Episode 136: When Revitalization Takes a New Direction

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Christ Is King and the Church Is Not a Democracy

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it. The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus.

In a local, visible congregation.

Well, I'm just glad that the government shutdown has ended and the internet has returned back to the great state of Arkansas, and I can have another episode of the Ruled Church podcast. Welcome to the Ruled Church podcast.

I am your host, Alan Nelson. I am one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas, and we have the great privilege today of Brother Jason Gunter. And you know what? I cannot remember, you're in Missouri.

What's the town in Missouri?

West Plains.

West Plains, West Plains, Missouri. The one and only, at least the only, Jason Gunter that I know of has joined us today on the Ruled Church podcast. I was trying to think, did we meet through a, did we meet through Richard Gamble?

Is that how we met originally?

Okay.

I was thinking about that just the other day. He took me to Clinton to a conference, a Bible conference that you were doing there, was my first introduction to you, and that's been 10 years ago, maybe?

Was that the one, was Jeff Johnson at that one?

Jeff Johnson, I think. Jim Ellis, maybe?

Yeah, okay. That was 2015, so that's good. So Jason and I have known, have met, you know, known each other a little over, well, over 10 years now, so it's great. And finally, what a friend I am. I've known you over 10 years, and this is the first time that you have come on the Ruled Church.

Is that on me or is that on you? I don't know.

I think we can both take, I think we can both take some credit for that, maybe.

Yeah, well, why don't,.

Let's just start this way before we get into anything with the church. This episode, I don't even know what the title's gonna be, but I'm sure the title and description will tell you that Jason is gonna talk about some difficult situations that he's had to deal with in ministry, and then this will be a two-part episode.

Lord willing, next episode, talk about some beautiful things the Lord's doing. But why don't we start out right now just talking about who is Jason Gunner? Just give us a couple of minutes of who you are, your family, that kind of stuff.

Jason Gunter’s Story of Salvation, Backsliding, and Call to Ministry

Yeah.

Jason Gunner now is a pastor of a little church plant here in West Plains, but it's been a long road to get here in a lot of ways. I grew up in the kind of independent fundamental Baptist circles, was baptized at age four.

And then when I was 14, God saved me and it was really hard to get baptized because I couldn't convince anybody that I'd been saved. So it took some explaining of what the Lord had done in my heart and meeting with pastors and even my parents, God bless them, they've done so much to point me to Christ.

And it was just a kind of a strange, but eye-opening and neat experience that whenever I was saved to have all these conversations anyway. So baptized, saved at 14, did a lot of, that was in South Arkansas, did a lot of moving around since then.

When I was about maybe 14, 15, shortly after that, we'd started moving around a lot. And so from age 14, 15 to, all the way through high school graduation, I never was again, a member in a local church after we'd left the church that I was saved at.

And so a lot of, just a lot of compromising took place as a young Christian, an immature Christian, trying, moving to schools, big schools, trying to make friends. And so I got, I think in a stage of just being backslid for a time.

And then the day after I graduated high school, my mother and father moved back to Springfield, Missouri. And I was just like, I'm not moving again. This is the third or fourth time in five years. So I stayed there, went to college at Western Kentucky University for a little while, but ended up working at a bar.

And don't know why I thought that would be a good idea, but I did. And so 10 years, man, I spent flipping bottles in a bar in a very afflicted and conflicted state as a Christian who was not living Christian life in the way that I knew I should.

But in that time, I met a cocktail waitress that has now been my wife for 16 years. God is also, God has also saved, you know, we got married. I had to chase her down to Arkansas. But after we had been married and moved away from Springfield, we got into a church together and had some people put their arms around us and really start to disciple us.

You know, they cared for us, they loved us. She realized, you know, that she wasn't saved in this time. God had brought her in the conviction of the word as we were studying the Bible. And so I don't remember exactly what year that was, but the Lord saves her.

And I ended up being able to baptize my wife and my oldest daughter subsequently later on at the, whenever she realized, you know, hey, it's time for me to be baptized. My oldest daughter was 10 at that time and the Lord had just saved her.

So even in that regard of running, I don't know, running in the wrong direction for a long time, you know, being out of the church, away from the discipline of church, away from, you know, the responsibilities of a covenant and the accountability of brothers and sisters.

