| was eating dinner with a friend one year ago | when he told me what had just happened in his church on the West coast. People had been upset with the pastor and wanted to get rid of him. They called a special meeting, and one by one, they publicly stood up and told all the reasons they didn't like him and his performance. Sitting in the congregation listening to all this was the pastor's eleven-year-old son and, of course, his wife.

The image of this story stayed in my mind for months. How could something so cruel and thoughtless happen in a church? What would this do to the pastor and, perhaps more important, to his son? Fifty years from now, that son will probably still be scarred. Other men in other professions may get fired, but seldom with such exquisite humilia

tion, and certainly not in front of their own families. This is just one of many horror stories I've heard the past two years while working on LEADERSHIP. Reading the articles pastors and others in ministry have sent to us ...