If the Lord Wills: The Story of Vista Church
Montaña d’Oro state park, near San Luis Obispo, CA, has incredible rock formations that extend out into the sea.
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13-16)
This post was originally published on Thursday, April 28, 2022. April 9th is the date I started writing this particular draft, which is why that’s the date the post.
On March 15th, a user asked “What’s going on at Vista?” on the r/leavingthenetwork subreddit. This is a delicate topic and I’ve attempted to deal with it factually and dispassionately. This is not a story of all of Vista’s missteps. I’m just telling the story of growth and subsequent decline of the church with a few observations along the way that mostly relate to early warning signs or causes during the decline. I’ve also focused on who’s left, and hypothesis about why that might be. While I’d hoped to respond quickly, I’ve taken over a month to write this, in an attempt to handle it as fairly as I can.
My goal, as always, is not to tear down, but to shine light. Sometimes the light hits things that are uncomfortable to look at. That’s not a function of anything wrong with the light, but rather the thing that is now visible. In the closing I will discuss why I find this story relevant, but I suspect parts of that will become apparent along the way.
I take no joy in these words. None. I gave five years of my life to planting Vista church. I loved the church. I wanted to see it successfully make disciples and lead people into a life-giving relationship with Jesus. There is great sadness in these words. Writing this post required me to go back and re-read countless emails, look at photos, and revisit memories.
What to do when memories that used to bring joy no longer do?
If you’ve seen Pixar’s Inside Out, there’s a part where a previously joyful memory is now one that brings sadness. That’s where I’ve been sitting. I found one particular photo where Luke Williams (Lead Pastor at Vista Church) and I were laughing together at something, and it’s so painful now. I remember the good times. But now I know what comes later in the story. It didn’t need to be this way, and I still hope that he (or you, Luke, if you read this) learns to repent and receive grace in a way he hasn’t before, and to experience the freedom to make mistakes, apologize, and feel forgiveness.
Given all of that, I wanted to share pieces of my story as we go so that you can capture some of what it felt like at the time. I’ve avoided photos of any specific people out of respect for their privacy. Quotes and stories, as always, are best recollections unless otherwise stated.
As always, I welcome feedback and corrections and will make updates and apologies where needed. You can contact me or you can engage on the r/leavingthenetwork subreddit. I’m also open to additions or follow-ups if others have recollections or gaps that they can fill in or are willing to. If something isn’t clear, please ask me about it, don’t just assume. There’s a lot of words here and it’s hard to know what details I didn’t include given how close I was to all of this. As far as I know, this is all accurate, but I’m doing a lot of it from memory.
Finally, if you are still in The Network, and you see things in this that bother you enough that you’d leave, please be sure you fully understand them - reach out to me or ask on the reddit to make sure you really understand it. I’ve done everything I can to be clear, but it’s certainly possible that something is not clear. I don’t want anyone making major life choices on something they don’t understand.
If you can’t tell, I am nervous about this post. I don’t love writing it, but as you’ll see at the end, I believe it is important because of several of the dynamics you’ll see along the way.
The Plant
Vista Church was planted in September 2016 out of Blue Sky Church, with Luke Williams as pastor. It was the third church plant out of Blue Sky, following Hills (Pullman, Washington - 2012) and Summit Creek (Eugene, Oregon - 2015).
Blue Sky Church took up an offering for the church plant, and it raised over $600,000. It was so successful that some of the offering was sent to help plant Vida Springs Church (Tony Ranvestel, Gainesville, Florida) since their own offering had come up short of their target. I believe $50,000 of the offering was sent. Luke told the plant team that he wanted generosity to be part of “our” founding as a church. The use of the “royal we” here always bothered me, since the plant team had no involvement in this decision.
The stated goal (“Jesus leading”) plant team size was 50+. We had 48 for a time, but one person had to drop off for personal reasons, so 47 ended up moving to San Luis Obispo, California (aka “SLO”, pronounced “slow” - yes, there are many puns like “SLO transit”, the bus system). The 47 included 9 children from 4 families, including my own two children who were five and three at the time. Personally, I loved the idea of showing my kids that this is what it’s like to follow Jesus. Most of the plant team was young professionals, but we also had one couple with a college-aged daughter who had previously been on the Blue Sky plant team in 2004.
The worship leader was made a full-time staff member. This meant that Luke, his wife, and the worship leader were the three being somewhat supported by the church, while the other 44 were expected to find jobs locally and volunteer/serve the church in whatever way they could. This is standard practice across The Network led by Steve Morgan (lead pastor at Joshua Church in Austin, Texas, and reported to be President of The Network).
Why SLO?
SLO was chosen for the same reasons as many other church plants. It’s a “university city” - the home of California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly). The population is around 50,000 in the city, 280,000 in the county, and it’s in a pretty isolated part of the state. It’s a three hour drive north or south to the Bay Area or Los Angeles, respectively. It’s coastal, with a number of nearby beaches including some that are popular with surfers (an old hobby of Luke’s that he gave up for a time while at Blue Sky, but took up again). The leaders of the church said they felt “Jesus leading”, and there was talk of Vista planting churches all over California and into Mexico.