And I got some scars from that, certainly, but the Lord has even used that. I met my wife there and was able to see her saved. And so as we kind of coming out of that stage of being seriously discipled, seriously in the local church is when the Lord started then calling me towards pastoral ministry.

And that's been probably about the time that we met. That was around the time the Lord was really working in my life in that way. Very confusing. You know, you have every argument in the world for why you have no business, you know, being anything like a pastor or a Bible teacher, you know, you're just, or at least I was just content to just sit, you know, in the back pew and be a part of a church and worship the Lord, you know, and spirit and truth.

But there was a, you know, the hound of heaven comes and I think, I don't know if I reached out to Richard, maybe, I don't know how exactly that took place, but just looking for counsel. And yeah, so I think that was about the time he said, why don't you come to this conference with me?

And so we went up to Clinton together, but probably within a year or two after that, we had moved up to Springfield. I'd taken a job with the city of Republic and I got a part-time ministry position at Old Baptist Church in Springfield.

I was there for a couple of years as a youth pastor and then ended up going to serve with Richard down in Louisiana for a couple of years as a family pastor. And then from there, went up to Lake Ozark and was a pastor over life groups and youth ministry, a lot like a family pastor there.

And in those years really grew enough to know that I didn't know anything about being a pastor the way that I thought that I did. But I feel like, you know, I spent this time of my life, 10 years maybe, of just being backslidden, you know, I'd be back in church and repent.

And then within, you know, it seems like maybe a month or so I'd be back to my old ways. And so then there's like this other 10 years, I felt like God just really put me in this crash course of ministry, of afflictions and hardships, certainly bright moments too, but maybe to, you know, to make up for lost time.

I don't know, but it seemed like everything that I learned in my ministry in the first, you know, 10 years, I've learned the hard way. And I feel like I learned more of what not to do than what to do kind of in the beginning stages.

And so we've gone through, you know, a few churches, few different posts, a few different moves and just relocations from the lake. We came down to Willow Springs, Missouri, which is the church we were, that we left out of before we planted here in West Plains.

But along the way, you know, I've made some great relationships, spent some time in seminary, you know, with Jeff Johnson down in Conway and taking some classes in some few other places. But by and large, I've just been, I've read books, a lot of books, and I've been blessed to have men in my life who would offer, you know, correction, offer help, offer resources, offer teaching.

And so hopefully now I think maybe the Lord has shaped me into a pastor, maybe a real one.

Yeah, well, no, thanks for that. What, so just getting into this, listen to your story, your first, as far as like lead pastor or whatever, I don't, you know, I don't love that terminology. I know we don't have that terminology in the scriptures, but your first, like, where you are the pastor was this previous church?

Right, yeah, First Baptist Church there in Willow Springs.

First Baptist Church, Willow Springs. And what, are they a Southern Baptist Church?

Yeah, they are. They, as far as I know, they still are, but yeah, the Southern Baptist Church. I don't know, well, I know that there wasn't really any active involvement outside of, you know, Lottie Moon offerings and then those kinds of things.

No messengers were being sent to the convention or anything like that until I'd gotten there.

Okay, so let's talk about that. And yeah, let's talk about First Baptist Church, Willow Springs. What, how'd you get there? And what did that look like? Just, you know, start out day one.

The Call to First Baptist Church in Willow Springs

It was an unmistakable, you know, providence of the Lord, like this is where we need to be. And we were at Lake Ozark. I was, just knew that my time was drawing near there for different reasons. Of course, this is like, you know, 2020, 2021.

So the Lord sends, you know, COVID and the church is being purged and sifted. And so the, where I was serving there, there were some things that being brought to light that I certainly didn't agree with.

And I think brothers didn't agree with me about. And I felt, I felt like I was in one of those positions, like there's, there's either going to have to be a compromise here or we're going to have to go.

That's pretty much the conversation I had with my wife. And of course she's like, why can't you just keep a job? So why, why can't you? But anyway, so we're, we're, we're praying and really just seeking the Lord.

I remember spending, you know, hours on the phone with Pastor Rob Davis from Cabot. Him and his wife talking to Ashley Jo and myself, like, what, what do we do? How do we, you know, handle this and just seeking counsel?

