5 /5 Jim Smith: My family and I were members of Fair Oaks Baptist in Concord during the times when Knudsen, Carlson, Korch, my friend the late Dan Owens and Beattie were Senior Pastors. Fair Oaks was one of the two most vibrant evangelical churches in the Diablo Valley, the other being E. Free in Walnut Creek. It was unfortunate that it changed so radically when the late Mike DeLeon and his first wife, Vicky, abruptly announced to the congregation one Sunday morning as the worship service began, "Starting today the music is going to be very different. Contemporary, no longer traditional. A lot of you wont like it, but youll just have to get used to it." Previously, this large vibrant congregations services had a large talented choir and even an orchestra. The church was growing and winning people for Christ. Although I enjoy Contemporary Christian Music and have sung and played guitar and electric bass in other churches since we left Fair Oaks, the way in which the transition took place was wrong. It pretty much set this church on a course of circling the drain for several years. It wasnt smart to tick off the older adults, those who were by far the most significant givers, who then left Fair Oaks and went elsewhere. I remember a later Pastor, McCoy, not only leaving Fair Oaks but also deciding to leave the ministry altogether. Really sad. Its stunning to look back at what the highjacking so many years earlier led to. Thankfully, the existing church that took over Fair Oaks as a sort of "church plant" and merger has done a good job and God has blessed the congregation because of the new leaderships faithfulness. What happened there presents a cautionary lesson church leaders can and should learn from.
