
One pastor of another tall-steeple progressive Baptist church who wrote to me lamented the trend he sees of deacons and church councils acting like corporate boards.
“Baptist church deacons need to stop trying to act like corporate boards,” the pastor said. “When senior pastors are dismissed or forced to resign and the people aren’t given good reason, it risks killing the church. This is really becoming an issue. Personnel committees, church councils, and boards of deacons do their best to try to solve problems, mitigate damage, look for gracious alternate paths, and limit legal liability. Often, they let things go way too long, handwringing for years, and then it all ends in suddenly and with complete shock to the system.
“This is the case because, oftentimes and different from a lot of corporate boards, church members have a hard time making the hard but obvious decision. They try to spare the pain. But there is no sparing the pain of a senior minister’s forced departure. When such a thing takes place, there really needs to be sufficient disclosure about the reasons. This probably means the too-broad NDAs need to quit being signed before the congregation is apprised.”
Another interesting point about Myers Park — contravening current trends elsewhere in Baptist life — is the very language of a “board of deacons,” which harks to an earlier time when deacons in Baptist churches functioned like an executive board. Over the past several decades, moderate to progressive Baptist churches have moved away from that model to make deacons more biblical servants while entrusting human resources work to personnel committees. At the same time, the most conservative Baptist churches have moved the opposite direction, ditching deacons for elite elder boards, which the pastor often leads.
Regardless the governance model, a heavy weight of healing will fall on whoever comes as the next senior minister, noted my tall-steeple pastor correspondent. “The next senior minister will be expected to heal the wound from a disease that otherwise cannot be named.”
By the way, this pastor speaks from personal experience as someone who followed more than one predecessor who was forced out.
Reactions
Another unusual aspect of the Myers Park situation is the attention it has attracted from outside the church. So unusual that the Alliance of Baptists — one of the denominational bodies Myers Park associates with — issued a lengthy lament about the pastor’s termination.
“Ben’s departure from the church is a major disappointment for those of us interested in pushing the broader church to take seriously the call to be antiracist,” the statement begins. “As a pastor, preacher, teacher and writer, Ben has been one of the most dedicated leaders and one of the clearest voices committed to pushing his congregation and the broader Alliance of Baptists to be an antiracist organization.”
“It does seem that at the very least his voice was one octave too high for some to hear.”
The letter continues: “Admittedly while we do not know all of the reasons surrounding Ben’s departure, it does seem that at the very least his voice was one octave too high for some to hear. Over the past week we’ve heard from many pastors and preachers who read the stories of Ben’s departure and fear that perhaps their voices are also one octave too high. They live, minister, and preach in times that are cruel and uncertain, too.”
The letter is signed by Elijah Zehyoue, co-director; Carole Collins, co-director; Lisa Dunson, president; and Kris Norris, vice president.
Also, well-known band leaders who have a long affiliation with the church posted an open letter to Myers Park explaining why their group will not perform there for now.
That letter from Greg Jarrell and Dawn Anthony says Carolina Social Music Club will “pause” its participation in events at the Charlotte church, including withdrawing from a scheduled appearance Dec. 8. “Our presence would be a façade. We heed instead the prophet Jeremiah’s call against saying ‘Peace, Peace,’ when there is no peace.”
“In your congregation, we’ve seen an institution struggling to figure out who it is,” the letter states. “Many times, we’ve witnessed you living into one primary stream of your history as theological dissidents testifying to the breadth and depth of God’s love. You’ve not been scared to confront yourselves or the world in your words and your deeds. Just as often, we’ve seen the other primary stream of your history: that of genteel niceties, of monied enforcement of social hierarchies and pretensions.
“We do not know or understand everything happening in your congregation in 2024. Certainly, it is a moment of upheaval. What is clear to us is this: The people making leadership decisions are not acting as the theological renegades that is your congregation’s best version of itself. Their actions come at a critical moment in public life when we need witnesses who will refuse to go along with the normal order of business in the United States.”
Carrie Veal
Associate Pastor Carrie Veal got the unenviable task of preaching last Sunday, the first Sunday after the pastor’s removal. By local accounts, about 180 people were in attendance, and about 20 of them walked out of the service in protest at the Passing of the Peace.
In her First Sunday of Advent sermon based on Jeremiah 29, she noted of the church’s history: “Eighty-one years ago, God called a group of people to start something new. God said: ‘I need you to build a house and plant a garden. Yes, I know you are in the middle of a world war. Yes, I know you are in the middle of uncertainty, in the middle of chaos, and yet I am calling you. I am calling you to build and plant and raise families in all the ways that you choose to define those words.’ And it is my deepest belief after being among you for over 10 years that what God began, God will continue. God has been working in the good of the world in this place for over 80 years.”
She concluded with this advice: “Like the Israelites, we must build community. We must build and not tear down. We must find ways toward one another, not pushing against. We should ask questions and pause for the answer. And I’m saying that to myself as well. We should seek clarification on our confusion and use those answers to find a way forward. We can be in exile, we can be in grief, and we can find ways to not let that stop us from living, not let it stop us from dreaming, not let it stop us from seeking after God.”
For her part, McClanahan told me the church will rise above this: “The departure of a senior minister from a church is inevitably controversial. Our Church Council, the vast majority of the board and I regret, however, that some apparently have sought to exploit controversy in the media and elsewhere. We are a diverse and inclusive congregation that embraces controversy as a reality of life together, and I am confident we will overcome this one.”
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. He is the author of Honestly: Telling the Truth About the Bible and Ourselves and Why Churches Need to Talk About Sexuality. His brand-new book is Troubling the Truth and Other Tales from the News.
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