And I had talked to a few different, few different churches. I had a church in California reach out to me, which was, you know, when you're in a moment like that and a church out of the blue calls, you think, whoa, this, this must be, you know, something, something from the Lord and had some interviews.

There's a little Reformed Baptist church. Of course, my wife's like, you'll be in prison in two weeks if we go to California. Like, we could just skip that. We could just go check you into the, you know, to the jail.

But then there was another church in Utah. I don't remember how exactly I got in touch with them, but that went really far. And it got to the point where they called and offered me the position, you know, here's, hey, brother, we want to send, bring you and your wife out here.

We really think God's calling you.

I think I remember that. I think that you had shared that with me and I was praying because what you're about to say, if I'm remembering correctly, is then you had this other one, like kind of simultaneous, is that right?

Providence, Discernment, and the Move to Willow Springs

Yeah, yeah. It was strange. I was actually in Conway and I don't remember what we were there for. But when I got the call from Cedar City and I remember talking to that brother and I told him, I said, you know, my heart should just be leaping right now, brother.

It's not. And I don't know, I don't know what that means. You know, I don't know why. I said, can you give me just, you know, a couple of weeks to just seek the Lord and pray and, you know, make sure this is the right, you know, the right thing.

Because this is, you know, big move for us, states over away from family. My wife's pregnant at this time with our youngest. So it was, you know, there had been a lot of hardship there, but, you know, we were willing to go wherever the Lord was calling, but I couldn't figure out, you know, like why I wasn't just, you know, jumping at this and really excited.

And within maybe a week, I'd gotten a call from one of the deacons at First Baptist Church. I'd sent a resume in months before that, because it was close to us. It's near, you know, kind of like West Plains.

It's kind of a hometown area for me. Willow Springs isn't, you know, far away at all. And I have family around here. So it would have been geographically, you know, and just the size of the town, a familiarity with it.

There's a lot of reasons that I thought it could be a good fit. Anyway, he called and I was like, wow, yeah. Okay, this is why I've got some hesitancy in my heart. So I ended up meeting with them, I think within a few days in, you know, the interview, I met with the pastoral search team, Ashley, Joe, and I.

And within, you know, maybe an hour, it was kind of determined like, hey, we feel like the Lord's working here. This is where, you know, I think we should come. They felt the same way. And so they made calls that week to cancel the upcoming interviews they had for the candidates.

And I called Utah and said, hey, I think I've realized what the Lord's calling me to. I think he's sending me to this church here in Missouri. And they were, you know, gracious. And of course, you know, when you're in that position and you're trying to call a pastor, the last thing you want is a pastor that's not called there.

So they're gracious to say, hey, brother, we want the Lord's will to be done. And so, you know, if that's the place for you, then that's where you need to go. And so that would have been, actually, I think we got to the parsonage July 4th 2021, I think is when we moved to Willow Springs.

Okay. So as you come into Willow Springs, what, where are you at? Where are you at theologically on the Reformed Baptist? At that point, you were a Reformed Baptist, like confessional or just, yeah, yeah.

And Probably had six points to my Calvinism.

By that point.

Yeah, yeah. Did, was that an issue with the church?

No, actually that was, that was one of the biggest draws for me is they were looking for a Reformed pastor.

Yeah.

They wanted to go in the direction of Reformed theology. And I was, you know, very, very excited about that. You know, your Reformed theology can get you into, you know, a lot of trouble, but it's something that, at least from my standpoint, that you can't, you can't avoid, you can't unsee, and you certainly can't, you know, pastor with one arm behind your back, ignoring the truths of scripture, you know, preaching with, I don't know, without trying to bring forth or trying to avoid, you know, God's sovereignty over all things and salvation and the sufficiency, just all of the, so I knew if I was gonna pastor a church, it would have to be a Reformed church.

Or I wouldn't, you know,.

I would just be causing problems. I wouldn't last, they wouldn't like me. And so that, no, that was one of the things I was most, most excited about. I'd talked to the pastor there before me. I'd reached out to him and, you know, pretty much said like, hey, is this, is this really the direction that they're wanting to go?

Or is it one of these situations where, you know, you've been teaching Reformed theology and they just, they're just taking it, you know, they don't know exactly what it is, but they're seeing the scriptures, you know, so they're not fighting it.