Luke also justified the plant by saying there were no churches as good as the one we would plant. He was quick to remind that other churches are there and on the same side, and to his credit, made it clear that we should not attempt to “steal” people from other churches. The example I remember of other churches not being good was that he’d gone and sat in the front row of a church in SLO and someone came up and told Luke that he was occupying the person’s seat, and something about really no one trying to get to know him. That’s at least how I remember it, and I don’t remember additional stories being given but he did say he’d visited “churches” (plural). I just took it on faith that SLO must be in need of a great church like ours. Later, Luke also told me that other churches in town just ask for volunteers to lead their small groups, and that you can even volunteer on the website of some of them. My experience in looking for churches in SLO did not bear this out - they vetted leaders, but many used small group leaders more like “facilitators”, going through a pre-set list of questions created by a pastor. In this model, less vetting is needed. I believe Luke was overstating the recklessness of the other churches in SLO, but this could have been unintentional.
It’s worth noting that SLO is home to both a Vineyard church (Mountain Brook) and Calvary SLO (which broke off from the Calvary Chapel network a while back), both of which are similar to Vista at least on paper, in terms of many beliefs and practice. Grace Central Coast is also similar in style, beliefs, and practice in many regards, and Agape is similar to Foursquare, another charismatic denomination (this is not an endorsement of those churches). Reminder: The Network split from Vineyard in ~2006. Vineyard itself broke off from the Calvary Chapel Association of Churches in the early 80’s.
I never attended another church in SLO until after I was out of Vista. In retrospect, this strikes me as a form of information control - I didn’t even look at their websites or listen to their sermons. I just knew what I heard here and there, and believed in my bones that Vista was better than them.
To those on church plants: do you know about the other churches in your town? Do you have friends at them? Do you see them as your brothers and sisters in Christ? Do you know what they’re great at? What they struggle with? How to pray for them? How to partner with them? Does your pastor? Most importantly: do you know why your church needs to exist? What it’s really doing better than all the other churches in the area that couldn’t be solved by you all going and joining one of the others?
Why me?
When announcing the church plant, Steve Morgan recommended that we not do a bunch of research into the details of SLO before deciding to go. He said we needed to trust God’s will and not worry about the logistics or details. So here are the sum total of facts I knew (I’d only ever been to California once, for a few days in high school, and only made it as far south as San Francisco):
It was about half way between the Bay and LA, and near the coast.
It was about 50,000 people, including the 20K university population.
It’s the home of Cal Poly.
It had a Costco and a Home Depot (maybe a few other national chains like Target)
It might be a cheaper cost of living than where we were living. This turned out to not be true - the house we bought cost roughly the same as we sold our house in the Seattle area for, but was 500 square feet smaller. I forget when we looked at cost of living - I know Luke brought it up when we met with him to discuss going on the plant.
I suppose I knew that the weather was better than the Seattle area, but that’s almost true simply by not being in the Seattle area.
As for me, I’m an engineer, and felt immediately (within an hour after the plant was announced) like God could use me in reaching the engineering population at Cal Poly (a particular emphasis of Cal Poly). My wife and I had felt for some time that we should go on a church plant, and we joined this team less than two weeks after it was announced. I did not know if my job would let me work remotely, and my wife and I talked about being prepared for me to be a checker at Costco and live in a 2-bedroom apartment.
After some discussion, my mangers did quickly agree to let me work remotely, which felt like “God’s provision.” It’s worth noting, if they’d declined, I would have called it “God giving us opportunity to build faith” or something like that, and then probably would have rejoiced at God’s plan when I got some form of job in SLO.
For what it’s worth, the small group I ended up leading had a bunch of engineering folks, and I’d like to think that I at least helped some of them in some way, but absolutely not enough to justify the costs. But seriously, we’d use a whiteboard in group, and drew graphs once of sanctification over time. So much fun.
Plant Team Training
“I’m on the verge of the rest of my life” - Owl City, Verge. I drove the moving truck, my dad drove my brand new pickup truck and towed the church’s new trailer, while my mom, wife, and kids all followed in our minivan way in the back there.
A couple early things stand out to me. First, planting was fun. It was good. It was exciting. My family and I created a paper chain all the way down our hallway with something like 200+ rings on it to count down the days until we’d move. We were thrilled to be moving and we’d never even been to the place we were going to. The excitement was widespread across the team, though as with all teams, some people had family or job stuff to work through. Each resolution to that was seen as “God is so good,” which now strikes me as something of a confirmation-bias prosperity gospel. Some things that didn’t happen:
We didn’t get the 50 on the plant team we’d been expecting
One person had to back out due to life circumstances
Some people didn’t get the job they wanted, so they were mostly celebrating getting a job at all (in many cases, a significant step down from the job they had in the Seattle area).
People found housing, but it’s not like they were most people’s dream homes. To be honest, though, we love our house in San Luis Obispo and it’s going to be heartbreaking to leave it behind - it’s basically perfect for us. I’d hoped we would live there for 50 years.
Four people moved away in the first year after the church was planted. Luke said he had not felt like it was right that the last of these was leaving, unlike the other three. If nothing else, that sent a message that, if we left, Luke would have an opinion about it that he might share broadly.
Our house, under construction. We hoped this would be our “50-year” house. Also yes - I am much taller than Paula, though this photo is exaggerating it more than normal
But, that didn’t stop our excitement. Everyone was proudly announcing the move on their social media accounts when we got to June.
