Trinity

Open Secrets at Trinity Church

• The Editors

Trinity

1. Purpose of this Website

It is my goal to raise awareness about how the elders and deacons grievously mishandled, and concealed crucial information from the Head of Households (“HOH”) during the Bryan family situation in 2024.

What makes matters worse is that a large portion of current/past Trinity people are privy to the information I will be sharing here… they’re just open secrets.

I am convicted of my duty to you as your brother in Christ to make known to you these crucial pieces of information which you had the right to know.

NOTE: The goal of this website is not to argue that Josiah Bryan should have been able to avoid facing justice, or that Stuart Bryan should have remained in ministry. I’m actually fine with the eventual outcomes that came to pass.

2. The Open Secrets

2.1. Patrick Wilson gave notice to the elders

As some of you may know, Patrick Wilson was the one who filed the police report against Josiah Bryan.

What you don’t know is Patrick Wilson made several attempts to speak with the elders about what he discovered regarding Josiah Bryan and the siblings.

There are a number of text and email messages sent between the elders and Patrick Wilson where it becomes evident that the elders were fence-sitting despite having full knowledge Patrick was going solo and shaking out the facts of a very dire situation in the Bryan family.

Even after multiple requests by Patrick, the elders denied him a meeting. Instead, they told Patrick to talk to Stuart directly because it was Stuart’s kids (so the reasoning went). It was at this point that Patrick began to take matters into his own hands and the entire church would be led by the nose into a situation that went sideways almost immediately.

The Trinity elders abdicated their responsibility. They had ample opportunity to be the overseers they’re called to be, and to provide pastoral care to the Bryan family and the Church. Instead, they chose the safe option of doing nothing (which will be a theme) so that they wouldn’t step on anyone’s toes. This information was concealed from you.

2.2. Patrick Wilson and William Nixon’s private meeting

After Patrick was repeatedly denied a meeting with the elders, both him and William Nixon organized a private meeting with approximately 20 members of Trinity Church. In this meeting, the details of Josiah Bryan’s sexual abuse were disclosed to that entire group along with Patrick’s intention to lay an ultimatum at Stuart Bryan’s feet: Either Stuart would take control of the situation in his family, or Patrick would go to the police with the information.

Patrick went to Stuart and delivered the ultimatum. Patrick wasn’t satisfied with Stuart’s response, and so Patrick went directly to law enforcement to file a police report against Josiah Bryan.

This private meeting happened without the elder’s knowledge. Both Wilson/Nixon were deacons at the time.

Wilson/Nixon should not have called this private meeting. As deacons they are entrusted with a special degree of influence and they abused this influence. If they had truly felt the conviction to take action, they should have just done that… take action. They could have went by themselves to law enforcement to file the police report but instead wrangled a sizeable portion of the church together and hung out the Bryan family’s dirty laundry for all of them to see. This information was concealed from you.

2.3. The elders knew Wilson/Nixon held that private meeting.

The elders eventually became aware that Patrick Wilson and William Nixon called a private meeting to disclose the Bryan family affairs to a group of approximately 20 Trinity Church members.

After discovering this, the elders relieved Wilson/Nixon of their diaconal duties but a few days later they were restored after the elders and Wilson/Nixon met and talked together. You will have an email in your inbox on October 14, 2024 when Chase Fluhart emailed the HOH about this.

What Chase did not mention in that email was why Wilson/Nixon had their spat with the elders.

It’s important for me to know as a Head of Household to know that 2 of the deacons were willing to commandeer a portion of Church and disclose sensitive information about the teaching elder’s family outside of oversight of the elders. This information was concealed from you.

2.4. Over half of current elders gave Stuart the green light in 2019

Rewinding a bit to 2019. Stuart became aware of Josiah’s past sexual misconduct that had occured between 2004-2009 was far more wide-ranging than he thought, and had impacted many of the children in the Bryan family. Alarmed by this news, Stuart did 2 things:

  • Stuart called a family meeting so the children could seek reconciliation and forgiveness.
  • Stuart went directly to the elders, told them what he learned about Josiah, and asked them to assess his fitness for pastoral ministry.

The outcome of that family meeting was very mixed by all accounts. The takeaway for you, as HOH, is that there was a family meeting so knowledge re: Josiah’s sexual misconduct was in the very much in the air for all of the Bryans.

