Special Members' Meeting: June 14, 2023 Removal of Josh Rice as an Elder

Welcome

First and foremost, thank you all for taking the time to be here.

We love you. We love our church. And we are grateful for your love and sacrifice on behalf of this body.

We all know why we are here.

Josh has resigned his membership and is no longer a pastor of our church.

The goal of this meeting is to explain how we got here with full transparency, sticking to the facts in a hope and an effort to guard against division in our church or people wondering what the real story is.

And now saying that with full transparency, nothing I’m going to say is meant to malign or disparage Josh in any way.

We have no interest in doing that.

So when we talk about ways we disagreed that’s saying nothing negative about Josh, just a statement of fact that we had different points of you.

Nothing more.

Now Josh is obviously not here because He resigned His membership.

And we know Proverbs says The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him (Proverbs 18:17).

That’s obviously not able to happy.

The Bible talks about truth being established by two or three witness, and just practically I’m here to tell you we aren’t interested in disqualifying ourselves by lying.

I’ve always told you, I would shoot you straight and I would tell you the truth.

That’s why were here.

What I’m going to say is not the shined up version but just the timeline of events.

Not really even our opinion or what we think about it, but just the facts.

And I can tell you everything we are going to say we have said to Josh and I would hope we would say exactly the same way if he was here now.

So let’s start with January.

Timeline

January

You remember how in January we had a Members’ Meeting where we announced we were going to two services.

That decision came after about a year and a half of prayer and discussion.

And that’s actually a good opportunity to explain to you how we as Elders make decisions and how we know the Holy Spirit’s leading for our church.

And this is going to come up again and again.

Unity

Basically the name of the game is Unity.

One of the clearest indicators of the Spirit’s leading is that we as a whole have a spirit of unity moving forward.

This is a peek behind the curtain, “How does the Holy Spirit lead our church?” and the answer is not that much of a secret.

Its right there in our bylaws.

Article 5: Section 5 The Board of Elders will aim to act under a consensus. If a consensus is not possible for whatever reason, the act of a 3/4 majority vote of the Elders present at a meeting at which a quorum is present shall be the act of the Board of Elders.

That consensus is a spirit of unity among the Elders. And specifically the elders as a whole because Article 5: Section 1 says The affairs of the church shall be managed by its Board of Elders. Other Deacons, ministry leaders, paid staff, or any other position established by the Elders shall serve the church under the direction of the Board of Elders.

The board, not just a few.

Not even me as the lead pastor. All of us together.

Now what would drive vote?

If there was a timeline external to us.

So take the interest rate on our mortgage.

Say it was going to balloon on Tuesday and we had to decide if we were going to refinance, or just continue with the mortgage we have.

One Elder is against taking debt of any kind, and so he doesn’t want to refinance, when the rest of the elders do.

We would pray, discuss, but at some point a decision has to be made. Its outside of us.

That would drive a vote.

But the way we always operate is we need to have unity as a whole. That’s how we know its the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Now sometimes that looks like one of us saying, you know what? I trust you. I disagree, but I can go along.

And other times, if there is no unity, even if its just one elder, we table the discussion and continue to pray until we have unity from the Holy Spirit to move forward.

This standard of unity as the leading of the Holy Spirit protects the church because it guards us against the tyranny of the many and the whims of the few.

And that conviction is rooted in Scripture.

Philippians 2:1-5 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, [that’s the key] any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.

So according to our bylaws, we have a fiduciary duty to not move forward in leading the church unless we absolutely have to without unity.

But more than that, it is our conviction from God’s Word that that is how we know the Spirit’s work.

Without unity, its not the Spirit’s leading, at least at that time.

Philippians 4:2-3 I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord. Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women, who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.

We see this same principle of unity again.

Now these two women were obviously not pastors but they labored in the gospel together, and they were at a crossroads.

And Paul tells them to agree in the Lord.

That’s how we operate. We are serving the Lord.

We are not to try and twist the arms of other elders to move them to our position but to come to a spirit of unity.

And in that unity we have the Holy Spirit’s leading.

Back to Meeting

Go back to the meeting.

We had said in that meeting, that we were going to two services and not planting a church was because there was no elder who had expressed interest in planting a church at that time.

And that was true.

In our elder meeting two weeks before, we were praying, making final plans, and looking at all of our options.

And we specifically asked if there was any of us thought that two services was not the way forward and we should be planting a church instead.

Everyone said no. Including Josh.

We had a spirit of unity, and believed it was the will of the Holy Spirit to move forward to two services.

And that’s what we did. And that’s why we said what we said in that meeting.

