Church of the Highlands Pastor Chris Hodges said that no clergy accused of sexual misconduct will ever stay at The Lodge, a retreat center that opened this year primarily for the “restoration” of pastors suffering from burnout.

So far, the center on the church’s campus in Irondale has primarily hosted events and guest speakers, Hodges said in an interview with AL.com.

Hodges said that his previous comments in sermons and videos about a “pastoral restoration center” where ministers can “rest, worship and grow” referred to pastors suffering from burnout, not accusations of misconduct.

A story on The Lodge published on AL.com on July 10 quoted a former church staff member and outside observers who wondered whether the center might be used to house clergy accused of sexual misconduct. That is not the case, Hodges said in an interview with a different reporter on July 13. He had not responded to repeated requests for comment for the previous story.

In a 2021 church conference sermon about pastors suffering from depression and at risk of suicide, Hodges said he was involved in “about 20 pastoral moral failures or restorations. I love doing that. I want to be known for that.”

That sermon did not mention The Lodge, nor was it intended to describe the future mission of The Lodge, Hodges said.

“I’m not talking about the ones that are in sin,” Hodges said in an interview. “I’m talking about the ones that are ready to quit. All this came out of the pandemic.”

He said he spoke by telephone with about 20 pastors suffering from exhaustion and burnout during the pandemic. None of the 20 clergy he referenced were accused of sexual misconduct, he said.

“Those are all guys with burnout from the pandemic,” Hodges said. “They weren’t coming here. This was still in the middle of the pandemic. These were guys getting ready to quit. Most of those weren’t moral in nature, they weren’t sexual in nature. They were burnout in nature.”

He wants The Lodge to address that.

“We hope one day to have four couples at a time do a five-day event, have a date night, help them catch a breath of fresh air,” Hodges said. “They’re going to be there with their spouse. These are couples.”

AL.com has reported over the past decade on three cases in which Hodges played a role in rehabilitating or attempting to restore a pastor who had a moral failing.

The Church of the Highlands has on occasion assisted pastors in need of restoration because of moral failure, according to Hodges. “If it’s a recoverable offense, that has been the protocol,” Hodges said. “They need to step down for a season, or whatever it is.”

Hodges said that the church’s role in a restoration process for a former megachurch pastor who was on the staff at Church of the Highlands from 2019-2021 had no connection to the planning of The Lodge.

The timing of the Micahn Carter case, the same year the Lodge was announced, may have caused confusion, he said. “I wasn’t working with any other sexual or moral cases, not a single one,” Hodges said.

Carter, former pastor of Together Church in Yakima, Washington, stepped down in April 2019 from Together Church for undisclosed reasons. Carter joined the staff of the Church of the Highlands in Birmingham later in 2019. Hodges said that representatives of Carter’s former church asked him if he could help restore Carter and he agreed. Church leaders later found out that Carter was accused of a sexual assault by a former assistant, and cut ties with Carter.

“In 2019, Micahn Carter’s Pastoral Overseers from Washington state asked Church of the Highlands to assist them in directing a ministerial restoration process for him,” the church said in a statement released in 2021. “Highlands agreed to do so, and since then we have been working with Micahn and his family. Recently, Highlands received correspondence raising new allegations about events that occurred over two years ago in Washington state. When we shared this information with the Carters, they resigned from their positions on staff to work through these issues themselves. Highlands is no longer involved in the restoration process.”

That effort was not connected in any way to the planning of The Lodge, Hodges said.

“It’s an unfortunate coincidence – they are not connected,” Hodges said. “One of the unfortunate coincidences is that the beginning of the Lodge, that we’ve had on our heart for years, kind of coincided with that Micahn Carter story,” Hodges said.

Hodges expressed regret that he allowed Carter to preach a sermon at the Church of the Highlands on July 26, 2020.

“I should have never let him have a moment on our stage,” Hodges said.

Hodges said when he learned Carter was accused of sexual assault, he took immediate action.

“The day we found out is when we made that decision,” Hodges said. “I asked him to resign. He resigned.”

Carter has filed a lawsuit against his accuser and denies the allegations.

Hodges first got involved in pastoral restoration a decade ago with one of his mentors.

When Associate Pastor Dino Rizzo joined the staff in 2013, Hodges announced that Rizzo was in a process of restoration after leaving the Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge following an inappropriate relationship.

“When the situation came to light, I and the other overseers at HPC got involved,” Hodges said when Rizzo joined his staff. “It was our responsibility. We guided the church over the past year through healing and restoration.”

Hodges said at the time he and the other overseers of Healing Place Church devised a restoration plan that called for Rizzo to step down from ministry for one year, and have a second year of supervised ministry, and complete other requirements overseers felt would eventually qualify Rizzo to minister again.

Despite those cases, The Church of the Highlands does not operate a program for pastors accused of sexual misconduct or moral failures, and that was not the intent of The Lodge, Hodges said.

“We have this stigma on it now that we’re trying to break because it’s just flat-out not true,” Hodges said.

Hodges said he won’t take on a case of sexual misconduct like Carter again.

“We’re not taking on any more,” Hodges said. “I don’t even want to say it that way. It makes the assumption that we’ve done it a lot, and we haven’t.”

The Church of the Highlands has no program that applies to all cases of pastoral restoration that involve moral failing, Hodges said.

“Here’s the problem with that,” he said. “There are no two cases alike. It’s hard to create a policy on something that is so unique in every situation.”

The Association of Related Churches, which Hodges co-founded to help launch new churches around the country, is not a governing organization over the churches it helps start, he said.

“The biggest misnomer about ARC is that we have authority over our churches, and we don’t,” Hodges said. “They’re all locally governed. We couldn’t take a guy out if we wanted to. We have authority over none of our churches. We train them all to be locally governed. They have their own elder boards, local. That’s who has the authority. These are all independent churches who are locally governed. That is probably the biggest misconception about ARC.”

The church previously declined to comment on The Lodge to media, because Hodges feels the church has been treated unfairly at times, he said.

“The day we opened in April, I made this video, that says what it is,” Hodges said.

The church website now features a page with photos of The Lodge and a summary:

“The Lodge at Grants Mill is a place where pastors and ministry leaders can be hosted, refreshed, rejuvenated and refocused on their calling, so that they can continue to spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth,” the church web site description says. “With recent statistics saying that pastoral burnout is at an all-time high, with 1 in 4 pastors planning to retire or quit before 2030, we are committed to resourcing and helping pastors lead healthy and strong churches for a lifetime so that they can make a difference in their communities and beyond.”

The Lodge, a $4.5 million retreat center with four bedrooms and a conference meeting room, opened in April on the Church of the Highlands campus on Grants Mill Road.

It has already hosted guest speakers for church events, he said.

“Our guest speakers prefer to stay there because it’s 200 yards from the stage,” he said.

The Lodge currently does not have staff or programs geared to pastoral restoration, Hodges said. “Right now, there is no programming,” Hodges said. “We haven’t built the programming up. Right now, it’s used as needed for guest speakers.”

So far, no programs have been developed for clergy burnout, which he said was his main goal for the center.

Hodges hopes to establish a program led by church staff for pastors and wives to help refresh them and keep them in ministry.

“The hope is that we will create some type of programming for those who need a retreat,” Hodges said. “We don’t have the first day of programming planned yet, but we are going to help people who are tired and discouraged. We are going to do that.”