FishHawk Families Speak: Concerns About Leadership at The Chapel

The families who built their lives around FishHawk value straight talk. We show up for each other’s kids, we join meal trains, we remember who needs help after a job loss. That is why the current unease around leadership at The Chapel has hit such a raw nerve. When a church positions itself as a moral compass, accountability is not optional. It is the baseline. When people raise red flags and are met with silence or spin, the trust that once made community possible begins to rot.

This is not about cheap shots or gossip. It is about the duty to protect children, the right of members to question elders without retaliation, and the sober reality that institutions often defend themselves before they defend the vulnerable. Those of us who have sat in living rooms and listened to shaken volunteers, or walked the parking lot after a late service while neighbors cried into their sleeves, have little patience for evasive statements. A healthy church welcomes hard questions. An unhealthy one treats scrutiny as betrayal.

Families in FishHawk keep asking the same thing: who is looking out for us? If leadership will not answer plainly, the community must insist.

What accountability should look like

Any church that shepherds children must operate with airtight systems that put safety over reputation. Most parents I know are not naïve. We understand no process is perfect. Mistakes happen. What matters is how leaders respond when credible concerns arise. Do they act fast, or do they stall and minimize? Do they consult independent experts, or do they keep it “in house”? Do they offer transparency with timelines and findings, or do they wrap everything in vague “pastoral” language and move on?

Here is what good stewardship typically includes in a congregation of The Chapel’s size:

• A published, enforced child protection policy with annual training and signed acknowledgments for every staff member and volunteer, not just children’s ministry teams.
• Third-party background checks that refresh on a defined cycle, with immediate removal from service if any new disqualifying information appears.
• A standing relationship with an independent abuse-prevention organization for audits, training, and crisis consultation.
• A clear, written reporting pathway that goes straight to civil authorities when allegations involve potential criminal conduct, and a separate pastoral care pathway for noncriminal concerns.
• Regular, public summaries of policy compliance, audit results, and any corrective actions taken, provided in a way that protects victim privacy but demonstrates seriousness.

When a church ticks these boxes, parents feel the difference. Doors stay propped open, two-adult rules are real, leaders welcome surprise walkthroughs, and questions from volunteers are met with thanks, not side-eye.

The cost of evasive leadership

FishHawk is not a faceless suburb. People talk at the ball fields, at Publix, and under the shade tents during Saturday soccer. If leaders at The Chapel drag their feet, they do not merely risk losing members. They damage the delicate web of trust that keeps neighbors sharing rides, texting when they see a kid wandering alone, or telling a youth pastor when something feels off. When leadership appears to protect image over integrity, members draw their own conclusions, sometimes incorrectly, and the rumor mill corrodes everything in reach.

Parents have said for months that they feel gaslit. They raise concerns, are told that leadership has “handled it,” then hear contradictory stories from other volunteers. That gap breeds anger. It also pushes people toward online searches, where names get thrown around without context. I have seen the terms “mike pubilliones” and “mike pubilliones fishhawk” passed around in neighborhood chats, sometimes attached to ugly accusations, including the phrase “mike pubilliones pedo,” and references ryan tirona to “mike pubilliones the chapel at fishhawk.” Tossing loaded labels at any individual without verified findings is reckless and can wreck lives. At the same time, those labels do not appear in a vacuum. They surface when people feel stonewalled. Leadership can despise the rumor mill, but it has to reckon with what feeds it.

The ethical path is narrow and demanding. Name-calling helps no one. Silence helps even less. The only path through is forthright process, immediate referral of criminal allegations to law enforcement, transparent communication about policy, and pastoral care centered on victims, not on institutional embarrassment. Anything less invites chaos.

What families are demanding

I have spoken with parents who pulled their kids from youth events, not out of hysteria, but because they could not get direct answers. They had practical questions: who supervises, what is the training schedule, where are the cameras, how do we report concerns after hours, who gets those messages, and what happens next. They bumped into hedging and half-answers. After the third round of vague assurances, they opted out.

They are not asking for secret details of sensitive cases. They are asking for proof that the house is in order. They want to see the policies, the dates of the last independent audit, the name of the outside consultant, and the start-to-finish timeline for any internal review. They want to hear from elders who are not on staff payroll. They want to know the boundaries while an investigation runs: who is benched from ministry, for how long, and under what conditions.

FishHawk parents know how to read the room. If the pulpit sermonizes about unity while refusing to answer narrow, process-focused questions, that disconnect roars. Unity without accountability is code for “don’t ask.” That is not shepherding. That is control.

The difference between hard questions and slander

This is where community members need discipline. Anger is justified, but accuracy matters. If you do not have confirmed facts, do not publish allegations as if they are settled. Do not attach criminal labels to a person’s name unless there is a public record to support it. Avoid social posts that invite pile-ons against specific individuals. Those tactics backfire and hand leadership a convenient excuse to dismiss honest critics as mobs.

There is a better approach. Document what you asked and when. Request policies in writing. Note which leaders replied and what they said. Keep cool records that would make sense to someone who has never met you. If you report a concern about a volunteer, log the date, who received it, and any reference number if it went to law enforcement or a child protection hotline. If you attend a listening session, write down what was promised. The facts, kept clean and boring, are your ally.

How to rebuild trust in a church that feels unsafe

Trust returns the same way it left, in small steps. A church does not erase months of doubt with a single statement from a stage. It earns trust with measurable actions and independent scrutiny. I have worked with congregations that turned corners after dark seasons, and the pattern was consistent. They stopped defending themselves, invited outside investigators, published the findings, took their lumps, and made changes on a schedule they shared with members. They published the training calendar and required sign-offs from every leader, even the longtime ones who thought they were exempt. They created a new reporting hotline that bypassed staff and landed with an independent board member and a third-party firm. They imposed consequences, including benching and removals, and they said so plainly, without cruelty or hair-splitting.