Oh no, you know, I've been teaching clearly on this for, you know, 10 or 12 years, and this is the direction that we want to go. And so they were seeking, you know, Reformed pastors. So from that standpoint, at that point, you know, that seemed just lovely.

Growth, Baptisms, and Early Blessings at Willow Springs

Yeah, well, let me ask you what, so let's talk about the good times. How long would you say that range of the good times were?

Until I moved out of the parsonage. We were there for, let's see, we had a couple really good years. I'll put it this way. Whenever, you know, the rug started to be pulled out from under me, I was blindsided.

So in the time that we're there, the Lord blessed us immensely. You know, when we showed up, I remember, I think it was my oldest daughter said, dad, who are we gonna be friends with? Because there was a couple of families there with young kids, but not many.

And I said, the Lord's gonna bring us some things. So we're gonna pray and he's gonna send them. So she said, okay. And he did, you know, within a few years there, three or four years, you know, we've taken in, I don't know, maybe 20 new families, you know, maybe 60 to 80 people had joined the church.

Lots of young families, lots of babies, you know, young couples, young kids. My kids had friends, great friends for the, you know, for the first time really. So it was just an immense blessing to see, you know, to see that there were people that moved to the area for that church.

I have a dear family with us now that actually moved there from Cape Coral. They were in Fort Myers, members of Haskell's Church there and, you know, cost of living and other things were kind of squeezing on the hurricanes and so forth.

And they found us, came to move, moved to Willow Springs to, you know, to relocate their family around a solid church. And yeah, so, you know, in that few years, in the beginning, you know, from my standpoint, the Lord was blessing, you know, baptisms and

Amen, yeah. You said, did you say 20 families?

Yeah.

That's amazing, that's more families than our church has.

So

It's the most incredible, it was the most terrifying and most unbelievable thing I'd ever seen.

So

Preaching Through Romans, Jonah, 1 John, and 2 Corinthians

So what, so during this time, let's just talk about your ministry for a moment. Like, what are you preaching through? And these families just coming, like, are you doing anything, any kind of special thing, evangelismy thing, or what, what's, what, just talk about that.

What were you preaching through and what

To my shame, I wish I would have been doing more, just, you know, just evangelism, street evangelism, that kind of thing. Sure. There's some, you know, festival there in town that I would rent a booth and hand out tracts and like that kind of thing.

But it's, and you know, in the rural area, cause this is a really small town, you know, 12, I don't know, 2000-ish, I think.

Yeah.

People, and there's no real, there's not a mall, there's not this downtown center where traffic, you can, you know, so it's, there's some walkability, there's a downtown, but anyway, there was some missed opportunity there.

But when I got there, the previous pastor who stayed on, we can get to that, but he had preached through up to Romans 9. So I actually took over at Romans, in Romans 9 on Sovereign Election, my first day in the pulpit, that's what I preached on.

The only time in my life that I really didn't want to clap during the sermon was on that. And so it was like this, well, yeah, I know, warm welcome and like, wow, you know, just a great thing. But so preached through Romans, and I think I went through, I went back to the book of Jonah, went through 1 John, and it was about eight or nine, I think I just finished up chapter eight, chapter nine of 2 Corinthians, maybe.

So just preaching verse by verse, which there's two chapters on giving, I didn't think about that. Maybe there's something to that. So preached two chapters on tithing, and then the pastor's gone.

Yeah, so he had a couple of verses. Yeah, so things are going well, and you, families are adding. I mean, that's amazing. The Lord's working. Any, so you said earlier that you're blindsided, and we'll get to that in just a minute, but like, anything, any inclination, anything's wrong at this point?

Not to any degree, you know, there would be, I think up to that point, the only critiques I'd gotten that were, you know, kind of alarm, maybe not alarm, just negative, you know, the feedback that you get where you're like, well, you can tell this person's not real excited about me, was just how long I was preaching.

Complaints About Sermon Length and the Parsonage Move

Yeah, how long was that, by the way?

You know, just usually about 40, 45 minutes.

Oh, my.

But then it was like, you know, 52, 55, you know, and so it would kind of, but I just, you know, I got ate up about that a little bit, and one of the hardest things, you know, one of the moments that like sticks out that just broke my heart was not, it was, a man came in that I had a good relationship with, and, you know, loved the man otherwise, and still do, but he just let me have it because of how long the preaching was, and, you know, that was conference preaching, he called it, I think, that needed to be done somewhere else.