If Josh had expressed interest in planting a church at that time, we would have pressed pause.

Looked at what that would have looked like, and probably moved forward knowing that would have answered our problem and we would have stayed at one service.

Although obviously I can’t guarantee that would have been the case.

That takes us to February.

February

Two or three weeks after the membership meeting, Josh called us individually as elders and said he was going to go plant a church.

That he had a potential second elder, which we will get into in a second, and his plan was to start the church in the Fall.

Now that obviously took us by surprise we had just told the church we weren’t planting a church and so we tabled our February meeting to give us an opportunity to pray and think it through before meeting about it.

And so we prayed with a plan to discuss it in march.

March

March comes around and we gave Josh the floor.

We worked through his desire, asked questions, were just trying to get our head around.

One of the big concerns we had was that this did not originate within the Elder Board.

It wasn’t a conversation of, “Hey guys. I think I’m ready to plant. What do you think of that? What would that look like? What would that look like for our church?

It was I’m going to plant.

And so we pushed a little bit.

We just went to two services.

We haven’t heard of this before. Yes, we always had a plan for Josh to plant when he was ready, but those conversations were always 2-3 years down the road.

We also asked questions about this second elder.

Now Josh had known this man for a lot of his life, and of course we trusted Josh, but we didn’t know this man.

Josh said that he was an pastor with an Assemblies of God church, but had in the last few years become Reformed.

And that was fine, but it was hard to see how we could send and commission a church plant where we didn’t know the second elder of the plant and he belonged to a denomination that goes against our Baptist distinctives.

It was nothing about the man himself, just how would that possibly work? How would we do that.

And really what it all came down to that this whole thing had just gotten too far ahead of us.

Josh was talking Fall, building, all kinds of stuff that we had never been a part of as an Elder board.

And we worked through that and we said, ok lets just hit a reset.

Pausing

Let’s start over with prayer to see if this was the Holy Spirit’s will for our church.

I’ll be honest, at the time we didn’t really see it.

We had just gone to two services, and we saw it as a possibility as a year or more in the making.

But we wanted to pray because what if the Holy Spirit was moving?

Was working? Was pulling the trigger before we really would on our own?

So we said, ok. Let’s slow down. See if this is of the Spirit.

We said we would address it again the next month, but at the least commit to pray for if and when this might be the will of God for that church.

In that time, we encouraged that this didn’t’ mean he had to go full stop, but could use the time to find an assessment, training, a network, anything that might get the ball rolling for him, while we prayed for God’s will.

April

That takes us to April.

In between meetings, the second guy dropped out.

So Josh came to the meeting and we gave him the floor, and Josh started by saying he was still committed to planting this church and he was going to resign his eldership and go.

Now obviously, we had a bunch of push back.

We didn’t have unity, we didn’t have a second guy which is how we always thought we’d send out church planters because Jesus sent His disciples out two by two, and the Holy Spirit said set apart for me Paul and Barnabas.

Plus, given our conviction that churches plant churches, we didn’t see how this direction was possibly God’s will.

The conversation eventually turned into well, what would that look like if it was an RBC Church Plant?

What would it look like if it was something our church was doing?

And before we get to that, let me give you some background of how we think as Elders about a church planting philosophy.

Church Planting Philosophy

This is not trying to big brain anybody, but one of my Masters is in Church Planting. So we’ve thought about this before.

In fact, how we replicate small groups is modeled off how we would plant a church. You could say its baked into our DNA.

Calling

Basically it would start with an Elder qualified man coming and saying, “Guys I have a desire to plant a church? What would that look like? What do you think?”

Before anything else a man has to have the desire to do it.

Just as with Pastors...

1 Timothy 3:1 The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.

But desire and conviction alone are not enough.

Paul tells Timothy...

1 Timothy 5:22 Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands...

There is an internal call and an external affirmation of that call by churches and Elders appointed by the Holy Spirit.

An internal call and conviction is not the end all be all.

Imagine if someone came to our church, I feel called to be an elder of this church.

That internal call or desire would not then make him an elder.

It would be the church affirming that internal call and laying on hands to commission him as a pastor.

Similar with church planting.

Churches plant churches.

Remember how in Acts 13:1-3 The Holy Spirit said “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

When Paul and Barnabas were sent out to plant a church, it was not just an internal call.

The Holy Spirit told the church, and the church sent them off to follow His will.

Verse 3...Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.

So you have a man with an internal call, and an external affirmation of that call from the church through the leadership of the elders of the church who God has entrusted with the ministry of the Word.

