This is a difficult story to tell because it’s complicated. I didn’t spend 17 years actively pursuing a ministry career at Healing Place Church. In actuality, I had competing priorities; things like work, college, touring, my overall health, personal life and a number of personal tragedies all vying for my attention. There were periods during which I was highly focused on Healing Place, but this was somewhat sporadic. If my singular focus in life had been to develop a ministry platform, I either would have found a way to make it work at HPC, or I would have moved on.
I was way more concerned about “meeting the one” and getting married than I was about anything else in life, period. Anyone who knew me in my teens and 20s could attest to this. I guess I would have to attribute my unusual preoccupation with romantic love to being a product of divorce.
The effects of my parents’ split lie dormant in my heart for 5 years or so until I entered my teens and started dating. Once I began to experience rejection, betrayal and abandonment in the context of teenage relationships, depression set in. That is, real, soul-crushing clinical depression.
I didn't realize it at the time, but growing up with a father like mine had left a profound void within me. When I began dating as a teenager, I got my first taste of validation; the kind you can only get when you find out your attraction to someone else is mutual.
Wonderful as it may be, I tried to stuff this pseudo love into the void that real, unconditional love is supposed to fill. This futility defined my life as a teenager and twenty-something.
I also wanted to make enough money to afford the type of lifestyle I desired. I was flexible on how I would accomplish this. Be it secular entertainment or ministry, I would have been fine either way. I think that my indecision on this matter played a crucial role in how I got stuck in HPC limbo.
I allowed general Christian hypocrisy and borderline schizophrenia regarding secular entertainment to really cloud my judgment. We have a real problem in the body of Christ with some people condemning others' behavior based on personal bias.
This is particularly bad when we elevate certain people as leaders over the rest of us. It seems that a leader is given leeway to lead with his or her personality, as opposed to a set of guiding principles that we can all agree on. If you gel with this type of leader, every day is Christmas. If you don't, well...
You may be reading this and thinking that I’m blowing things out of proportion. Look around you and I guarantee there are people whom you love that can relate to what I’m saying. In the end, there are only two things that I hope will happen as a result of this blog series. I want people to read, and I want people to care. I can’t make you do either.
I said previously that I would elaborate on several key concepts that I'd floated in earlier posts, including:
- Absolute power
- Favoritism
- Misappropriation
- My own emotional baggage and how it contributed to my problems at HPC
I would like to tackle the first of these now.
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." -John Dalberg-Acton
Throughout my long years in ministry at Healing Place Church, there was a pattern of leaders crossing the line and acting inappropriately toward a subordinate co-worker or volunteer. Some lost their tempers and abused people while others were sexually inappropriate. Some played favorites with ministry opportunities and positions, while others abused church resources, bestowing luxuries upon themselves and others. In all cases, those in favor with Dino Rizzo received no punitive action whatsoever for these abuses, and those who had been hurt by a leader's actions were invited to leave if they had a problem with how anything was (mis)handled.
There was an atmosphere of unflinching loyalty among Rizzo's appointed leaders. If you were in favor with him, he had your back no matter how badly you abused your position - basically, the opposite of accountability. This was never more evident than when it happened to Rizzo, himself. The appointed presbyters of HPC were brought in to "handle" the whole situation surrounding the affair. One of them found Rizzo's leadership style quite amusing, stating that our pastor, "ran the church like the mafia," and "showed you the door if you didn't like it."
The following is the account (in broad strokes) of how Rizzo's affair with a female staffer was discovered, how it was handled and by whom, according to various members of the staff. This story represents the consistent statements which were independently confirmed by multiple longtime staffers at Healing Place Church. I cannot and would not claim that I know this story to be 100% true - only that which I personally witnessed. However, I wouldn't repeat these things if I did not personally find them credible. This is a story and not a statement of fact. You can believe whatever you want. Now, without further ado:
At some point, a romantic relationship developed between Pastor Rizzo and an unmarried female staffer. There are quite credible details that I've omitted regarding when, how and why this happened. Eventually, Rizzo left his phone some place where it was then picked up by another staffer. This man held on to Rizzo's phone for safe keeping until it could be returned to the pastor. While in possession of Rizzo's phone, this man inadvertently intercepted incriminating text messages from the female staffer involved with Rizzo. This, to me, is where the story actually gets interesting.
