An open letter

Judging from your non-responsiveness to any communication from me, I believe this will be the last time you hear from me. I don't see a need for me to say anything else if you don't.

When I got an SMS from you thanking me for my leadership and blessing my ministry, it sounded terribly hollow.

It still remains a mystery to me why you would uproot yourself so haphazardly. Officially, the reason is divine intervention, but many things fly in the face of that reason. If truly God was behind this, why the secrecy? Why the avoidance? Why the tell-tale signs of a person greatly disturbed by something?

Ironically we are going to learn some of these things this Friday. Soon after the announcement of the closing of a ministry you were connected to, you started leaving service immediately after closing, when it was in your nature to stick around. You started to scale down your ministry commitments. You avoided my calls, SMSes and emails for over a month. Your actions were so obvious that people aside from me started to notice as well.

The main thing that gets me is, if this is from God, would God have wanted you to make so ignominous an exit, almost with a paper bag over your head - so ashamed are you to face your friends? Who am I to speak if it is truly God? So if you speak the truth, then I apologise unreservedly, to God and you.

However, the signs point to the fact that something or someone hurt you, or someone close to you, perhaps related to the above-mentioned ministry. I will never know, because you will never tell. I sincerely hope I am wrong about you, because if you would use God's name to lie about a personal reason for leaving, then I pray for God's mercy on you.

I must admit that I'm hurt by your actions. Ironically, we're teaching Handling Hurt, the final lesson in the ALG for Creating Community. Even more ironically, you were supposed to plan this lesson, but like all the other ministries, you dropped everything and left, something unlikely for God to allow you to do even if He were asking you to leave. I feel like I've been betrayed, despite the effort I've put in to your lives, that I don't even deserve a decent response or explanation. Again, is this what God would have you do?

For these reasons, I really doubt that your reasons are genuine, and that instead you are grappling with personal hurts that you've chosen to nurse and nurture. You've let it consume you to the extent that you'd put aside dear friends here and leave without saying anything to them.

Finally, for you to see the Sunday outing as "just an outing" was utterly irresponsible, and it showed. I even have to doubt a recce was even done (as I was informed); the chaos at the location was damning evidence of that. You may have seen it as your last hurrah, but how is that fair to the people who entrusted their time to you?

Words can't really describe the disappointment I feel after the effort I went through to defend you in front of others who tried to put you down. They said you were irresponsible, impatient, cunning, conniving, undependable and more. I defended you vehemently on countless occasions. Unfortunately, now I feel like a fool, for they have been proved right.

I hope God will make you learn your lessons about impatience and judgmentalism, or you will be condemned to repeat the lessons till you do.