Part 6: A Law Unto Himself
How does Robert Hahn keep his iron grip on Chesapeake Church? He’d probably say that it’s because the people trust his leadership. He’d probably say the church’s growth speaks for itself.
Others might say that Robert Hahn holds onto power by kicking to the curb anyone who dares to thwart him or to question his judgment, his “management style”, or his personal behavior.
But there’s more than that to his control strategy. For nearly 20 years he has run the business affairs of the church with almost complete disregard for the requirements of Maryland law. He has done it in a manner calculated to concentrate power and control in himself.
The facts are all matters of public record. You don’t have to be a lawyer to understand them.
And the fact is that Maryland law requires that the business of Chesapeake Church be managed by a Board of Trustees.
But under the reign of Robert Hahn the church’s business is run by “The Session” – a body made up of Robert Hahn and six men he’s picked for their willingness to go along with whatever he says and wants. The way The Robert Hahn Show is run doesn’t line up with the rules.
Chesapeake’s Articles of Incorporation vest power and control over church property and assets in a Board of Trustees
The “rules” start with Chesapeake Church’s founding documents. Churches don’t have to incorporate, but for smart business reasons they almost always do. Chesapeake Church filed Articles of Incorporation and a Plan with the State of Maryland in 1985.
The 1985 Articles are still important today because Maryland law says that all corporations, including religious corporations, have to operate consistently with their Articles of Incorporation. They are a church’s “governing document”.
Trustees aren’t limited to men
Chesapeake Church’s Articles of Incorporation start off by reciting that in late 1984, the adult members of The Chesapeake Presbyterian Church of Dunkirk, Maryland met and voted to form a Maryland religious corporation and to elect four named individuals as Trustees of the new corporation. The new Trustees were described as “sober and discreet male members of said congregation.”
Interestingly, future Trustees were not limited to the male sex. According to Article 3, “The Board of Trustees shall consist of such members as the Corporation shall elect from the communing members 21 years of age or older . . . at the regular annual business or congregational meeting.” There was no restriction as to sex.
Trustees have sole responsibility for managing the church’s business
More importantly, the Articles of Incorporation gave the Board of Trustees “the duty to manage the assets and business of the Corporation.” They’re responsible for the church’s “temporal affairs” (as distinguished from its spiritual concerns).
It’s the church’s Trustees who, legally, hold title to all the property and all the assets of Chesapeake Church. In fact, the Articles are more concerned with the duties and powers of Trustees than anything else. Seven of the sixteen Articles deal with the work of the Trustees.
The 1985 Articles of Incorporation also called for a Board of Elders – and for a Board of Deacons.But these boards were to be entirely different bodies. The role of Elders was to be different from that of Trustees.
State law says a Board of Trustees MUST manage the church’s business
But it wasn’t just the Articles of Incorporation that say that a Board of Trustees must manage the church’s assets and business. Maryland state law says a church’s Trustees must manage its business.
The law gives responsibility for a church’s temporal affairs to Trustees. It gives a church’s Trustees the power to “generally manage any assets of the religious corporation.” It gives the Trustees power to buy and sell any church assets in the State of Maryland. It gives them the power to mortgage or sell church property. And it gives them the power to hire and fire pastors and to set their salaries.
No Trustees anymore – axed by Robert Hahn
Chesapeake Church doesn’t even have Trustees today. Why? Because Robert Hahn arranged for them to be eliminated after he became the church’s senior pastor.
One long-time Chesapeake member remembers a congregational vote back in the mid-2000s to eliminate both the Trustees and the Deacons and to consolidate all their responsibilities with those of the Elders. But it doesn’t appear from the records of the State of Maryland that Hahn or the Elders attempted to amend the 1985 Articles of Incorporation to reflect such a decision. And anything voted on by the congregation would still have needed to be consistent with the Articles of Incorporation and with Maryland law. State law would still have required that a Board of Trustees manage the church’s business.
How in the world has the church managed to get through its business affairs over the last couple of decades without a functioning Board of Trustees? Surely the church has bought, sold, and mortgaged real property. Surely it’s entered into big-dollar contracts. Without question the church has hired and fired staff. Someone has been deploying the financial resources of the church. But all these things needed approval by a Board of Trustees.
Have the Elders of Chesapeake Church signed loan agreements and signed real property deeds and mortgages claiming they were trustees? If, acting at Robert Hahn’s behest, the Elders have misrepresented themselves as Trustees in legal documents when they weren’t, what legal risks did they personally run? If the church’s business transactions weren’t properly authorized, were those transactions even valid?
Eliminating Trustees protected Robert Hahn from any danger of being dethroned
Let’s suppose Chesapeake Church did have Trustees. (It should have Trustees.) If it did, where would the senior pastor of Chesapeake Church fit in?
He’d be one of seven people (men or women) on the Board of Trustees. (Article 3 of the Articles of Incorporation states that “The pastor of the Church shall be a member ex officio of the Board of Trustees.”) The other Trustees would be nominated and elected by the members of the church.
