Mar 26, 2009

The Covenant Stories #3: Kenny

---Memories of Kenny:

Kenny waving and rushing over to meet us the first time we walked into the Duckblind Lounge.

Staring at Kenny’s fascinating sermon notes after worship on Sundays. Even his notes were a work of art.

Kenny on the blanket with the kids. Tousling their hair and telling them how much God loved them.

Kenny looking up and smiling at me from the floor of his man cave, a converted garage with a big screen tv and killer stereo. His pens and rulers and drawing tools scattered around him.

Kenny holding his hand up and telling me that when he was in the writing zone, his fingers smelled like smoke.

Communion night at youth camp. A group of kids in the back needed bread. Kenny heaving a loaf like a football. He had a pretty good arm.

Kenny showing me his diary from the hospital after his divorce. In it he had written about his dream to start a church with a blanket for the kids to sit on.

Kenny telling the church he couldn’t do this anymore. The tears. Even the eyes of men who did not cry were glistening.

Yes, Kenny was a charmer. No doubt about that. He held the church together with the force of his personality and with his energy. He was 43, his daughter lived with his first wife, and he was a workaholic. He had all the time in the world. And there was no limit to what he would do for the church. Every person at Covenant Baptist Church got handwritten letters from him. Kenny regularly dropped by the offices and workplaces of members. "I was just in the neighborhood." He pulled people aside and told them how important they were to the church and to him. He worked behind the scenes to make sure there was enough money. Kenny here, Kenny there, Kenny everywhere.

In 1990 the church asked me to be the associate pastor and youth minister. Part time. $250 a month. I was Kenny’s sidekick. I was in my late 20s and completely charmed by Kenny and the quirky little church that wanted to be authentic. Kenny said the church should be like the bar on Cheers, a place where everyone knew your name. We certainly had the bar. How intimate we were would remain to be seen.

I was happy to hitch my wagon to this creative star and go wherever we were going with this church experiment. We met in his “man cave” at least two nights a week. I sometimes stayed until 1 or 2 in the morning. We watched movies and laughed. Lord, we laughed a lot. Kenny was smart and hilarious and insanely creative. We were the ministers of the coolest church EVER. Kenny ran the show, and I did whatever he needed me to do. I loved it and gave no thought to the future. It was absolutely wonderful for about 18 months.

It all started unraveling in 1992. Kenny became withdrawn. His personality changed. He sank into a deep depression. One Saturday night he called me in a panic. He couldn’t go to church the next morning. He just couldn’t. Could I throw something together, preach, and run the service? I gulped, terrified. But I did whatever Kenny needed me to do. So okay. A few weeks later I showed up at his house and found him in tears. He told me that he couldn’t go on being the pastor. He was leaving Covenant. I was broken-hearted. I couldn’t imagine the church without Kenny. This makes sense to me now because there was no church without Kenny. That was Covenant Baptist Church’s greatest weakness. We were made in the image of Kenny. I begged him to stay. I couldn’t bear the thought of going back to a “traditional church.”

“I can’t do it,” he said, hanging his head and weeping. In that moment a change occurred. I remember looking at him and thinking that perhaps it was time for me to take care of Kenny. I tried to be strong. I told him to leave if he needed to. We would carry on without him. In my heart I didn’t believe that we could.

The next Sunday morning Kenny told the church he was leaving. I remember his exact words: “I just can’t do this anymore.” That was Kenny’s last Sunday. He never came back. He didn’t return phone calls. He disappeared into his house, pulled down the shades, and wouldn’t come out. People were grief-stricken and confused. I was the associate minister so they assumed I knew what was happening. People peppered me with questions. Where is Kenny? Why doesn’t he return my calls? Did something terrible happen? Is he okay? I had no good answers. Some people wanted to know if Kenny was coming back. Would he return for a month or so to transition out of his role as pastor? Would we ever see him again? “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. But It doesn’t look like it.”

One third of the church never returned after Kenny left. His last Sunday was their last Sunday. There were empty chairs all around the Duckblind Lounge. Another third of the church trickled away over the next year or so. It seemed like every time a new family would find us, one of the old families would pull me aside and say they were going away. It was a strange, parallel process. Like Kenny, they just couldn’t do it anymore.

Every family that left was a personal blow to me. Every last conversation was like a punch in the stomach. I could feel our church slipping away. If too many families left, we wouldn’t be able to pay the rent at the Duckblind Lounge. The stress was enormous. I felt like I had to hold this thing together. Our phone would ring and I thought it might be another family telling me they were leaving. My stomach would churn. I came to hate the sound of the phone.

The church had to find a new pastor. But Covenant Baptist Church had no institutional memory to help us. We had never tried to find a pastor before. In the interim I tried to preach like Kenny. I wrote letters to the church like Kenny. I did everything just the way that Kenny did it. I tried to keep things going as smoothly as possible.

But of course, there can only be one Kenny. So we had to learn a hard and painful lesson. It is a dangerous thing to build a church around the personality of a minister. When that minister leaves - and of course he or she eventually will - the foundation of the church, wrongly formed, cracks and breaks. The church will have to make major system changes. And no human system wants to change. People within a system will actively work against change if they can.

Covenant Baptist Church needed a new foundation. We had to find one or die. This is one reason so many new churches do not make it. They can’t survive the departure of their first pastor.

Gordon Atkinson

All images created by Kenny Wood. Click for a larger view.