Plant team training went as normal, with some things that look odd in retrospect, but honestly I don’t remember much of it. Steve told us not to expect to be friends with Luke and his wife. Luke or Steve also said that somewhere around three years in is when people start self-important and want to say things like “but I helped plant this church” when a newer person is being given a role. I remember this being a strong “don’t ever feel like you’re owed anything.” Which is true, in many respects. But given that this was a narrative about people who’d left other churches after a few years, it seeded my mind that if we left after a few years, they might try to spin it this way.
Here’s something I’d forgotten about until this week when I was reviewing old emails. In November 2015, the plant team was forming and excitement was building. Some women, including Luke’s wife, tried to put together an event for the women who had joined. However, it was canceled after Luke sent the following email saying he’d spoken with Steve and that it was too soon, and we should hold off on group events until plant team training started because we shouldn’t disengage with our existing Blue Sky relationships. This is a high degree of control exercised by Steve over Luke, and in turn over the new and very excited plant team who were all grown adults, being told who they can or can’t hang out with. I remember it immediately chilling my excitement and reminding me that I could “get in trouble” for doing things even if I hadn’t known there was a rule against it before.
Hey guys,
I hope that you are all doing well and having a great week so far! Right now the team is at 37 people and counting!! I am so thankful for you guys and am amazed at how Jesus is leading all of this so that a new church can be planted in San Luis Obispo.
I was talking to Steve this morning about the church plant, and he was encouraging me that as the team we need to be careful that we are not disconnecting from other relationships at Blue Sky, and already starting to connect as a team. This is always a challenge for church plant teams as they come together. I’ve noticed for myself, that out of excitement over what Jesus has planned, I’ve already wanted to get together, but the truth is, it’s too soon. I want to encourage you guys to stay relationally connected with the small group that you are in, and for now hold off on planning group get togethers with other people on the team.
Once we start team meetings in February/March, we will have plenty of time for us to connect and have fun together.
If I’m honest I love that I’m having to say this, because it means that we are intentional about having friendships, which will be a really good thing for the this new church in California!!!
Love you guys a lot!
Luke
Launch
We launched in September, 2016. We were ready for a launch with only a few new people showing up. We’d known that previous plants had taken years to even get to 100 people. So imagine our excitement when the opening Sunday had well over 100 people in attendance. If memory serves, the first Sunday had somewhere around 125 people, and we quickly grew to over 150, tripling the size of the church (I have a photo of a service from December 12th, 2016, and I estimate total attendance at 125+, and this would have been the Sunday before finals week, typically a down number by a little). Quickly, two new small groups were started, bringing the total to six. The church was highly successful among college students, in part due to the building location being only half a mile from the campus, making it among the most walkable to those students.
By spring, we were pushing 200, and filling the space at the Vets Hall. Sándor Paull (lead pastor at Christland Church, and reported to be VP of The Network) visited that spring, and apparently told Luke that we should have already moved to two services given how full it was.
Summer and Families
My kids looking out over San Luis Obispo, Fall 2016. It’s a beautiful town, honestly. The kids are bigger now, but my son still usually wears green shoes if he can find them.
Summer took numbers back under 100 most Sundays as the college students left town. In May 2017, Luke sent an email to the plant team families asking if they’d join him in praying for 10 families to join Vista by the end of the year. This never materialized. We would regularly have families visit, but few stuck around. To flash forward for a moment, about five months before leaving Vista, I actually emailed Luke and the Kid’s Director to ask what we would do if another couple years went by and there were still no children my daughter’s age. Outside of a couple high-schoolers, my 4th grade daughter was the oldest child in kids space by two years (our son, a 2nd grader at the time, was the next oldest). My intention was to simply put my daughter in a youth group at another church in town, while we would all still continue to go to Vista. Luke only really assured me that “we’ll figure something out” without being specific.
As far as we know, nearly every child who is still of an age that they’d go to “Kid’s Space” (6th grade or younger) is a child of a couple in which both parents came on the plant team. Almost every other family with kids that age that we knew of at the time we left has since left Vista Church.
Rapid Growth
We started our second year with two services, the college students came back, and attendance grew to over 300 people by spring 2018. Landon Nagata was brought on as a staff pastor. The children’s director also moved from part time to full time at some point during those first two years (I think fairly early).
I heard from Luke that he almost felt embarrassed to talk about the growth with other pastors in the network who had been planting much longer but had much smaller churches.
Fall 2018 maintained the need for two services, but the growth leveled off. Still, we were drawing over 100 people to Team Vista meetings, and we expanded to somewhere around a dozen small groups (my own group started in spring 2019, and only two more that I can remember started after that).
Virtual Vista. In Fall 2018, we bought the stage that “Luke” is standing on here, and built the wooden pallets shown to the right and left, replacing the well-worn originals we previously used.
My best guess is that at peak, we had attendance of around 350, with something like 400 individuals regularly attending Vista Church (if each person misses one Sunday every two months, it takes 400 regular attenders to have typical attendance of 350).