From there, that planter would go through assessments, and trainings to set him up for success because 80% of church plants don’t make it in the first five years.

And he would have a head hunting license to develop a core team with the elders.

When that team was ready, and the sending church had a plan in place for all the leaders and volunteers leaving, we would send them out, pray for them, bless them, and give them a financial gift if not try to fund it until it was ready to stand on its own.

And after that the elders would be there to always pray and give any wisdom or direction the planter might need.

That’s how we always saw it happening.

Now that is just a philosophy, not a hard a fast rule, but a general idea of how we think.

Plan

So with all that in mind we said Josh what if you don’t resign and we go at it like this.

We pay for assessment and training.

Have an interest meeting.

Build a core team.

Start a small group where all your focus is on developing that core team and getting them ready to plant.

Don’t have to come to meetings and can be a “church planting elder.”

During that time we will get RBC set up: replace volunteers and leaders that are going with you. Make the transition.

And then we send out the whole plant. Pray for you. Commission you. Bless you with a financial gift and send you out.

There was even conversation about paying Josh a stipend during that time to help support him and allow him to focus on the plant with all the extra work he’d be doing.

We honestly were doing everything we could to try to get behind this church plant.

Josh hadn’t thought about that before, didn’t know it was a possibility so he asked to pray about it.

We said great, and waited till the next month.

May

May comes around, and Josh said he didn’t want to plant with that plan and felt it was imperative to go start the plant in the Fall.

And he said he was going to resign his eldership.

In the spirit of transparency we really pushed back.

Churches plant churches.

We strive for a spirit of unity.

How do we set both these churches up for success.

But Josh made it clear that he had a conviction to start this church, and that conviction was enough to go ahead and go.

At that point, our hands are basically tied.

We aren’t tyrants. There’s nothing stopping it.

So we started asking Ok. If this is what is happening, how do we guard against division and protect the church.

Because we loved Josh, and we had no interest in making it a battle.

That wasn’t our heart. We disagreed and that was that.

So we though, Well we don’t agree. We don’t have unity about this church plant being of the Lord.

But we love Josh.

Let’s just pray for him in front of the church, thank him for his years of service, bless him with a financial gift, and send him on his way.

And that’s what we planned to communicate in hopes of guarding the church from division

We planned to say Josh was going to leave and plant a church.

And while we disagree on the timing and some of the philosophy, we wanted to love him and pray for God to bless him on his next ministry endeavor.

And that takes us to June.

June

As we we working on the email where we planned to tell the church that Josh was resigning to plant a church sharing the fact that we had disunity on it with a plan to pray for Josh and send him out...Jeff, Chad, and I really had questions in our conscience.

I personally just had questions of if I think this is how church planting should go, and I believe unity amongst the elders is a sign of the Holy Spirit, how do I stand before the church and give the appearance of blessing it.

So I started reaching out to some other Pastors just to get their wisdom and council.

I talked to a former elder of a 10,000 person church that was heavily involved in church planting.

The Missionary from Africa whose entire mission was planting churches in Uganda.

And I called the founding Pastor of our church, Andy Swart, and just laid everything out like we’ve done for you and asked, what do you see?

Am I wrong? What would you do? What direction would you go.

And every one of them said the same thing.

You need unity. That is the clearest work of the Spirit when you’re leading a church.

Then we went to a pastor’s breakfast with other Reformed Baptist churches in the area.

Pastors from Legacy Baptist, Covenant Baptist in Siloam, and Immanuel Baptist in Springdale.

We get together somewhat quarterly and consider one another sister churches.

And as we were talking about what we can pray for each other, we talked about this church plant situation and just asking for unity and protection for the church.

And all of them really pushed back with some of the same stuff we’ve been talking about.

Churches plant churches. The need for unity. Plus if you guys don’t agree that this is a work of the Holy Spirit how can you stand up there and bless it.

And that was honestly the tipping point for me.

It was like the dam broke, because all the questions and objections they had were all the ones I myself was asking.

And I didn’t have any good answers for the questions they were asking, even going so far as saying going through with our plan would appear duplicitous.

Well Chad and I were both very convicted because we want to be above reproach, and we talked to Jeff, told him what they said, and through prayer and conversation just realized we can’t go through with this.

Its going to rip our conscience to shreds if we do it.

Because we lacked peace and feeling conviction, we pressed on the email and started looking at what that could mean.

So what we did was we called these Pastors.

We told them where we were, asked more questions, asked for more wisdom, and all of them individually on separate phone calls were again saying the same thing.

That without unity, you can have no confidence that this is of the Holy Spirit.