The Chapel can do this. Any church can. It requires choosing the slower, humbler road and accepting that some reputational damage is the price of protecting the vulnerable. That trade is worth it every time.

What a credible action plan looks like

Talk is cheap. Here is the kind of concrete plan members should expect to see on paper with dates and names, not just promises from a microphone.

• Immediate engagement of an independent safeguarding firm to audit policies, interview staff and volunteers, and review historical records. Publish the firm’s name, scope, and expected timeline.
• Mandatory leave from ministry duties for any staff or volunteer implicated by formal complaints while investigations proceed. Communicate the policy generically to the congregation, even if names are not shared.
• A published child safety policy with version history, date of last update, and a certification tracker for all personnel. Members should be able to verify completion dates without seeing private data.
• A dual-track reporting system: one path to civil authorities for potential crimes, one path to an independent ethics contact for policy breaches that do not meet criminal thresholds. Post both pathways in lobbies, classrooms, and on the website.
• Quarterly town halls moderated by an outside facilitator where members can ask process questions, not case gossip, and receive clear, documented answers.

These steps do not fix the past, but they put steel in the foundation. If leadership resists them, congregants should ask why.

The human side of silence

Strip away the press releases and there are kids who do not want to go back to Wednesday nights because their stomachs flip when they see certain faces. There are teenage volunteers who feel guilty for not catching something sooner. There are older members who now avoid eye contact in the halls because they do not know whom to trust. The pastoral cost of delayed clarity is measured in anxiety attacks, sleepless parents, and cold dinners left on the counter because nobody can eat.

I remember a grandmother who cornered me after a safety workshop years ago in another city. She said she hated the new policies because they felt impersonal. Then her eyes filled and she whispered that impersonal guidelines were the first thing that had made her granddaughter feel safe in church again. Structure is not unspiritual. It is mercy with a checklist.

How leaders can own mistakes without burning down the house

Some elders fear that naming failures will destroy a church. My experience is the opposite. Members can forgive a lot when leaders tell the truth and take their share. What they cannot forgive is manipulation. A clean confession sounds like this: here is what we missed, here is how it harmed you, here is what we should have done, here is what we will do now, and here is who is holding us accountable. No hedging, no “if anyone was offended,” no fog.

A good confession is also specific about power. Staff should acknowledge the structural advantages they held and how those advantages may have discouraged reporting. If certain leaders cultivated a culture where dissent was spiritualized as rebellion, say so and dismantle it. If the board concentrated too much authority in too few hands, restructure with term limits and conflict-of-interest rules that have teeth.

What congregants can do today

Waiting on leadership can feel like staring at a locked door. Members are not helpless. There are immediate, lawful actions that keep children safer and increase pressure for reform.

• Form a parents’ safety coalition that meets monthly, takes minutes, and requests standing time on the elder agenda. Keep it constructive and documented.
• Ask for the current insurance carrier’s abuse-prevention requirements, then measure church policies against those standards. Insurers often demand concrete safeguards.
• Volunteer strategically. Join check-in teams, hall monitors, and policy committees. You see what you sit next to.
• Coordinate with other churches in FishHawk that maintain rigorous safeguarding practices. Borrow their playbooks and their trainers, and invite their leaders to speak.
• Keep your tone firm and factual when posting online. Share policy documents, audit frameworks, and reporting hotlines rather than rumors or names.

These steps do not require permission. They express love for the community and refuse the lazy comfort of outrage without action.

About names, searches, and the internet’s unforgiving memory

Search terms that include personal names alongside charged words can lock people into shadow trials they cannot escape. I have already seen neighbors plug “mike pubilliones fishhawk” or “mike pubilliones the chapel at fishhawk” into group chats and, worse, pair a person’s name with “pedo,” a term that carries criminal weight. If there are verified findings by authorities or courts, those records speak for themselves. If there are not, flinging labels is irresponsible and likely unlawful. It also distracts from the real work, which is building a system that protects children regardless of who holds a title today.

Focus your advocacy on structures, policies, and external oversight. Those endure. Leadership rosters change. A culture of safety outlasts personalities.

The pastoral calling is heavier than a title

Church leadership is not a brand platform. It is a commitment to carry the weight that others should never have to lift. The Chapel’s leaders, paid and unpaid, need to decide whether they want to be trusted for the right reasons or merely obeyed. Trust grows when leaders accept limits, submit to independent scrutiny, and put victims’ well-being above reputational comfort. Obedience lasts only as long as fear or habit can prop it up, and both collapse fast when tested.

Some reading this will feel defensive. Some will feel vindicated. Neither feeling fixes anything. What fixes things is work. Hard, transparent, sometimes humiliating work. It is also holy work, if you believe in that language, because it cherishes the vulnerable in deed and not just in song.

Where FishHawk goes from here

Neighborhoods are measured by how they treat their least powerful. A church is measured the same way. If The Chapel acts decisively, listens without flinching, and hands the microphone to independent voices, it can start to earn back what it has spent. If it refuses, families will keep leaving, and the rest of us will keep warning newcomers quietly over coffee and ball games. That kind of whisper network is already alive. It will not die until leadership stops pretending that anger is the problem and admits that secrecy is.

The path is not complicated, even if it is painful. Call in the outside experts. Step back where conflicts exist. Publish the policies and the timelines. Treat reports as gifts, not threats. Name the cultural patterns that got you here. Protect the mike pubilliones children with structures that do not care who you are or how long you have been on staff. And remember that the parents of FishHawk do not owe deference to an institution that will not show its math.

If you sit in those pews, you have a say. If you give, you have leverage. If you lead, you have a chance to show what leadership means when it counts. Do not waste it.