James’ Story, Part Two
James’ Story continues with Part Two. James alleges that CFC leadership is not only legalistic and dysfunctional but that Rick Sinclair makes claims that are demonstrably false.
Read Part One here.
My wife, Britny, and I had already taken part in several meetings with leadership that each lasted hours and really resolved little to nothing. The leaders always seemed to find a reason not to resolve the issues. It was either “we can’t talk about this because so and so isn’t here” or “we can’t talk about this because so and so is here and we don’t want to widen the circle of offense.”
The meetings were frustratingly stifled and felt increasingly pointless. We had already not been allowed to lead worship for several months. We had already been told not to talk with members about why we weren’t leading worship. We had already watched the leadership give a phony story to the congregation about a “summer of guest ministry, YAY!” to explain away why we weren’t up there leading worship.
I was already dealing with awkward moments running into people from church. “Hey, why haven’t we seen you up there? How much longer?” It was beginning to torment our souls trying to keep putting on the act like everything was fine and at the same time hold out hope that we would resolve whatever the problems were. We were both tired. But we had hope that somehow this one last meeting would resolve things. I sent a few messages to some friends before the meeting asking for prayer.
At this meeting, we sat with Mike Tomford and Rick Sinclair and tried to work through the problems that they had with us. There’s much I could say about this meeting, but one thing proved to be a real game-changer.
Toward the end of the meeting my wife and I were talking about the fact that we still didn’t trust Bob Dale because of some things that he had done to us and others, lies he had been caught in, and the manipulative tactics he had used. Their response? We were simply told by Rick Sinclair: “If you can’t trust him then you’ll just have to find another church.”
Again, this was not an option. We love these people. We loved our Pastor Mike Tomford. But we were just struggling with this one elder and we knew that many others in the church were as well. I tried to explain to them that for years, individuals have left because of things he’d said, that many people had complained to me and Britny about his actions and attitudes but in response, I was quickly cut off by Rick Sinclair, “Nobody else is saying that to us. We’ve asked all of these people and they all esteem him. No one else has a problem trusting him.” My wife and I were shocked. Nobody else has a problem with him?
I then mentioned four individuals by name who had stated within the previous week that they didn’t trust this man, and Rick quickly responded, telling me that all of those people have said great things about Bob and have told him that they do trust Bob. According to Rick, we were the only ones still struggling with trusting this man and that we needed to get over it or leave.
My wife lost it. She burst into tears because rather than believe that the leadership was lying to her, or that our friends were lying to us, she assumed that she must be crazy to imagine that they feel this way. She questioned her own sanity. Here’s a direct quote from the blog where she describes it:
We specify: “Were they saying people DID trust this man?”
They specify: “You two are the only ones expressing that you don’t trust *elder*. Everyone else we’ve spoken to has told us they have confidence in him.”I couldn’t take it anymore. I’m sobbing. Rocking. I don’t know everything I said but I do, unfortunately, remember whispering Jesus’s name over and over. Trying to breathe. Rocking.
Not me. I grabbed my phone and fired off this message in a group chat to the four individuals that had told us they did not trust Bob, the same four individuals that Rick Sinclair assured us did trust Bob Dale.
These friends didn’t miss a beat. They said that it wasn’t true and that they were confused by Rick’s claims as well. At least two of them called Mike Tomford and asked him why he and Rick were telling us this.
I was home after the meeting, still trying to process what had just taken place when I got a phone call from Mike Tomford. It was a conference call with him and Rick Sinclair, both upset that I had messaged those friends, and ready to rebuke me for not trusting them. I was done playing nice because this was a lie. The people they lied about confirmed that they were lying, and they were mad at me for not trusting them…when they lied?!
No, I needed answers. I DEMANDED answers. Somehow, I still believed that Rick Sinclair was too good of a man to just outright lie. Surely there must be some explanation for this? Even if I couldn’t imagine it, he couldn’t have lied to me so there must be an explanation that will make sense of how what he did was not a lie.
So I asked him right there on the phone with Mike listening: “Pastor Rick, I know that you aren’t a liar. I know you’re a good man and I trust you, but please help me understand how what you told me isn’t a lie? Make sense of it. I’m sure you can explain it, I want to hear your explanation. Please tell me?”
He assured me, “James, I promise you, I assure you, I didn’t lie to you. Please just give me a minute and I’ll, I’ll explain in full how I didn’t lie.” So I sat and waited. He fumbled through some words and then said that he couldn’t do it over the phone but would be glad to explain it all to me…at another meeting. I naively accepted this proposal because I desperately wanted to believe that he wouldn’t lie to me like that. A meeting was scheduled for September 16th, 2021, almost sixty days away.
This meeting was going to be different, I was sure of it. This meeting would solve things. This meeting would restore my trust in Rick Sinclair and CFC leadership. I imagined myself laughing at the fact that I ever thought he’d lied to me. He would make sense of it all and I would apologize for ever THINKING such a thing and we could move forward with this, right?
We had one request, though: we wanted to have at least one person present who wasn’t part of the eldership: a neutral witness. We got two people, two of the people who Rick had lied about at the first meeting. Two of the people who also wanted an explanation for why Rick Sinclair said that they said that they trusted Bob Dale when they had made it abundantly clear to him that they did not.