The man who had intercepted these messages brought the evidence to the highest authority in the church under the lead pastor. According to sources, the text messages left no doubt as to what was going on. Despite this damning evidence, no one, not even the most powerful associates within Healing Place Church had any authority to take action. The only thing this man had the authority to do was pick up a phone and call in an outside group of overseers. The presbyters, a group of men no doubt appointed by Rizzo himself, were the only ones who had any authority to respond to a lead pastor who had crossed the line.
This team of presbyters consisted of 1) an elder from the good old days of Family Worship Center 2) Rizzo's father-in-law, and 3) a selection of other southern megachurch pastors who very well may find themselves in Rizzo's shoes one day. These people came in, circled the wagons around Rizzo and started making lots of controversial decisions about the fate of the church. The staffers who spoke with me claimed that no one on staff had any say in anything. Over the next several months people were treated flippantly, in some cases stripped of rank and authority, demoted, redistributed or forced out.
To the congregation, a smokescreen. After worship ended one Sunday, I walked off stage and over to the Mission Cafe to eat. I was standing there making small talk with other oblivious churchgoers. Nearby was a monitor with a live feed from inside the sanctuary. There was just something about the somber tone of Rizzo's voice that got my attention. I stopped chatting to listen to what was going on. The next thing I knew, Rizzo announced an unplanned sabbatical effective immediately. He actually talked at length about the reasoning behind his forthcoming leave of absence, all of which turned out to be horse manure.
Afterward, Rizzo walked off stage and the service went on as usual. Most of the details spread like wildfire on local Internet forums, exploited on websites dedicated to shaming Christian leaders. At the first hint of a possible problem, un-churched people who knew absolutely nothing about HPC were able to guess what happened with ease. Everyone’s minds went straight to scandalous affairs and misappropriation of funds. Someone on Team Rizzo purchased space in the newspaper and ran an ad cleverly disguised as a news story whitewashing the whole ordeal.
Our lead pastor was gone for a couple of months or so, and it didn't seem to affect things at all. I remained oblivious to the truth, as none of my allies within the ministry had given me the slightest clue that there was trouble in paradise. I wasn’t brought into the loop until the Saturday evening before Rizzo announced his resignation. That evening, I received a call from a staffer who broke it all down for me. He explained that Rizzo had been caught in an affair, and had been on sabbatical while the situation was dealt with behind the scenes. I got somewhat of a bulleted version of the events, the most notable being that at church the next day, Rizzo was going to confess everything to the congregation and resign.
The only reason I was briefed was because I had been scheduled to be on stage for worship when Rizzo was to address the congregation. The staff didn’t want people to be on stage reacting to the news for the first time. By then, many people had known about the affair for months while I hadn’t had the faintest idea. Again, they were pretty good at keeping people out of the loop. I don't know how you could compartmentalize such a volatile secret, but they managed to do it.
Behind the scenes, the discovery of the affair and the subsequent handling of the crisis by the church's presbyters all had quite a polarizing effect on the staff. During his sabbatical, some staffers supported Rizzo to be immediately reinstated to continue leading the church with full authority. Other staffers refused to cooperate if this took place and were calling for Rizzo's resignation. The presbyters appeared to be there for the pastor's sake, and not to look out for the church's best interest as they had claimed. They seem to have just sat back and let the guilty party make all the decisions. Rizzo got to control the narrative, as well as whether he would face consequences for his actions or simply pull the wool over the congregation's eyes and continue with business as usual.
When the rational portion of the staff resisted Rizzo and the presbyters, this is apparently when Rizzo realized that staying on as lead pastor may not be what he wanted after all. Rizzo had previously told the staff that he would confess his sins and come clean on stage that Sunday. Well, there was no mea culpa. According to insiders, once Rizzo realized that he did not have the full support of his staff, he decided to save as much face as possible. He simply went with an alternative story that would enable him to continue his (very) lucrative ministry career. The presbyters also did a good bit of talking to the congregation, leading to by far the most quotable line of the day. One smug megachurch pastor basically likened our congregation to naive children who just needed to eat their cereal and let "daddy" take care of where it comes from.
Another notable thing was when the presbyters told the congregation that they were going to take care of the Rizzos and "make sure that they never wanted for anything a day in their lives." As the story goes, the pastors continued to take a salary from the church and relocated out of state. Allegedly, while continuing to live off of our tithe and offerings, Rizzo took paid speaking engagements as the charismatic founder of Healing Place Church. The Rizzos sold their home in the upscale residential community, Santa Maria, after listing it for $1.2 MM. You can go digging in public records if you actually care how much they sold it for. I'm just not interested enough to look.