The other takeaway – and the primary takeaway of this subsection – is that over half of the elders (Ken Trotter, Bob Dowers, Ed MacBurnie, and Kevin Peterson) spoke with Stuart and Josiah in 2019 about Josiah’s sexual misconduct. The elders made the decision that Stuart should remain as the teaching elder because the sin had been dealt with, and all of the siblings were walking with the LORD since the last known act of sexual misconduct by Josiah in 2009.

Chase Fluhart and Mark Bennon were not elders during this timeframe in 2019.

The situation with Josiah didn’t come out of the clear blue sky for the elders as you were led to believe. Additionally, Stuart had been given the green light by those same elders to remain in full-time pastoral ministry to Trinity. Many of the elders during the string of HOH meetings last year behaved as though they were caught off guard by Stuart, and never mentioned that Stuart had actually made some degree of effort to keep the elders apprised about his family. This information was concealed from you.

2.5. Wilson made disparaging remarks about Stuart during HOH meetings

During a few HOH meetings, Patrick Wilson called Stuart Bryan a “liar” and “notorious for downplaying” things. It was not right for Patrick to say those things in the HOH meetings because Stuart wasn’t there to defend himself.

Patrick’s remarks cultivated the illusion that Stuart was simply the “bad guy” and the elders were the “good guys” in the whole situation. It didn’t help that the elders stayed totally mum about Stuart’s past efforts to ask for counsel from the elders.

The elders should immediately corrected Patrick, and told him to keep those remarks to himself. Stuart was unfairly disgraced by Patrick in the HOH meetings. I think that everyone was constantly getting scandalized by the new information they were learning in the HOH meetings that Patrick got a pass when he was verbally lashing Stuart.

2.6. Elders forced Wilson to resign

When I was convinced that Wilson/Nixon had organized this private meeting, I attempted to make it known during one of the HOH meetings and ask the elders if they knew it had occured. Once I got the microphone and named Wilson/Nixon, Bob Dowers shut me down and took the microphone. Bob claimed I was spreading information that I got from “back channels”. Even though I hadn’t said anything besides their two names, Bob knew what I was going to disclose and that it would be egg on the elders/deacons faces once a line of questioning would open and contradict the overarching narrative, e.g., elders are the good guys and Stuart’s the bad guy.

Towards the end of that HOH meeting, Patrick Wilson’s resignation letter was read by the elders. That resignation letter said that Patrick needed to focus on his family after being involved with the Bryan family situation.

After that HOH meeting, I emailed the elders asking to meet with them to ask them questions about Wilson/Nixon.

In that meeting with the elders, I asked if Patrick was asked to resign by the elders. They affirmed it. I asked why there weren’t any consequences for Patrick even though he had organized that private meeting. I was told by Chase Fluhart that “it is loving to preserve Patrick’s reputation”.

A few months after Patrick resigned from the diaconate his family left Trinity Church.

If Trinity church members have to give Patrick Wilson and William Nixon a special degree of trust to serve as their deacons, and they abuse that trust by calling a private meeting with approximately 20 members of Trinity Church where ugly details about the Bryan family were disclosed, then the elders need to disclose that to HOH so that we’ll know that the elders consider this as permissible behavior for a deacon. Instead the whole shebang was concealed from you.

2.7. $46,000 spent on Telios

On May 5th 2025 at 6:58pm before the 7:00pm HOH that evening, Chase Fluhart sent an email to all HOH with a PDF attachment of the financial reports. Normally, the financial reports are printed out and handed during the HOH meeting. You can search your inbox on that date to find it.

In this financial report, a new line item appeared where an expense of $46,000 was disclosed. This money was spent on Telios, who was the law firm hired by the elders to produce a fact-finding report that was supposed to organize all of the Who, What, Where, When, and Whys… essentially to get the story straight for the elders.

I was under the impression that the report Telios produced would be given to the HOH so they could finally get a sense for what actually happened, but as you know, the elders decided that the report could only be read if you scheduled an appointment with the elders, drove to church, and read the report while they were in the room with you.

In the past, Stuart would call out irregular expenses during the HOH meeting. Whether it was re-financing the church building’s mortgage that fluctuated the interest payments up/down by a hundred dollars or the money sink with Bobo Construction when they expanded the lobby. I can’t make the conclusion that this was intentional, but I believe it’s important you know that a very large sum was paid for a report that you can’t even read without jumping through a lot of hoops.

3. Conclusion

The elders need to come clean with the HOH, and acknowledge their inaction in helping the Bryan family, overseeing the deacons, and leading the church has sowed deep divisions in the church.

Every claim made here can be verified with evidence and first-hand testimony.

But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” – Matthew 20:25-28