But when Trustees are in charge of a church’s business, they have fiduciary duties by law. They must make independent decisions as fiduciaries in the best interests of the church as a whole. They can’t defer to the wishes or the “authority” of a pastor.
And the senior pastor of Chesapeake Church would serve at the pleasure of its Board of Trustees. Because in Maryland, a church’s Board of Trustees has the power to hire and fire its pastor.
A church governance model that puts Trustees in charge of a church’s business is not a model that a pastor can easily seize control of. That’s the very reason most large “mainline” churches have Trustees, whether the law requires it or not. And the fiduciary responsibilities of Trustees are especially important for independent, nondenominational churches like Chesapeake Church that have no real oversight from outside their small world.
But Chesapeake Church doesn’t have a Board of Trustees. Robert Hahn did away with them.
The Trustees of Chesapeake Church – last heard of in 2005
The church’s original legal name was The Chesapeake Presbyterian Church of Dunkirk, Maryland. In March 2005, though, the church amended its Articles of Incorporation to change its name to “Chesapeake Church.” The Articles of Amendment filed with the State of Maryland were signed by “We the undersigned trustees who approved the resolution advising the foregoing amendments.”
Three individuals signed this 2005 document claiming to be “Trustees”. One was Michael Lea, who is active in the church today. Mr. Lea is shown on the church’s website today as an “Elder” and also as one of the pastors subordinate to the senior pastor, Robert Hahn. Another was Paul C. Miller, who stepped down from his active role as an Elder in February 2022. The third signatory was Robert P. Hahn himself, who had become the church’s senior pastor. Hahn signed the amendment as a “Trustee”.
Had Miller, Lea, and Hahn ever actually been elected Trustees by the members of the church? Did they misrepresent themselves to the State of Maryland? The minutes of the church’s annual meetings would show.
As nearly as this blog can determine, no “Trustee” has been heard of at Chesapeake Church since the filing of this 2005 document.
Who runs the church’s business today? Robert Hahn and his hand-picked Elders.
Today, in March 2022, if you look through the church’s website, you’ll find a document called “The Chesapeake Church Book of Church Order.” It dates from 2006. Robert Hahn had been the senior pastor for some time by then. The Book of Church Order was his doing and his handiwork.
The Book of Church Order doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of the Articles of Incorporation, let alone their supremacy over the BOCO. It recognizes no role for Trustees, doesn’t even mention them. (It is careful, though, to recite that only a man can be a senior pastor or an associate pastor, and that only men can be “Elders”. Some Protestant theologians in the Reformed tradition view the New Testament as teaching that women should not be in leadership positions. But Robert Hahn, whose seminary training was negligible, may well also have felt that women in positions of responsibility would be less tolerant of his peccadillos than men.)
Robert Hahn’s Book of Church Order states flatly, in disregard of both the Articles of Incorporation and Maryland law, that the officers of the church are its Elders, that all the church’s power are administered by them, and that the Elders alone are responsible for the church’s “government” as well as its spiritual oversight.
When the BOCO abolished Trustees, it abolished the Board that had the power to fire Robert Hahn.
The Book of Church Order is at odds with the Articles of Incorporation and state law
In seeming defiance of both the Articles of Incorporation and Maryland state law, section 11-1 of the Book of Church Order gives responsibility for the church’s business affairs instead to the “Church Session” (that is, the Elders plus Robert Hahn). It states that one of the jobs of The Session is “to approve and adopt the budget”. The Session is to “approve actions of special importance affecting church property.” The Session is “to receive offerings.” The BOCO states that “If the church desires to be relieved of a pastor, such action is the responsibility of the Session.”
[The original version of this piece included a short paragraph at this point concerning the abolition of the church's Board of Deacons. It asserted that it was Robert Hahn who did away with the Board of Deacons. A reader has kindly brought it to our attention that this assertion was inaccurate. This reader, a person active in the church during the early 2000s as a Deacon and as a ministry leader, advises us that it was the Deacons themselves, as a group, who came to realize that the biblical role of deacons was being performed adequately by others and that the Board of Deacons had become redundant.
“After months of prayer and discussion,” he states, “we, as a group, recommended to the session of elders that the Board of Deacons end and recognize that the deacon role was being fulfilled by the ministry leaders of the church.” He states that the members of the church voted to accept this recommendation, marking the end of the formal Diaconate. This former Deacon states that the Deacons’ recommendation was not influenced by Robert Hahn or by the Elders.
Since the Book of Church Order made no provision for Deacons, we mistakenly assumed that the role of Deacons when the Book of Church Order was adopted. That was not the case, and Hahn was not responsible for the change. We stand corrected.]
Recipe for accountability: Robert Hahn puts “his” people on a board that’s supposed to exercise over HIM
Who makes up “The Session”? The Articles of Incorporation say that “The Session shall consist of the Pastor of the Church . . . together with the Elders elected by the Congregation to serve on the Session.” While the 1985 Articles of Incorporation – which are still operative – do mention Elders, they don’t set forth their duties and powers.
So today The Session at Chesapeake Church consists of Robert Hahn and six Elders. But how does one get to be an Elder?
