Explanations + Documentation
1. Pastor James’ Repentance statements since January 2019.
2. Protective Order, March 4, 2020
2a. Settlement Confidentiality Provision, August 14, 2020
3. Harvest Bible Chapel was not in decline in 2017–early 2019.
- Easter at Sears Center/Summer Revival – the highest-impact events in the history of HBC
- Act Like Men was growing and flourishing among HBC men
- Vertical Worship was growing and having world wide impact
- Walk in the Word was the number 3 program on Trinity Broadcast Network (unprecedented growth in 4 years)
- Walk in the Word digital relaunch would reach 70% of the audience for 30% of cost
- HBC wins best Christian Workplace in November 2018 (based on anonymous staff survey)
- Elders affirm Pastor James’ leadership/character in December 2018
- Closer Campaign brought $27+ million in pledges (50% toward mortgage reduction)
- The 40 Mighty Men campaign had $20 million in remaining pledges
- Attendance in 2018 remained steady between 11 and 12k
- HBC was refocusing on discipleship; moving away from filmmaking and other distractions
4. Underlying Tensions
[link to?]
5. HBC’s Disparaging Statements
[JM annotated docs]
6. Our Silence
Many have asked why we have waited so long to speak out what we have only alluded to. There are 2 main reasons:
a. We were forced to.
Our pension (fully and legally vested, which HBC staff conspired to steal) and more than 100 personal belongings were held from us until Winter 2020, as leverage to force our submission to the WITW seizures. My library and sermon notes were returned in June 2019 by Eddie Hoagland; half of our personal belongings were returned in Winter 2019 by arbitrator mandate and the remainder only after settlement, with a surprising list of items (firearms licensed to me, 10 drawers of my office files, missing WITW production items, etc.) still outstanding.
We didn’t want to destroy the church and began down a road of silence until our possessions were given back, our ministry was returned to us and we actually got to the bottom of what happened and who was responsible which was very difficult and costly to discern. The arbitration cost 1 million dollars and forced our home into to foreclosure. Please note, the settlement from the insurance company was not for the funds HBC stole from WITW, it was for defamation. (irrefutable evidence that the church falsely characterized and maligned us). Anyone who understands insurance companies knows, they paid what they did in settlement only because they believed the panel ruling would cost them more.A secular company admitting what the Elders still refuse to confess.Sad.
b. Confidentiality Provisions.
We have only ever wanted the truth to come out. HBC waited 7 months after us to join the arbitration, we never wanted but were forced into when they cancelled the settlement. In that time they plotted the November DQ and Wagenmaker report, as a way to intimidate me and break my resolve to seek a legal remedy for their unlawful actions. The ICC rules prescribe confidentiality during the arbitration and I insisted the language be tightened until the hearing was completed. As part of the settlement HBC fought to include a gag order but we refused. This week when the long awaited Elder meeting failed to produce anything of merit, HBC attorney Kevin Toad, filed a motion to keep me from speaking in public. This they did even though the settlement says, after 8 weeks if no mutual statement can be reached each side is free to tell their own story, “without restriction.”
Then they filed an emergency gag order to force my silence, then they wrote a threatening letter out of the blue claiming that my Deferred Comp Agreement, (DCA) was improperly distributed and that they would be issuing a 2020, W2 to me.
7. Access Blocked
8. Concern for the church
JANUARY 11, 2019 – Repentance/resignation statement to EC
“I am not stubbornly holding onto my role as Senior pastor of Harvest Bible Chapel because I don’t see my flaws or sin. I have offered my resignation to the Executive Committee of the Elders many times even hoping they would accept it. I remain in my position not because it offers something I feel I must retain, but for 3 reasons: 1) I have not wanted to yield to the accusations that are false thereby appearing to affirm them. 2) We love the people of Harvest Bible Chapel who have given us much grace and remain committed to growing together in love. 3) The size of the churches mortgage in 2007, is almost entirely my fault and I feel responsible to remain, and ensure that it is paid off completely. …
To any and all currently estranged from me and or Harvest Bible Chapel, I am very sorry for my role in your leaving, and any action taken or anger toward you that involved me personally, and I believe many of you know I would love an opportunity to hear you fully and to ask your forgiveness face to face in private.”
JULY 3, 2019 – email to elders
“Thank you for undertaking such a difficult task for the Lord and for Harvest – i am very aware that unlike me, you did nothing to contribute to the mess you inherited. But please consider more carefully who you are listening to … Even if the “captain” truly had to go – the truth is never learned by talking to the pirates that made him walk the plank is it? – And the congregation is better served by obvious Elder objectivity and disinterest in the rabble. …
Is there humility among the current Harvest Elders. Is there any sense that maybe those who proceeded you have wronged us and the church in ways you may not have understood? …
There is zero reason to waste God’s money on arbitration, but genuine oversight in my view needs to attempt understanding what is concealed versus your May 1 debut of beating the drum handed you and widening the gap of offense significantly. The focus needs to become doing what is right and trusting God with the outcomes rather than defending the indefensible – a foundational principle in a Vertical Church.”
9. 2018 Capin Crouse Audit
10. Frequently Warned
May 29, 2019 – email to Elders from lay leaders
June 11, 2019 – email to Elders from lay leaders
July 3, 2019 – email to Elders from Pastor James
December 8, 2019 – email to Elders from Pastor James
November 21, 2019 – email to Elders from
Jim Dvoratchek
11. Over and Over
[JM copy]
12. Leverage for Arbitration
[DB supporting docs]
13. Efforts to Connect
July 3, 2019 – excerpt from email to Elders
“There is much more on the subject of my failings i would gladly confess in person and have so long sought that opportunity without response that at times i have despaired.