So we asked them if they would be willing to help us with a church council, of Reformed, like minded Baptist churches to help us find a path forward from our impasse.

Proverbs 15:22 Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed.

Now mind you, we are Baptist. We believe in local autonomous churches.

We were not calling asking them to be an authoritative body to tell us what to do.

But we were asking if they would come in, listen to Josh’s side without any of us in the room, and give us their wisdom to help us find a path forward.

We could be wrong, so we wanted to make our selves accountable to other godly elders from other godly churches.

So we had:

Landon Shrock and Dr. Terry Chrisope from Legacy Baptist in Bella Vista

Ben Seewald from Immanuel Baptist in Springdale

And Tad Thompson from Covenant in Siloam was going to chair it, and we were even going to bring up our founding Pastor, Andy Swart, from Texas and all of these men had agreed to come to help.

And the goal of that council was to find the will of the Holy Spirit and find unity with Josh on this plant no matter what it looked like.

Planting. Not planting. Anything.

So then last Thursday we called Josh, and said man, we just can’t in good conscience do it.

We told him the reasons why…conviction from the Holy Spirit, council from other Pastors...

And we asked Josh if he would be willing to participate in this church council where he would be able to tell his whole side so that we could hopefully find unity.

Josh asked if he could take a few days to pray, and we were honestly hopeful it was going to happen.

That

He wanted time to pray. We said of course.

And we were hopeful this council was going to happen. And these churches that love us and think like us could give their wisdom and help us move forward.

And then this past Sunday, Josh resigned his membership, and is going to go plant this church.

That was that. That’s where we are.

That’s the whole story.

And I hope it helps explain why this was all so sudden because we thought we were still working through it.

So to summarize...

We never said a hard no to planting a church. In fact throughout the whole process we were trying to find a way to get on board and get behind this thing.

Also we never asked Josh to resign. Not once. We actually asked him to stay on and find another way.

I can tell you from our side, there’s no bitterness or anger. Its just what it is.

Now what does that mean for us.

I don’t think any of us wanted it to end this way including Josh.

I don’t think this was the intent of either side.

I don’t think its right in our philosophy of planting churches.

We wanted to be involved, find a way.

At no point in any of these discussions did we just say a flat hardline no.

We were trying to come together in unity, but that’s where we are.

Pain of Pastor Leaving

Also I understand how a lot of you might be hurt.

It hurts when a pastor just leaves.

Its not right. I don’t understand it.

But if it hurts that’s ok.

I’m sorry. We know first hand how bad it hurts when members leave.

And I’ll tell you, I’m hurt.

This has been one of the most painful things me and my family have ever experienced in our life.

But it will be ok and we will get through it, and we will shepherd you through it.

Gratitude

We are grateful for Josh. We will miss Josh.

He was a huge part of getting this church healthy.

And no one including him, I’m sure, wanted it to end this way.

He served our church faithfully for many years, and we would not be where we are today without him.

Schemes of Satan

But here’s where I want to encourage us and edify us as a church.

We need to be wise to the schemes of Satan.

There is nothing more that he would love than to use this to so division, bitterness, create conflict and drive us off our mission to preach the Word.

We need to guard against it.

Pray against it.

Like 1 Corinthians 13 says love assumes no wrong, so we need to assume the best of everyone in our our church and out.

Instilling Confidence

And lastly I’ll say this.

I know its hard, and many of you have never been a part of a church before that had anything like this happen.

But I will tell you its all going to be fine.

This kind of stuff happens all the time.

But this doesn’t change anything. We’re still the same church.

We still preach the same Word. Sing the same songs.

Love one another the same way.

And just give it a couple of weeks and you’ll see everything is still the same.

And here’s what we can pray for: The preaching of the gospel.

For the gospel to go forth in Northwest Arkansas so that more people might be saved.

So let’s do that now.

Pray

Q & A

In the spirit of transparency, we are going to open it up for questions.

Now, experience says open Q & A’s are rife with opportunity for the devil to sow division in a church.

We ask that you would guard against that and treat everyone in our church with respect.

And to help with that, we are going to limit this time to Questions only.

With our limited time, we don’t have time for comments, and we want to make sure we answer everyone’s questions to hopefully give fully clarity to this situation.

If you have a comment please come find us after the meeting and we will be more than happy to speak with you more in depth.

If you stand up, and are not asking a question we might interrupt you and ask if you have a question, and we are going to set aside at least hopefully 7:30 maybe 7:45 as a cut off time.

We might have to cut it off to let people go home to their kids, but we as elders will stay here as long as it takes.