Well, there’s the way it’s supposed to work under the BOCO, and then there’s the way it actually works. In mid-February 2022, when Chesapeake Church members got notice of the church’s upcoming congregational meeting, they were invited to propose candidates for Elders. In theory, any member could propose anybody (but not a woman).
But in practice, as long-time church members have told this blog, new Elders have always been picked by Robert Hahn.
Put another way, he puts “his” people on the body (the Board of Elders) that is supposed to exercise oversight over him.
According to the church’s website, its Elders today include the Pastoral Development Pastor (Michael Lea) and the brother (Jonathan Miller) of the Worship Pastor (Christopher Miller). Christopher Miller is Robert Hahn’s son-in-law, married to his daughter Jacqueline Miller (who is President of End Hunger, a not-for-profit organization affiliated with the church). Jonathan Miller is the son of Paul C. Miller, the Elder who retired a few weeks ago after a stint of many years. (Jonathan Miller’s wife Ahna Miller is also listed as staff on the church website as a director at End Hunger.) It’s all in the family.
The Elder just stay on and on
And they keep serving. In a February 18, 2022 “thank-you” letter to the congregation, Paul C. Miller wrote that “even though I will no longer be active on Session, I will remain your Elder until God calls me home.” Perhaps Mr. Miller did not mean that literally. But the Articles of Incorporation provide that “no Elder shall be elected to serve for more than two (2) consecutive terms,” with a year’s break before the same person can be elected again. The Book of Church Order has a different rule, one that seems to encourage perpetual service: “The term of service on the Session for an elder will be in three year intervals with successive terms being encouraged.” How many years in a row have the church’s Elders been serving?
Having “his” people as Elders – including pastors who serve under him! – minimizes any chance that the Elders might someday seek to hold Robert Hahn accountable. It ensures they won’t rock the boat, won’t question his “authority”, from a position on The Session.
Some church members may remember that a year or so ago, someone nominated the church’s then-Lead Teaching Pastor (“Ron” in an earlier post on this blog) to be an Elder. But Hahn discouraged Ron from agreeing to be a candidate. He told Ron that it might be too much for him, given his other duties.
But was that the real reason? Robert Hahn had already drawn Ron into his inner circle and made him one of his regular drinking companions. Did he feel that was enough for the time being, and that he could save a spot on the Board of Elders as a “future” reward for Ron’s fealty? Or might it have been that Robert Hahn sensed that Ron – and especially Ron’s wife, who had grave reservations about Hahn’s character and personal behavior – did not feel the “loyalty” to him personally that he valued above all else in an Elder?
Robert Hahn’s rules give him and his Elders a veto over new Elder candidates
At any rate, Robert Hahn could be sure that no critic of his would ever become an Elder. That’s because Robert Hahn and the existing Elders have a final veto over all new elder candidates.
How’s that work? Under section 7.5 of Robert Hahn’s Book of Church Order, “every candidate for the office of elder is to be approved by the Session by which he is to be ordained.” No one can even be proposed as an Elder of Chesapeake Church who hasn’t been approved by Robert Hahn and his men.
If there were a Board of Trustees . . .
Let’s sum up. If the church were actually operating consistently with Maryland law and with its Articles of Incorporation, it would have a duly elected and functioning Board of Trustees. Its trustees would have control over the church’s budget, its property, its money, its business, and such matters as hiring and firing pastors and setting pastoral salaries.
But today, under cover of Robert Hahn’s Book of Church Order, the all-powerful Session has control of the business affairs and assets of the church and has assumed powers that belong to a Board of Trustees. As a practical matter, Robert Hahn is accountable to no one.
And if Chesapeake Church actually had a functioning Board of Trustees, that board would be open to women – because the Articles of Incorporation didn’t restrict it to men.
My way or the highway
Are Robert Hahn and the Elders of Chesapeake Church aware that the church’s governance is irregular? They can’t not be. A few years back a church member of several years’ standing examined the church’s governing documents and compared them to the church’s actual practice under the Book of Church Order. He was concerned that the church was not operating in accordance with its Articles of Incorporation and the Church Plan, both of which had been filed with the State of Maryland and never amended.
When he raised his concerns with Robert Hahn and the other Elders, Hahn thanked him for sharing. Several months later, the Elders met and determined that this former member was not welcome back on Church property or to serve in any capacity in any church ministry.
For reference:
If you’re interested in taking a look at Chesapeake Church’s Articles of Incorporation (which anyone can download from the State of Maryland website that keeps such things), here they are:
Chesapeake Church Articles of Incorporation
If you’re interested in what the Book of Church Order looks like, here it is. You can also find it on Chesapeake Church’s website.
In late 2020 the Maryland Court of Special Appeals issued an opinion in a case called Vaughn v. Faith Bible Church of Sudlersville which confirmed that, under the Maryland Religious Corporation Law, only a church’s Board of Trustees is authorized to fire a church’s pastor. If you’re interested in reading it, here it is:
Vaughn v. Faith Bible Church of Sudlersville
We repeat our request that the leadership hire an outside investigation team to thoroughly examine the abuse and mistreatment of those who were under the authority of Robert Hahn.
Here is one such organization: