Chapel of Awareness pastor's letter

"Your current Board members are all free thinkers and none were held hostage or coerced into making decisions they didn't agree with."

Reverend Don Miller, Chapel of Awareness pastor

In such a fractious time in the world, in an era where unity is needed most in the name of "loving kindness" (as the Friends of Chapel have put it) Chapel of Awareness Pastor Don Miller takes an uncalled-for slap to the faces of a good amount of the Chapel of Awareness membership who supported the previous Board prior to (and during) the Friends' lawsuit.

Reverend Miller has opted to turn what was once a positive, inspirational, and unifying annual letter to the congregation by previous pastors into a negative political play designed to ostracize those he and the Friends of Chapel do not agree with. Coercion and "hostage holding" are serious accusations. He has thrown them at current members without qualification or example. This is inappropriate and unbecoming of a pastor -- especially one who admits in his own letter that he has been gone from Chapel for about a third of a year.

Reverend Miller states in the letter that Reverend Nell Rose Smith took over as Pastor in his absence, yet the present church bylaws do not state a procedure for such a handover (the closest that can be found is the calling of a special meeting of the congregation); even if such a handover was done properly by board action, no notice was ever sent out to the congregation.

Before he takes this slap at members and the previous board (representative of the chapel membership as elected), Reverend Miller refers to church founder Reverend Eugene C. Larr's "mundane practices" of teaching. Does he really mean to call the founder's teachings "mundane"? As to say, by definition, "common; ordinary; banal; unimaginative"? From Chapel Guardians' observations, this approach falls in line with the very publishing of the book In the Beginning, material that (by the book's own admission) founder Larr did not want published (a position he was consistent on for years).


Reverend Miller's letter is ironic in that he literally sat on both sides of the fence during the church conflict, serving and voting with some of the very board members he accuses of "hostage holding" while supporting the Friends' lawsuit. This calls his loyalties into question when it comes to a whole congregation, which Chapel of Awareness members assumed would be made whole by the Friends' stated goals upon taking over the church. This letter does not make the congregation whole; it only keeps the wound open. Many argue that it is the Friends of Chapel who fractured the congregation to begin with, and based on the actions (recall: right thought, right action) of the sitting leadership, Chapel Guardian must now agree.


Reverend Miller says the current Friends leadership is working to make sure there are no hostile takeovers of Chapel of Awareness. But there has been one. Theirs ..... From the filing of a lawsuit to the banning of ministers, corporate members and leadership against mediation, to the publishing of a book the founder didn't want to a new leadership that has been consolidated into Friends of Chapel backers.


From the letter, Reverend Miller would have the membership believe that Chapel of Awareness was saved from some underground force bent on taking it over (odd, given that the alleged ringleader was pastor for about two decades). That was not the case, no matter what Friends of Chapel propaganda would have you believe.


Reverend Miller's tone -- his statements in this letter -- is a new unfortunate chapter in Chapel of Awareness history. Is this what Chapel of Awareness has come to? Is this what Reverends Eugene C. Larr and Donald Schwartz would advocate? Is this what you want out of what has often recently been termed "Your Chapel"?

Chapel of Awareness annual meeting and chairman's letter

As Chapel of Awareness enters its annual phase of electing members of the board, Chapel Guardian take note of some points made by Reverend Nell Rose Smith in her letter to the congregation in her capacity as board chair. [Mailed election materials are at the bottom of this post]

As with last year on the heels of the Friends of Chapel take-over of Chapel of Awareness, Reverend Nell states: “nothing is more precious than the generosity of those who make it work through their commitment, time and energy, their ideas and resources” … none of which Reverend Nell provided herself when she and the Friends of Chapel faction disappeared from Chapel of Awareness and then proceeded to sue the church as it struggled.

She thanks the following people whose behavior was questionable over the year: She thanks Reverend Sherry DeLoach as membership director [who has resigned her board position], who sent collection notice-style letters to corporate members warning them of their “termination” if they did not pay their corporate dues. A stick-rather-than-a-carrot approach with shades of the very behavior she and the Friends accused the former board of. Reverend Nell also thanks Terry Hall as the webmaster, who was cited by Yelp and Wikipedia for terms-of-service violations and who proliferated Chapel of Awareness “business” listings across Websites of questionable taste and information.

Finally, in the annual meeting materials provided to the membership this year, the sitting board opted not to provide pre-stamped proxy envelopes to mail back to chapel. The stamping of the return proxy envelopes, for years, was designed to encourage members to return their proxies in the event they could not attend the annual meeting – as a courtesy. The sitting board has apparently chosen to forgo courtesy, and perhaps discourage proxy voting by this quiet, albeit incidental, change of procedure.