All of the inside information I'm presenting to you has been offered freely by members of the Healing Place staff. Furthermore, all of these matters have been covered in great and scandalous detail by more watchdog type bloggers who seem bent on publicly shaming the Rizzo family and all those involved. Others seem intent on connecting the dots and exposing all of the financial matters that are most likely driving this machine. These people are outsiders. None of them understand truly what it was like to live this particular experience like the staff and volunteers did.
Don't get me wrong. I've said before that when all of this happened, the floodgates were opened and all kinds of backstory came rushing out. This was an incredibly vindicating experience for me, because it validated assertions I'd made for years that would have otherwise been written off as paranoid delusions. Guys like me never had much access to the Rizzos. We didn't have to worry about how to provide for our families if we didn't keep the church overseers happy. I walked out of the church the day Rizzo resigned back in late 2012 and I've never regretted it for a second. I don't harbor any ill will against anyone who stayed. There are good people at Healing Place Church who are committed to reestablishing the ministry as a healing place for a hurting world. However, I don't recognize the crisis we all endured as an excuse to overlook 17 years of being treated as less than in my own home church.
I never quite had the proper vantage point to see clearly the hierarchy that existed at HPC. Emotionally, I was too close to the situation. I had been so caught up in my failure to thrive and my individual conflicts with people that I couldn’t see the bigger picture. Could I see patterns? Absolutely. Favoritism, pride, vanity, lack of accountability among leadership and general misappropriation were rampant. Still, a little distance from the ministry probably would have provided greater objectivity and perspective.
On the other hand, I never got quite close enough to permeate the membrane around the leadership that sealed in all of the most unflattering details. People mostly worshiped the Rizzos. Any dissent that existed within the ministry was overshadowed by a monolith of loyal support. Had there been more transparency regarding the Rizzos’ “leadership style”, I would have stopped holding out hope for fair treatment long before their resignations. As was proven in the end, having the right information would have made walking away a very simple and easy thing to do.
Though I didn’t have a lot of access to the Rizzos, I did have personal relationships with a number of HPC staffers. I heard a lot of testimonials during the honest moments of these relationships that, taken together, told a pretty clear story. During my final years there, as the campuses were consolidated and the Arena opened, I began to work in closer proximity to the Rizzos. Though I saw more, I just didn’t see the obvious. It’s like I was on Wheel of Fortune, and anybody watching at home could easily have solved the puzzle. I had stared at it for so long that I just couldn't see the truth staring back at me.
Wrapping up this discussion about absolute power, I want to underscore my main points:
- To borrow a phrase, the Rizzos and their appointees were "habitual line-steppers" in terms of how they treated their human and financial resources.
- There was only an illusion of accountability within the power structure at Healing Place Church. The "Rizzo Administration" did just about anything they wanted and got away with it. No one within the ministry had any power to check the lead pastors.
- The unending streams of distracting rhetoric and compartmentalization left most of us convinced that the manner in which the Rizzos lived and led was normal and acceptable.
- In the wake of the scandal, those entrusted to enforce boundaries and standards within the ministry appear to have shielded the Rizzos from natural consequences, rewarding them with an even more powerful position and more cushy lifestyle than before.
- The presbyters had financial and other incentives to look out for the Rizzos' best interest at the expense of the rest of us, leaving a foul taste in our mouths.
- It took the old classic "company ink" scenario to snap people out of their trance and remind them of the fallibility of man. This does not appear to have lasted very long, though. For those still loyal to the Rizzos, it only galvanized their unyielding support.
- I really had no idea how much power two people wielded over such vast human and financial resources until my time there was over. I never would have allowed this ministry to have so much influence over my life if I'd known how things really worked behind the scenes.
Some people want to make a career out of church, and they have a financial incentive to keep their heads down, mouths shut and tow the party line. To this end, a lot of the talented people who had been heavily involved at HPC during the scandal found themselves scattered across the nation looking for new opportunities. Some even followed the Rizzos to Birmingham. I've got the scars to prove how all of this affected me. I can state resolutely that I will no longer allow a church or ministry to be the gatekeepers of opportunity in my life. If I never utilize my creative and administrative abilities in church again, I can live with that. This means that I’m no longer a slave to what people in ministry think of me. I have my freedom and I have my scars.