This was the day my eyes were opened to something that I didn’t want to see.
After a lot of confusing word salad, attempted gaslighting, and question-dodging I finally just said, “Pastor Rick, you promised me on the phone that you would make sense of how you didn’t lie to me. We still haven’t even talked about that. Can we please talk about that now?”
He said, “Oh yes, that…” and that was the moment where the scales fell from my eyes. I watched as this man did mental gymnastics with both the effort and the elegance of a morbidly obese seal on a treadmill, to desperately try to make sense of how him telling me something that he knew wasn’t true, was not in fact lying.
As I pressed more and held his feet to the fire it became abundantly clear. Rick is just a man. He’s just a man with gifting and charisma and too much power who isn’t used to being questioned. It came down to: “I wasn’t lying because I don’t lie and why would I lie about that?” and then finally he settled on “I never actually claimed that they trust him. You misunderstood me. You’re putting words in my mouth.”
At the end of the day, he asserted that whether or not he lied, the real problem was that we didn’t trust the leadership so we should just go to another church. Britny and I felt that since we couldn’t resolve it with them our next step was to bring the whole situation before the congregation as Matthew 18 teaches, but we were denied this.
We finally just agreed to leave, at least temporarily. I decided that as much as I love these people, I couldn’t support this institution anymore. It had too much power, and that power would be abused if nothing was done to correct it. I had made my case over and over and the leadership expressed no desire to fix it. I lost count of the times I was told “nobody else is saying that” or “we’re not hearing that from anyone else”.
And I had just watched Rick Sinclair demonstrate that he has no problem lying even when it’s painfully obvious he is lying. We had visited a few churches, but we didn’t know what we were going to do yet. We were in the middle of moving houses and had a lot to figure out. One day, Mike Tomford asked if he could stop by my work on my lunch break and talk. I agreed and messaged some friends to pray.
In this meeting (that I recorded for memory’s sake) Mike informed me of several things. First, the church was no longer going to pay me for the part-time work I did for them. That work included constructing the Directory, building and maintaining the website, and a few other social media-related things. I assured him that I would have no problem being professional and continuing to do this work for them, but he said it would be too awkward. He decided that he would pay me until December but that I was done.
Second, Britny and I were no longer allowed to serve at the Gouverneur Food Pantry that was started by RCF Members, until we were under a pastor that they trusted, who they could check in with regularly. I assured him that this was a bad idea, that it was a double standard not applied to anyone else working at the Food Pantry and that it might push Britny over the edge. We still hadn’t said anything public about this (Britny writes about this meeting here).
We were making an effort to leave as peacefully as possible and if there was any hope of us reconciling with CFC leadership it was going to be through serving at the Food Pantry. He seemed to agree, but weeks later, the Director of the Food Pantry, and a close friend of ours, was informed that Britny was not allowed to help at the Food Pantry. She refused to enforce this rule and ended up stepping down from her position with the Food Pantry in protest.
People were asking questions. People were confused about why they weren’t seeing us on Sundays. We knew that people would really be confused if suddenly the Director of the Food Pantry stepped down and we were no longer there.
Britny and I felt like some kind of public explanation was warranted, which is what led to her sharing her first blog post, a blog that led to a meeting at RCF that someone recorded for us, where leadership exaggerated Britny’s feelings, minimized their part, and claimed that we were both just being “bitter,” particularly Britny.
For example, my father, an elder at RCF, stated in the recording:
“First of all you should know 100% that Pastor Mike, Pastor Rick, Bob, and I were all at these meetings” and that “little mistakes were made that were blown out of proportion. It’s not even in the same universe. It’s not even close. This is my daughter-in-law, this is my son, and I can tell you for sure, everything was done right. I can honestly tell you that. Yes there were mistakes, yes there was repentance, but that's not even comparable to the bitterness that is being shown.”
Bob Dale warned the congregation about things Britny was sharing on Facebook:
“Whatever you see in the midst of this, one of the things that happen when people become embittered is many people become defiled. When people become embittered they start to make general statements.”
While they stated that “James and Britny are not our enemies” they made it clear that we were giving the devil an opportunity to hamper the gospel work: “people are coming and when things like that are happening, who’s gonna get involved but the devil.”
Britny was cast as an offended bitter woman and a tool of Satan, instead of someone who simply told the truth about why she was no longer allowed to serve at the food pantry. We weren’t informed of this meeting or given the opportunity to be a part. That meeting led to both of us speaking up more. Since then, we’ve both learned that what we experienced isn’t really unique at all.
To those who’ve messaged me and Britny privately since we spoke up, to those who’ve spoken up yourselves, to those who started CFCtoo, to those who’ve shared your story with CFCtoo: thank you. The time has come and CFC is reaping what they’ve sown.
To all of the people who I begged to stay at CFC-controlled churches when you wanted to leave: I was wrong, I’m sorry, and I love you.
To all of the people I invited to CFC and I’m “the reason you’re there”? I was wrong, I’m sorry, and I love you.
To all of the people who I didn’t believe for years or even decades, I was wrong, I’m sorry, and I love you.
To all of the people upset that I’m using the title of a Derek Webb song and haven’t given him credit yet? Well, there ya go.
