Religion · Atlanta, GA Metro · August 25, 2026
All Four PMBC Pastors Resign After Anonymous Plagiarism Dossier Scandal
What Alinsky tactic is being used
3 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 13
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
The whole operation is one man singled out: an anonymous packet naming Tom Buck alone, freezing him at 17 sermons pulled from nine years of preaching, personalizing it down to an illustration in which he allegedly inserted his own wife's name, and then polarizing by going to roughly thirty FBC Lindale deacons and later to outside ministries urging them to 'conduct your own investigation.' Using Buck's own church as the return address was designed to make the isolation feel as if it came from inside his own house. Reporting says four elders of one congregation knew of it while the target had no one to answer.
Counter-Rule 13 · Radical Solidarity
Stand publicly with whoever has been singled out. Isolation is the whole mechanism; refusing it disarms the tactic.
Refuse to be a relay: if a dossier about a pastor arrives anonymously in your inbox or church office, do not forward it, and say plainly in your circle that unsigned packets are not evidence. Read what FBC Lindale actually concluded and what Buck said to his own congregation before repeating anything. Write one short, signed note to the man being named — not a defense of his conduct, simply a refusal to treat him as a case file.
Rule 4
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
The dossier's leverage was Buck's own published standard — he had condemned sermon plagiarism, so the packet held him to it and accused his church of failing to deal with 'public sin biblically.' The reversal is the story: the same Pray's Mill board that in 2025 treated Josh Buice's anonymous accounts as disqualifying slander was itself reported to have prepared and mailed an anonymous accusation, and the gap between the stated rule and the practice is what forced all four resignations.
Counter-Rule 4 · Radical Integrity
Close the gap between stated values and actual practice before anyone else finds it. This tactic only works where the gap is real.
Close your own gap this month rather than waiting to be caught in it. Ask your elders to put in writing, before there is a crisis, what attribution the pulpit owes to commentaries and sermon aids, and what the church will do with a complaint against an elder. Then hold your own leaders and your own faction to that written rule the first time it costs you something.
Rule 11
“If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.”
The packet did not allege sloppy footnoting; it alleged 'habitual and systemic' plagiarism, counting 45 instances across sermons selected from nine years while checking only one commentary series. Pushed that hard, it broke into its counterside: Lindale's review found a genuine but limited attribution problem in commentary use rather than a man preaching other men's sermons, Phil Johnson called it traffic-ticket-level, and the men behind the overclaim lost their offices.
Counter-Rule 11 · Proportional Truth
Refuse to overclaim, even where it would help. One exaggeration hands the other side the only weapon that works permanently.
When you repeat this story, state both halves in the same breath — a real attribution failure that the pastor confessed and corrected, and an anonymous campaign that vastly overstated it. Resist the two easy versions ('he plagiarized, he's finished' and 'nothing happened'). If you speak about it in a class or small group, write down beforehand the sentence you can actually source, and say 'I don't know' about the rest.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
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