A Place I Used to Call Home

an open letter to the Church of the Nazarene

I grew up in the Nazarene church. My dad was a drug addict hippie in the 70s when he started attending a little Nazarene church in California, Pennsylvania. The people loved him and accepted him as he was and he met Jesus. In true Chris Sutherland fashion, once he was in, he was all in. He went to the Nazarene Bible College in Colorado Springs where he met my mom and began pastoring when I was in the 3rd grade after traveling for years as an evangelist.

When I was in the 8th grade, my parents were commissioned to be the first Nazarene missionaries in Vietnam. He resigned from our church and we were set to leave in a few months. However, after some backroom Nazarene politics, the agreement he entered into had completely changed and we did not go to Vietnam. I had never seen my dad cry the way he cried when that all went down. He was heartbroken, but he did not give up on the Church of the Nazarene. He served 4 more congregations as pastor until he retired in 2022.

I went to a Nazarene University and from the time I graduated in 2002 until 2018, was employed in one way or another by the Church of the Nazarene. I was never in full alignment with the COTN on paper, but found myself in small churches and organizations full of people I loved, so I stayed.¹

Two of these people were Pastor Rick and Vicki Power. Pastor Rick was my first pastor who wasn’t my dad. I served as the worship leader at the church he pastored here in Hawaii and although he and I did not always see eye to eye (I was insufferable), I always had the utmost respect for him. And, well, if you’ve met Vicki you know she is as close to “Christian perfection” as it gets.

Recently, the Board of General Superintendents has determined that Pastor Rick should retire from his role as DS of the Hawaii Pacific District. The reason? A pastor on the district discovered that Pastor Rick’s adult daughter performed the wedding of her brother-in-law and husband 5 years ago. (Yes, you read that right, 5 YEARS ago). She was a part-time admin for the Hawaii Pacific District and since Pastor Rick did not take disciplinary action against her, he is now in trouble. She has since resigned from her part-time job making copies and sending emails (so her dad didn’t have to fire her). In the wake of that situation, which occurred while they were all on a mission trip this past fall, the BGS was made aware of a private letter Pastor Rick had written and shared with a few friends about his journey toward belief in the inclusion of LGBTQ people in the church.

Pastor Rick has never spoken about his journey publicly, he has never preached a sermon from the pulpit or done anything that would be considered “teaching doctrine considered incompatible with the teachings of the Nazarene church.” Quite frankly, I served with him and have known him for almost 20 years and did not know where he stood on this subject. I imagine if I asked any of the people who currently serve on the HIPAC district if they knew what Pastor Rick thought about any of this, not a single one would have said they did.

They would probably tell you what I know to be true about Pastor Rick. He loves Jesus, is intelligent, teachable, kind, the only haole any of us knows who speaks fluent beautiful Mandarin, patient, even-tempered (extending to the most insufferable among us), thoughtful, has the dryest sense of humor, adores Vicki, is a proud dad/father-in-law to Rachel and David and their spouses, and a doting grandpa to his four grandkids. Pastor Rick is a humble servant of Jesus and of the Church of the Nazarene and yet, he is being pushed out of ministry after 40+ years of service for merely thinking “maybe we should talk about this and pray together over the future of the church?”

I would say it’s unbelievable, but given what happened to Pastor Dee Kelley, I very much believe it.

And I am so very sad. I am sad for my pastor, my friends, and I am sad that somewhere along the line, the Church of the Nazarene went from being a big tent with room for conversation to a fortress with not-so-secret spies and gatekeepers ready to push out anyone who simply wants to talk and consider the possibility that we may not have it all figured out.

What is happening to Pastor Rick, what happened to Pastor Dee, and so many others, is a terrible loss for the COTN. I hope someday those who are making these calls behind closed doors will look up and see that those they drove away were the ones who kept the rest of us hanging onto hope for so long.

And that their coldness and disregard for people who’ve devoted their lives to Jesus and ministry in the COTN is why it is no longer a place we call home.

1. I did not leave the COTN until we moved away from our little church we loved and I started working for a different denomination.