What year is this, when this man comes in?

This probably would have been 23, maybe.

Okay, so you've been there a couple of years before.

Yeah, it's probably like right in the middle.

So just help me, just so we're clear, you're preaching, families are joining, the church is growing, and the complaint is you're preaching too long?

Preaching too long.

Wow, I mean, I'm just, it just baffles me, brother. I mean, you know, like if you're preaching, I don't know what the time would be. Maybe if you're preaching an hour and a half or something, or two hours, and you've got kids that are just, you know, flailing around or something, I don't know, but goodness, four.

Well, it gets better. The main, you know, the big aggravation of this person was that, you know, all of the fried chicken is sold out at the town and country by the time church is over.

Oh, man.

And, you know, then the wife has to cook, and then, you know, she's mad, and it just really ruins the day.

So let me, I need to ask you this. I forgot to ask you earlier. So you're going into this place. This is, is this still kind of a typical deacon structure? Like one pastor deacon model?

Yeah, so it was kind of strange the way we worked through that. So when I was coming, that was, you know, we had just transitioned to an elder-led church, or we're doing that in the church that I was coming from.

You know, we wrote the constitution, you know, all those kinds of things to make for a plurality of elders. When I'd gotten there, they had basically said like, yes, we're becoming an elder-led church.

They had already, essentially, they'd already selected their elders out of their deacons and were waiting for, you know, me or whoever to come and, you know, rewrite the constitution to allow for that form of church government.

And so then the elders could be, you know, ordained and actually put into office. But it was basically, you know, vetted, selected, and just kind of waiting, you know, waiting for the paperwork to catch up so they can be ordained.

But they were already functioning in that way as elders in every sense of, you know, teaching and leading and those kinds of things. But it was kind of odd, I think, in the way that that went. You know, it seemed like, because they were just a deacon single pastor for a long time and the previous pastor, I think, making the right choice said like, hey, we need to have multiple elders leading the church.

And so it was, but it was just like, you know, you men have been pretty much serving as elders, a lot of you just with the role of deacon. So who, you know, kind of who feels called and some did, some didn't.

And that was like how it worked out. And so I don't know that there was any real vetting in terms of scrutinizing doctrine and those kinds of things. But anyway, that was the situation that we came into.

And so that was something that happened pretty soon too. That was one of the first things we were doing, meeting and adopting a new constitution so we could ordain the elders and put that in place, you know, formally in the church.

The First Signs of Conflict and Moving Out of the Parsonage

Okay, so this, so now you're two years in, she had a couple of complaints. You got the man that can't get the fried chicken in time. So now we're two years in, we're in 2023. Do, I mean, so let's talk about how, do things just keep kind of unraveling or you said earlier, you used the word blindsided.

So let's walk through that.

So around that time, I think is whenever I bought a house, I was wanting to move my family out of the parsonage for multiple reasons. I mean, we were basically sharing a parking lot with the church. And so there's just a lot of traffic to our house.

You know, we homeschool, so my wife's there and it's just real easy for people to pull in and say, oh, you know, you're not doing anything. Can you just let me into the church.

Or help me with this or that?

And so that was one. And then just, you know, you kind of live in a fishbowl anyway, as a pastor and a pastor's family. And so we wanted to have just a little bit of privacy. So I got a cabin and just a tiny bit of land, but it's about 30 minutes away from the church, which in hindsight, you know, maybe that wasn't the best, the best choice, but it wasn't so much it seemed.

The distance, I don't know, there's a few people, one lady in particular was just called me sinful. And, you know, this was just a big stunt. Couldn't believe I was trying to do something like this.

Is this the house you're in right now?

No, no, this was the house that we sold when we had to move. But, you know, like that was just, you know, God didn't call me to, you know, build equity in a home. You know, he called me to teach and just, I don't know.

So anyway, I think that was one of the things that, I think in some people's minds might've been received as me putting a distance between myself and the church. You know, not just like geographically, but like something that maybe communicated that I was, I don't know, that I was putting up a wall or something to that effect maybe.