Things got big enough that in Summer 2018 we bought a stage and a second trailer. We built new, bigger signs for the front of the Vets hall, and new pallets. I learned SketchUp so that I could create a digital copy of Vista to figure out what we needed to build. We built new carts for the gear for worship and Kid’s Space, and installed a belay system in the trailer to get the stage in and out without it accidentally rolling away and crushing someone (it weighed over 1000lbs).
The hope was that the second trailer could also be used for a smaller set of stuff to take to some other location for Discipleship Community (DC), which Luke was hoping to start soon. DC never did start, and still hasn’t, as far as I know.
Plant team members started talking about new church plants happening sooner rather than later as we seemed like we could easily hit the magic 500 number in under five years.
Even Team Vista was drawing over 100 people, by my best estimate - so while there was something of a concern about engagement, we had ~12 small groups at peak, and a good third of the church coming to Team Vista.
Decline
The first Membership Bible Training (MBT) was held in early 2019. I was later told by Luke that we lost a significant number of people due to disagreement over the church’s views on election and women’s roles in the church that were taught at this MBT.
I have spoken to people since then and know the reality is worse than this for at least some, though I do not know how many. Abuses by leadership had been occurring already and people left over it. I regret deeply not reaching out to people who left and asking why. They knew then what would take over two more years for me to figure out (though I had already witnessed some of it). There were people being harmed around me and I simply didn’t know, because I simply didn’t ask. I have had the opportunity to apologize to a number of people who left before I did, who I then did not reach out to. I am thankful for the grace they have shown me. But I strongly regret not reaching out. They were there. They might have talked to me. They might have warned me. But more importantly, I might have been able to help them, to comfort them. To let them know that I was a brother in Christ who still cared about them and loved them, and would speak up for them if needed.
My best guess is that we were still around 300+ as we closed out our third school year in spring 2019, but I can’t be sure. It was down from spring 2018, but I don’t think by that much. In summer 2019, I remember Luke telling me that he’d been busy because he was trying to “raise up two new pastors.” We did not add any. We dipped significantly into the summer, as always. My memory of fall 2019 into the start of the pandemic is hazier. We still had two services, but they were less well attended.
Into the Pandemic
The final Sunday service as the pandemic was starting, which was also right around when MBT 2020 was finishing, drew probably close to 200 people to the single service, as the overseers shared how the church would be responding to the pandemic (nearly all of which was invalidated days later by the shelter-at-home order).
The church had no meeting of any kind until ~August 2020. The church would publish media with several worship songs being performed by the worship leader, plus a sermon delivered by Luke (audio only). Small groups would hold zoom calls on Sunday mornings, with a variety of approaches. Some listened to the sermon together, others discussed the sermon. Normal small group kept meeting virtually in most cases, but some began meeting in a hybrid or even in-person format in the summer and fall if they were small enough to get under the 10-person gathering limit.
The church began meeting at an outdoor wedding venue about 15 minutes from San Luis Obispo in August 2020. My best guess is that attendance at these meetings was approximately 100 people, pretty consistently, approximately half of what had come to the early 2020 final meeting before the lockdowns. However, a number (my guess is ~25) of people were still listening online as they felt uncomfortable joining in person during the pandemic. There was sporadic short-term child care, most of the time our kids came and sat with us and watched movies or played their Nintendo Switches. Singing was originally disallowed, and then later allowed. Luke did agree to try to setup video streaming, but there was no reliable internet at the venue, so we stuck with recording the audio and making it available online afterwards.
Landon Nagata was removed as a pastor (story here) sometime in late 2020 and moved into an “administrative role,” which was only announced at a Team Vista meeting with roughly thirty people in attendance. Within a few months, he left staff entirely, which as near as I can tell was never announced to the church, and I do not know the reasons for the removal from staff. I simply saw him on Facebook talking about a new job he was starting one day. He continues at Vista as a Small Group leader.
We eventually moved to meeting in the parking lot at a church in San Luis Obispo sometime around December 2020. Those services also drew somewhere around 100 people each Sunday, and I can confirm that they continued at that level until my family left in April 2021. I think maybe a packed Sunday might have even pushed 125 (particularly Easter), but I can’t be sure.
In (I’m pretty sure) November 2020, Luke told me something like: “It felt like in the first two years we could do nothing wrong, and in the second two years we could do nothing right.”
I also heard him tell about at least four relevant visions in this time. Sándor, in April 2021 praising Luke in front of the small group leaders, said that Luke has more visions than any other pastor in The Network. He might have said “other than Steve [Morgan]”, but I don’t remember. As a preface, I am using the word “vision” because that’s the word Luke used. I’ll share some thoughts, and leave it for you to determine what you think about whether these are from God. Those four visions are as follows:
Gold Bricks
Unknown date - sometime in 2018 or 2019, I think. I remember hearing this while we were still at the Vets hall, so pre-pandemic. Luke told me privately something like “getting numbers is easy”, but that Jesus had given him a vision in which he was building the church out of bricks. And Jesus had told him to only use the solid gold bricks and lay each one carefully. He took this to mean that the growth should be slow, and only with the best of the bricks, not ordinary bricks. If I am remembering correctly, the context for this was that our numbers had started to drop.
This is highly reminiscent of the “cream of the crop” language that Steve Morgan is well documented as using.
