Bobby Ross Jr. of Christianity Today interviews Tullian Tchividjian on the attempt to oust him as the senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.
The context: In March, Tchividjian was elected senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church by a 91% vote. Soon after Tchividjian’s installment as the senior pastor, a small, vocal minority has been seeking to remove him from that office. In an op-ed piece in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Tchividjian recounted that to address this issue once and for all, the church had a congregational meeting and a vote this past Sunday. A little over two-thirds of the congregation voted to keep Tchividjian as their pastor.
An excerpt of the interview:
Ninety-one percent of Coral Ridge members supported your hiring earlier this year. In the vote Sunday, 71 percent voted against ending the church’s relationship with you. That’s still a two-thirds majority, but how do you get back the support you have lost? Do you even try?
Tchividjian: It’s a bit misleading. Anybody who was registered as a member was eligible to vote. However, there were about 150 people who came on the day of the vote who hadn’t been to this church since before I got here. But they had friends who were unhappy and came back to vote with their friends.But in a church our size, my guess is, there are still 100 to 200 people who are not supportive of me.
How do I go forward? I keep pastoring the whole church. I keep shepherding the whole church. I keep preaching to the whole church. I keep leading the whole church.