More Collateral Damage From A Purpose Driven Pastor

Mike Ratliff of Possessing the Treasure shares his personal Purpose Driven Transition account:

"...I was very surprised that our Pastor was at every meeting. He guided us into everything. He would not allow us to change anything without his input. The main thing that changed in the Constitution was the addition of our Purpose Statement. The more I thought about that the more I began to become very uneasy with all of this focus on “churchy” things when what we should have been concerned about was the preaching of the Word and the discipling of our people. It was as if those things were unimportant.

Over the next year or so our Pastor became increasingly hard to understand in his sermons. He kept talking about his vision for the Church. Late in 2005 he began preaching through Nehemiah. He kept focusing on Nehemiah dealing with troublemakers, et cetera. It was about this time that I came to know Ingrid and Ken at the old Slice of Laodicia blog. Ken shared a great deal in his posts about the Purpose Driven Church model and what really went on during a transition. It was as if he was describing exactly what was going on in our church. A few weeks later our Pastor gave me a book to read. It was Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Church. I almost fell down."

See related article: Collateral Damage of the Purpose Driven Pastor , Dismembered By A Purpose Driven Pastor