Standing Outside the Fire
Luke also told a vision, from the pulpit in spring 2021. If I remember right, he said he’d had this vision near the start of the pandemic, but I’m not sure and may be confusing that with the next one. In this vision, he was standing near a forest that was on fire. He knew that everyone in the church was in the fire, and he was just waiting to see who would make it out.
He was applying this to our time as a church, in COVID, seeing who was going to make it through, presumably meaning those who would stay part of Vista.
This fire burned the hill near our house in September 2020 on the hottest day in SLO history. The hill is covered in grass, not trees, and so the fire was out within a couple hours. Luke also lives near this hill.
Theologically, I have a huge problem with this. For one thing, the shepherd should be with his sheep. And if he is not, he should run in after them. This vision also has the benefit of asserting that Luke himself is by definition “out of the fire”.
Finally, and most importantly, this imagery at least could imply that anyone who doesn’t make it out gets burned up and must not be Christian. Using fire imagery with no clarification is reckless and potentially slanderous, given that many people had already left Vista by this time. If you’re saying to yourself, “well maybe he didn’t mean that”, then I guess I’d ask you to do two things:
Ask him what he meant, don’t just assume he meant something else.
Think about what possible alternate he could have meant. Is there a meaning that would be ok?
Test the vision - weigh it. See as follows - prophecy is to be weighed by those who hear it. You should be able to judge its accuracy by the Bible.
This also appears to be disorderly prophecy according to Paul: “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.” (1 Cor 14:29). Prophecy is to be weighed by “the others” - those in attendance, presumably. In this case and in others, Luke shared a vision, and then did not allow it to be weighed by anyone.
And finally, I would argue that there is no love in these words. I heard no tone in his voice that implied concern or brokenness over those who were not going to make it. 1 Corinthians 13:1-2 (emphasis mine):
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
Saving Babies
In August 2020, Luke shared a dream that he claimed to have had near the start of the pandemic. He had seen a bunch of people from Vista near the beach, as a huge tidal wave came in. The church waited until the waters receded, but when they did, they (we?) went charging in to rescue people, who were represented as babies who were stranded on the beach and in danger. Luke believed this was a vision of the church’s opportunity and task to go rescue as many people as we could who would realize their need for Christ during the pandemic.
Preach the gospel
Luke also told another vision to me sometime in 2019/2020. He said he’d been on the phone with Krsh Penzar, Lead Pastor at Blue Sky Church. He said he had a vision in the middle of this conversation. In this vision (I’ll do my best to get it right), Luke said he was walking through San Luis Obispo and there was snow on the ground (I’ve heard there was a trace of snow in SLO once in the 60’s, but that’s it). He was walking to the place Vista was holding services, and he got there, walked in, and stood up on the stage. He said a man was with him, who he knew was Jesus. The man walked up, gave him an encouraging pat on his backside (like a baseball manager sending a pitcher back to the dugout) to push him toward the podium. I forget whether the man said it or whether Luke just said he knew what it meant, but he said he knew that the man meant he should “preach the gospel”. I remember him saying the snow melted as well, but I can’t remember whether it was before or after he started preaching.
In this vision (also untested by the church), Luke is claiming to have Jesus’ divine endorsement to do what he is already supposed to be doing. Luke is not unique among pastors to claim this, specifically in that we know that The Network believes that “Jesus has called the leaders” (Small Group Leader Training Part 1, page 6).
2021-2022
Ok, so what’s the current status? I’ll break that down by plant team and non-plant team, because it’s quite interesting.
The remaining plant team
“Leaders and Family” (L&F) means anyone who either has (or had) a role or is the direct family of someone with a role. Only three plant-team members remain who have never been L&F.
We know for a fact that there are no more than 23 of the original plant team present, so more than half have left, and in less than six years. They did not go to other churches in The Network - many of them still live in San Luis Obispo or the surrounding areas. As far as I know, nearly all of them still identify as Christian as well.
The remaining plant team members are as follows (I am not listing children who were born after the plant):
Overseer 1/Lead Pastor and his wife. Married prior to planting.
Overseer 2 and his wife. Married prior to planting. Also one child who came with them on the plant. Was a small group leader earlier but no longer leads one.
Overseer 3 and his wife. Became an overseer after moving down. Both part of the plant team, married after the plant. This overseer is also a Small Group Leader.
Worship Leader (on staff) and his wife. Both part of the plant team, married after the plant. He is also a Small Group Leader.
Small Group Leader 3 and his wife. Both part of the plant team, married after plant. He was also an associate pastor but was removed in late 2020.
Small Group Leader 4 and his wife. Both part of the plant team, married after plant. He was a SGL at Blue Sky for many years, and taught one of the sermons at the pre-plant retreat, and was said to be available to substitute after planting. But he did not become a pastor and I don’t recall him teaching.
Small Group Leader 5 and his wife. Both part of the plant team, married before the plant. Also two children who came with them on the plant.
Former Small Group Leader. He is now married, but to a woman who did not come on the plant team.
Kid’s Director (on staff) who is also the bookkeeper and led a small group for a time.
Steve Morgan’s daughter. She used to be the bookkeeper, and also substitutes as worship leader at times.
Three single women.
A couple trends to note:
Leading (or being the family of a leader) is almost synonymous with still being there.
