Is This Really Happening?

Rick Altman was the first one to tell me that I was being “groomed” as Trinity’s next senior pastor. This was so out of order in so many ways that at first I couldn’t even believe that he was saying it. After overcoming the initial shock, I approached Don Smith on the basis of not having a very good feeling about Rick and wanting to know why he had been placed on staff in such a hurry. I was hoping for a discussion between the senior pastor and his newly appointed associate about the improprieties that seemed to be gathering around the new hire, but among Don’s many shortcomings was his complete state of denial. While I did not—at this early stage of our working relationship—tell him verbatim what Rick had told me, I wondered if he nevertheless sensed something because he was very deliberate in telling me that he planned to retire from Trinity. My next course of action was to approach Preston Howard as chairperson of the S-PRC to express my concern. Preston surprised me in a couple of different ways. First, he said that the S-PRC had also not been comfortable with Rick’s being hired so suddenly but that Smith was so uncharacteristically insistent upon it being done that the committee acceded. Secondly, and far more surprising to me, was Preston’s matter-of-fact statement that Rick was probably just repeating what he had already heard: that the S-PRC was unhappy with Don’s leadership (or lack thereof) and that when I was interviewed weeks earlier it was with an eye to me as his replacement. I was beginning to realize that this Las Vegas church had become so estranged from the Annual Conference and the General UM Church as to have lost touch with reality.