Understandable Hesitance
Your apparent reluctance to seek out significant responsibility elsewhere in this relational disaster, is understandable given the consequences if that turns out to be true. But time only accumulates consequence to the church you are called to protect, thus my strenuous and at times too shrill (please forgive me) efforts to meet as brothers in Christ and consider the best interest of Harvest and all concerned.”
November 8, 2019 – excerpt from email to Elders
“Given these multiple expressions of repentance, I am confused and grieved by the Elders’ decision to draft the November 2, 2019, letter and to disseminate it publicly. I know you to be men who love the Word of God, yet all biblical texts on offense resolution and public rebuke (including the 1 Timothy 5 passage you have leaned upon) include the presence of the accused. Why then am I publicly rebuked for sins I have already confessed? Why am I publicly rebuked for distortions and misunderstandings that face-to-face brotherly conversation might resolve?
Such a dialogue might have answered many residual questions: why we spent money as we did; who gave the approvals; how generous gifts were funded; why some thought a gift was personal; who approved those decisions; how we viewed fundraising expenses; how much we raised; why we expressed generosity in honoring others. Even if we remained with different convictions in these matters, we might have realized that there was no ungodly intent. There could have been a more grace-filled view of our differences.
My insistent appeals, in an effort to reach resolution before arbitration regarding certain more personal matters, are now used as evidence that my repentance is insincere. I believe that view is unfair. I remained in silence through every Elder action of winter, spring, and summer because I recognized my role in past conflict and have offered my silence, waiting, and private appeals as a fruit of repentance.
The other biblical fruits of repentance are open confession of sin, absence of rationalization, and restitution—each of which I seek to express more fully but cannot complete in isolation from those you have now mandated not to speak to me. Given my isolation and the aforementioned confessions not being read to the congregation or posted to the Harvest website, it seems I am left without remedy for what appear to be preferred conclusions.
What was hardest to hear in your weekend words was the offer to meet, given my awareness of how unresponsive you have been to all my appeals.”
Vanlaningham & Rydelnik texts
15. Intellectual Property Agreements
1996 Elder Board Minutes
2006 Elder Board Statement
2007 IP Agreement
2008 Elder Board Minutes
2015 Executive Committee Covenant of Commitments
2017 Compensation Committee Memo of Understanding
16. Reimbursement Ledger and Checks
Fired for Faithfulness
Post Firing Investigations
Documents produced in discovery show that HBC Staff leaders knew before Easter 2019, that the letters used to divide the Elder board and force my firing were riddled with inaccuracies. LINK TO THOSE DOCUMENTS DOUG HAS THEM
Elders Warned
October 19, in person, october letter to cp, date, during settlement when we refused demands for total gag order in the settlement, “we will never agree, not for any amount of money to hide and cover your sins against our family our church family and against WITW”
Refused
Show the texts from with Michael Rydelnick and Michael Vanlaningham, also the requests sent to paul inserra and others with no response but we have to block those names out.
Full Gospel Resolution
Explain the reason why taking a person to court is part of Gods provision for a just resolution when the matter is big enough
Let it roll off your back
- Roll it off to God in prayer.
- Go to the person.
- When the matter is too significant for Elders to judge or to turn the other cheek, pursue a just resolution through God’s established authorities: the police in criminal matters; the judicial system in civil matters.
May 1 Elder Board
Trying to meet with them, insert here a summary of efforts to meet and refusals, ignoring of letters from me, chris clark and Lankford, pleading in November, ignored, then finally offered last minute stipulating that the false financial statements could not even be brought up. Then much later offered to meet in late May 2020 but only by zoom. Brian Laird declared, (show texts) that I could say whatever I wanted, and that they had no agenda except to listen. However when I finished re-expressing the repentance they had witheld from Harvest members, they shut the meeting down allowing no presentation yet again of financial evidence to contradict their false assertions.
Stared blankly at ledgers of reimbursement, pages of canceled checks, (the bible thumper when I held out the evidence, barked, “I don’t wanna see it.”) Truly dug in and evidencing their novice status as Elders. These men were specifically chosen by the now fired Greg Bradshaw, as having their mandated trifecta, 1) never met or socialized with James 2) never been an Elder at Harvest before 3) little to no experience in any Elder capacity anywhere. With that action, HBC drove over a cliff, putting 400 years of collective Eldership out to pasture, and beginning in ernest with maybe 6 years between them.
Arbitration Documents
The documents produced in discovery, 109,000 in total, were mainly repetitive document dumps from HBC. HBC brought only 60 documents to the arbitration, while we utilized more than 300 documents in making our case so persuasively that HBC did what they said they would not do, settled. The primary reason being their reasonable fear than the panel would award us a great deal more. For us it was never about the settlement, it became about refuting the lies HBC staff and leaders told the congregation we loved, and the Walk in the Word audience we now call our family.
Small Group of Staff and former Staff/Elders
Greg Bradshaw:
Mo Zachariah:
Dallas Jenkins: Refused to be deposed (appear in advance to be questioned to establish his testimony) and refused to produce any documents in discovery, (ie. all his emails and texts with a particular person). Still, (suprising to noone who knows him, Dallas appeared as a witness, and was labeled an “obstructionist” by the arbitration panel, meaning all present recognized that he was testifying as a person who did not want the truth to come out. (for obvious reasons). Despite producing no documents as evidence Dallas managed to perjure himself multiple times, claiming that he only labored “to bring the truth to light,” until we showed the email he sent to his “termination team” as they came to be called. In that email, Dallas congratulated his team members “the MacDonald’s are gone, the EC is on the way out, our goals have been accomplished.” Additionally, Dallas claimed he had no recurring porn problem nor was ever confronted for viewing porn at work, until his wife’s book was shown to the panel where she wrote the opposite “with his permission,” a true liar, exposing himself over and over. Dallas claimed too that … ASK DOUG.