Nearly all are Leaders & Family (L&F): 85% of the adults are either current or former leaders or staff, or their spouses, or related to Steve Morgan.
Non-L&F are nearly gone: 84% of those who were never leaders or family are gone now. Remember this number for later.
All remaining men are/were leaders: All eight men who are still there are/were leaders, only two of whom have never had some additional responsibility beyond that.
No non-plant members are currently leading: Seven non-plant members were small group leaders at one point. At least four of those have left the church, and the remainder are no longer leading. That means that not a single person who wasn’t part of the plant team is currently on staff, in leadership, or even married to current staff or leadership.
Leaders who leave: Two members of the plant team were small group leaders at one time and left the church along with their families. (myself included).
How did this happen? What does it mean?
Nearly all who have stayed are quite close with the lead pastor, or the spouse or children of someone who is. And no one who isn’t part of the plant team is currently leading. What leads to such an insular setup?
At least four well-documented psychological phenomena may help explain these trends:
Betrayal Blindness: We do not want to find out that someone we are close to has done something bad. I see this play out on the reddit and in interactions when I see that some will seemingly defend their own pastor more, while believing the system around them is toxic. That’s more psychologically comfortable than believing a person you knew closely was toxic. The link is an article I’ve shared before about a real world example, and is an excellent breakdown of this issue.
Willful Blindness: We do not want to learn something that will cost us something (power, position, pride, etc). The link is a TED talk that is very worth your time.
Sunk Cost Fallacy: Those with much invested tend to find it very difficult to walk away, even when there’s little hope that it will get better. This link is just wikipedia.
Learned Dependence: Through the tactics of Dismantling (Wade Mullen, “Something’s Not Right”, chapters 3 and 4), a person can be made to believe that they need their specific church community, leaders, or other specific people in it. This can apply to both leaders and non-leaders, but particularly those who are vulnerable to believing that they don’t know how to navigate life on their own. Luke encouraged small group leaders to see themselves as “spiritual fathers” to the people they were leading.
In addition, those closest to the pastor have more friends who are also close to the pastor. This makes the stakes higher for them to leave, knowing that their friends will be unlikely to follow, and they know they will likely be shunned after leaving, given what’s happened to others who left. Also, remember that leaders are more likely to have committed their own abuses, making it more difficult for them to call out abuses being committed. In one more dark possibility, it’s possible that these leaders fear the things they’ve confessed to their leaders being used against them after they leave. All of these would combine to create a person who truly believes they’re doing the right thing and that those who have left are in the wrong. These are all of course not universally true for each person, but each person should be aware of them.
These combine to create a phenomenon that seems consistent with what I’ve read about other toxic churches. Specifically, those who have been around longest and are closest to the leader are frequently the last to see a problem, or at least the last to say something. This may seem counterintuitive, but Wade Mullen writes about this in his book “Something’s Not Right” (emphasis original):
Another environment that can contribute to abuse is tribalism among the top executives in an organization. Tribalism can pervade businesses, nonprofits, high-control groups, and churches, especially if started or managed by close friends and family. This closeness heightens the tendency leadership might have to protect family members and friends when dark secrets come to light. In a tribal corporate culture, it’s easy to justify compromises because of these close relationships. When faced with an image-threatening event, the tribe is more likely to cover up wrong in order to protect their own — to circle the wagons, as it were. They often choose to defend their image rather than confront the leader or protect the vulnerable.
The choices for leadership positions within a tribal culture thus become further calcified in a crisis — family members and close friends are chosen because they will be able to keep secrets (and have their secrets kept). The abusive organization will slowly shift more and more power to the top as a way to protect those most important to the tribe, and as the tribe becomes more protective of insiders, they become less trusting of outsiders, resulting in an even higher potential for abuse of authority.
This is a critical problem with a tribal system: concern for powerful tribe members and the effect a controversy will have on their image means the less powerful, who are often the most profoundly harmed, are forgotten and ignored. This is a key attribute of abusive communities and cultures — the most powerful benefit at the expense of the least powerful.