I, you know, I'll say one thing about pastors and parsonage. I think parsonage are great and they can really be a help, especially, you know, pastors with families and all those sorts of things. But at the same time, it's like, you could pastor somewhere for 40 years and then you're like, you're out, you just retire.

You know, it's not, everything's amicable and you just retire. It's like, but you have no, like, what are you supposed to do? You know, I know of a situation. I think it's kind of a beautiful, I've never heard it before.

The only situation I've ever heard of this before, that is there's a pastor and basically the church can't afford to give him like big raises and stuff. What they do is every year it's written up where he gets another portion of the parsonage, basically a percentage.

And when he's there a certain amount of time, I don't remember how long it is, maybe 20 years, something like that. But basically he will own the parsonage, you know.

That's great.

Yeah.

That's great.

So, but yeah, so that's interesting. I mean, you know, and there's so many rabbit trails we could chase on all this. So I don't wanna do that because I get it. You know, you're reflecting, you're thinking back, well, okay, I moved 30 minutes away and maybe, you know, hindsight rethink some of that, but okay, I know we could run through all that and we could spend a whole episode talking about all that.

Do you feel like your move separated you from the churches? I'm talking about from Jason's perspective, not theirs.

No, you know, from my perspective, it was helpful because I was feeling a bit, you know, just pressed and run down and needed a place where there was some, just some quietness and reprieve. And so I felt like as far as, you know, preaching and seeking the Lord and, you know, being a man that can spend time with God and then go and show God there's people that, that was, that became better there.

You know, I don't know if that makes, if that'll make sense to everybody, but for the pastor, you know, if you're unable to, you know, commune with God and spend time with the Lord and study and just to seek him without distraction, I feel like you can't do that.

Then there's not really a whole lot that you can do for your people if we're showing Christ to them. And so I felt like I was able to do that better there, but, you know, this was, you know, traditional, you know, kind of small town Southern Baptist church and the pastor is still kind of thought of, I think is the, the one who would do everything.

Yeah.

Because it was that model for, you know, for a long time and the previous pastor before me, I think he, he did. I think that's one of the reasons he was, he was run so ragged, you know, when I, when I got there was because of that.

And so seeing something different and not understanding as well, and this is probably on me, you know, the function of a plurality of elders and what that looks like in the life of the church, you know, they're still looking at, well, yeah, but you're the guy that we pay.

So you have to do all these, all these, all these things. But when we've got, you know, we had eight elders, I think. And so it's like, there's, there's plenty, plenty there to, to take care of everything that, you know, within the flock that needed to be taken care of, you know, that lived near the pockets of people.

And we had a pretty wide footprint because people were driving a long way, you know, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour, some of them, you know, some lived in town, you know, to the church. And so, but I think they, they saw that as, you know, reaching duties.

I think a couple of things I'd like to say, like one, pastors are not hirelings, and we got to move away from this idea of you hire a pastor. I mean, a church doesn't hire a pastor, church calls a pastor, God calls a pastor, the church affirms that call.

And the church compensates that pastor so that he can focus on primarily the word, the ministry of the word and prayer.

Prayer and the ministry of the word, yeah.

And so, yeah, we got to move away from that. The second comment I want to make is, I'll just briefly mention, you know, a situation up here, but it's oftentimes that things like this actually serve as a catalyst for exposing some things that are kind of underneath the surface.

Sounds like what happened for here, it was moving in a different direction with music, with, we had a lady that was leading in music ministry, and we just, I and a couple of others came under this conviction, like this is, this is not the right way, you know, this is ultimately a violation of 1 Timothy 2, 12, you have someone leading, and so when we went a different direction, there was some problem with that, but really with some people, but really what happened is it exposed some things that are happening underneath the surface.

So it's kind of, I mean, was that, is that a?

Oh, yeah, no, I think, I think absolutely, absolutely, that's what it, that's what it did. I mean, it just kind of, you know, it was, you know, as Bodie might've said, a fault line, you know, that began to spread and that, I think that though, you know, by me, by me doing that, I think it gave a voice to those other kind of hidden critiques and complaints that were there.

Now there was a reason, a valid reason that someone could make a formal, you know, complaint against me, you know, now it's like he's, we gave him this parsonage and, you know, we thought he was going to stay there, you know, but he, but he moved and now he wants compensation instead of just, you know, being able to live in a house for free.