David Trotter wrote Lost + Found: Finding Myself by Getting lost in a Affair. I’ve finished the first chapter, it starts with background and positioning. I now understand how he felt about his job as founding pastor of the Revolution Church, and about his emotionally distant marriage. It’s interesting that many of the traits Trotter recalls are the same traits that drive pastors to abuse power, children, women, or, as in the stories circulating around Pastor Eddie Jones, young men.
Trotter was involved in all aspects of the running of his church. It was “his church”. Every aspect was something he cared about and apparently micromanaged. Typical management techniques, like division of labor, fiduciary and behavioral safeguards, professional management, even old school (but necessary) role power based command structures, are not mentioned. Which is a shame since these are the techniques we use to solve the business problems he complains about. For a man who claims to be slowly dying under the pressure of a job he no longer finds appealing, his words appear as an excuse to justify his future excesses.
He mentioned the pastor from El Dorado Park Community Church, I know the pastor. I’ve played disc golf with him a few times and have crossed paths with him at a few social events. I know him for what he is, an authoritarian who’s disconnected from the needs of his parishioners (I still know a bunch of these people too), and a man who chewed up a good youth pastor I know (and play disc golf with), not to mention his rocky relationship with another pastor who I mentor. Ah good times. It is truly a small world.
I will read Trotter’s book, but I’m already asking, “Who was this written for, and why?”