An indicator that a tribal culture has taken hold in an environment is what happens in a crisis: the leadership takes greater control of all decisions and communications, while assuring their audience that they have a legitimate claim to continued trust despite the power grab. It is a dangerous arrogance that keeps them blind to true problems and true solutions. And because tribal leaders tend to shun outsiders, they end up at a worse place than they were before the crisis: they have more power than ever but still lack a victim-centric, expert-informed understanding of the problem, increasing the potential for further crisis and abuse. (pp 29-30)
The tactics of impression management also mean that toxic leaders will have some people who are treated extraordinarily well (these are people who fall. inline. and do not rock. the boat), such that it’s almost unthinkable to them that the leader would treat others poorly. By definition, an abusive leader does not abuse everyone: if they did, no one would follow them. Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer describe this in their excellent book “A Church Called Tov”:
Though a narcissist may possess what is commonly known as a “strong personality,” that perceived strength often disguises insecurity and a deep need to feel superior and successful. The selfish drive for importance compels narcissistic pastors to surround themselves with admirers. They will break relationship with people who don't give them the esteem and honor they desire. Narcissists often gravitate toward enablers, who will pave their way to power – or at least not stand in the way. The operative term that disguises the enablers is sycophants –people who fawn over someone in a position of power and influence in order to gain power and influence of their own. Some pastors nurture sycophants and before long the elder board or deacon board is populated with apple-polishers who are malleable to the pastors will and often unwilling to stand up to the pastor with solid – and necessary – biblical oversight. (page 27)
McKnight and Barringer then state that “narcissistic pastors, of churches large and small, tend to gravitate toward non-denominational churches or nonaccountable church structures where they answer to no one.” They follow that by quoting Ronald Enroth, “an expert on dysfunctional churches and pastors,” who says:
It is my opinion, based on extensive research and informal observation, that authoritarian leaders are ecclesiastical* loners. That is, they do not function well or willingly in the context of systematic checks and balances. They are fiercely independent and refuse to be part of a structure of accountability. To put it crudely, they operate a one-man (or one-woman) spiritual show. And God help the person who gets in the way or makes waves. Yes, sometimes they will point to a board of elders or its equivalent, but more likely than not, this turns out to be a faithful inner circle of clones that implicitly accepts all that the leader sets forth. (page 29-30)
*”ecclesiastical” might be a new word to you. It refers to churches and how they relate to each other. Enroth is basically saying that authoritarian leaders isolate themselves from the broader church, avoiding checks and balances that might exist in larger networks or denominations. Steve Morgan’s move to take The Network out of the Vineyard in 2006 is following this path, as is his special role among the Network Leadership Team. More locally, this is the setup of each local board of overseers, with the lead pastor having more power than the rest as well.
As always, please remember that those who left frequently did so without a community to do it, and it cost them greatly to do so. Those who have stayed watched one friend at a time leave, but all they had to do was keep doing what they were doing, while believing they were on God’s mission. Again, it’s understandable - it’s even normal. But it doesn’t mean that it’s right for them to stay silent in the face of so much harm.
In a poignant description of the sunk cost fallacy, in the podcast, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, episode 4, Host Mike Cosper says the following starting at 50:49 (emphasis mine, and I strongly recommend listening to the audio):
“Stories like the fall of Mars Hill are never just about the failure of one person. They’re about the shattering of community, and they’re about years, decades in some cases, of memories that turn from beautiful to bittersweet because of the loss. Why do you stay? Because this is the place that you found a purpose and a sense of calling. A sense of who you are as a man, a pastor, a husband, and a father. Because you hope, despite all evidence to the contrary, that you’re one good conversation away from things getting back to how they used to be. Because you’ve given everything to this community, and in some ways, this community has given everything to you. That is why you stay.”
Cosper’s point is not that these reasons make it correct to stay. He’s highlighting the very human reasons why we do, even though deep down, we know that “Something’s Not Right.”
Non-Plant Team Size
It’s very difficult to gauge the current size. I’m more than happy to update with firm numbers if someone provides them.
There is only one recent photo of Vista gathered on Instagram, which was posted last October. Only 35 people are visible, but it’s cropped tightly such that determining the total number is impossible. A post later about the fall retreat doesn’t help much either. Still, Vista used to fairly regularly post photos of a large crowed gathered at church, and some other network churches still do (Hills Church did so in January). These photos are frequently taken from angles that show the largest possible crowd.
I have heard very low numbers, and I know of at least 20 people who have left after my family did. But let’s use what I think is a very generous number of 75 non-plant team attendees including kids, which would imply a total of roughly 100 people (roughly what it was when we left). Given a peak of 300 non-plant attendees, and assuming some turnover within that, I think it’s likely that this means over 80% or more of non-plant people who at one point called Vista home have left. Undoubtedly some of those are graduates, but that’s an issue many churches deals with. I’ve also heard from college students who I thought had graduated who say they were harmed by Vista. Vista managed to grow rapidly, and then lose people almost as rapidly.
[Edited on 4/30 to move this above the notes about Sándor below for greater clarity, also added the rough counts in parenthesis after the percentages to help with the math here]: One thing I find fascinating is these two numbers, which are quite similar.
>80% (less than 75 out of more than 400, probably): percent of non-plant team regular attendees who are no longer at Vista. Remember - these people were the entire point of planting Vista.
84% (16 of 19): percent of plant team members who were never leaders or family of leaders, who are no longer at Vista.
I heard Sándor, in April 2021, say that the issue in SLO is “church hopping”, that this is something people in SLO do. Some problems with his statement:
First, how he would know that is beyond me. He is on the Network Leadership Team but is lead pastor of Christland Church in College Station, Texas. It’s highly unlikely that he’d have a great read on the church-going habits of San Luis Obispo, California.
Second, five years in, when numbers are way down is a convenient time to mention that.
Third, I know of at least one large-ish evangelical church in the area that actually grew during the pandemic. Another church plant planted during the pandemic and my guess is they had something like 200 in attendance when we visited them last summer.
Fourth, and most importantly: it fails to be curious in any way about what fault we may play in it. It assigns the fault to those who aren’t around rather than seeking to understand in what way the church may have failed them. This is consistent with Sándor’s 2018 teaching on unity (published on Leaving the Network), and it’s still not how a Christian leader should model humility.
So here’s the graph, as near as I can get it, without having any kind of official attendance numbers (which by the way are public at many other churches).
The error bars are not exact, and I’m particularly uncertain about the spring 2019 and exact timing of the Spring 2020 number (which represents the final Sunday before the Pandemic). But I’m pretty confident about the first three data-points, including spring 2018 as the high-water mark, and the count in spring 2021.
Update on May 2nd, 2022: I am not updating the chart yet, but I have heard from sufficient sources to include this note that total numbers as of fall 2021 were lower than the 100 assumed here. If true, it only raises the percentage of non-plant team people who have left, and also means the remainder of the church is more highly composed of plant team members than thought. As it is, at least 30% of the remainder are plant team or children of the plant team unless there’s been dramatic growth recently that I am unaware of. As always - happy to revise/update if Vista or anyone else supplies better numbers.
Why does any of this matter?
In every post, I ask myself this - why does it matter? Is this relevant? Or am I just bringing up things that I don’t like, but ultimately don’t matter. For any of us, it would be easy to highlight some unwise words we said. But we hope in the grace of Christ. We sin, we apologize, we move forward. We give grace and understand when someone says or does something that they likely regret. The point is never mudslinging or just to point out some fault. Why do people need to care?
The Network’s Standard
In the lead up to planting Vista, I remember Steve Morgan speaking. He said something along the lines of the following (this is not an exact quote, but the sentiment is accurate):
Now, we believe that Jesus wants us to plant a church in San Luis Obispo, CA. But we do not know this for sure. How will we know for sure? We will know it was Jesus leading if in several years, a healthy, growing church is planted in San Luis Obispo.
I’m pretty sure Steve said “five years”, but I’m not sure. Either way, it’s been almost six. I’ve heard from at least twenty-five people who say they were harmed by Vista, and I suspect that’s just the tip of the iceberg given the now hundreds that no longer attend (I generally do not reach out to people who have left unless they reach out to me first, with a couple rare exceptions - if anyone wants to talk, I’m always up for it). It’s quite possible that the people harmed by Vista outnumber the non-plant people who are still there.
Going back to the lead quote in this blog post from James 4, we are told to never boast in our plans for tomorrow. Steve rightly voiced that we could be incorrect about God’s leading, but as far as I can remember, this statement was surprising because it’s the only time I heard that sentiment. All other times, “Jesus is leading” was spoken with something close certainty or actual certainty.
What’s the point?
The pattern of leaders staying while over 80% of others leave gives some indication of what’s going on, and hopefully helps people understand that if they are a non-plant member and still there, they are a quite rare thing, especially if the numbers are worse than what I’ve guessed above. It’s important for you to ask: where is everyone? Why are they gone? Have you talked to them? Do you know their story for real? Many I’ve spoken with have a story of harm at the hands of Vista or other churches. Please, I’m begging you - go ask. Ask me. I’m here. A friend who I tried to tell about the abuses happening before I left was talking about an article that said a tell-tale sign is a “pile of dead bodies”. He said he didn’t see that. He was wrong. There is a pile of dead bodies, except they’re not really dead: many of them will still talk to you if you have the boldness and courage to ask.
For those of you in other network churches, does this match your experience? Do you see a highly loyal plant team (and maybe some additional locals) and then a difficulty hanging on to anyone else? Are numbers significantly down from peak? Do you know why? Have you actually talked to people who left or just accepted what the leaders have said?
Additionally, in this case, at least $1.5M has been spent planting a church that seems to be smaller today than it was on opening Sunday. We are called to be wise stewards, and the question has to be asked: was this wise? Would it be wiser to merge with one of the local churches that overlaps significantly with the beliefs and practices of Vista Church?
There is also a question of the leaders’ ability to hear God’s leading. That goes to whether or not they should be trusted when they tell the church that Jesus is leading in this or that. If the leaders regularly claim “Jesus’ leading”, and then are wrong, we should doubt that they have any special ability to hear Jesus’ voice. I am not saying Jesus doesn’t speak. But in this post alone there are multiple examples of “leading” that at least raise red flags.
Finally, Luke is the Network Area Coach for the West Coast (Blue Sky, Hills, Summit Creek, Valley Springs). In my last several months there, when I would ask to meet, he was several times too busy to meet because he was “busy with network stuff.” Even on the day I left, I texted him and said I needed to talk to him or an overseer, and he passed me off to one of the other overseers. I got a text message from him that evening. Reminder: I was one of at most a dozen active small group leaders at the time. Two questions of wisdom:
Luke is the pastor of a church that is losing people rapidly, and he has no other pastors on staff. Shouldn’t he be focused more fully on his own church? This would be similar to the qualification given for elders in 1 Timothy 3 to manage their own households well.
Does the track record of Vista give Luke credibility in coaching the other pastors on the West Coast?
Closing
I don’t know what happens with Vista next, and the future of Vista isn’t the point of this post. I hope the leaders are repentant for their abuses and truly humble themselves, but I don’t know what happens after that. Earlier in James, he says “God opposes the proud but gives to the humble.” What will that bring about? I don’t know. But I do know it’s better than pridefully acting as though all is fine.
Again - hopefully you see how invested I was. But this shows the arc of a church in The Network that was, for a time, seen as a huge success story, only to reverse over the following years, seemingly due to issues with doctrine, teaching, how the pandemic was handled, and finally as stories of abuse came out.
It didn’t need to be this way. It just didn’t.