I watched the director’s cut last night. Want to add some more data points to the timeline. Eventually I will integrate all these comments into one large post. In the meantime, I am building the story one post at a time.
8/12/13 – director’s cut – This is the date on the letter from the zoning and planning commission directing the church to close the program within 30 days.
At issue is violations of city code.
The ironic thing is Jay Reinke states in the director’s cut that the Fire Chief did a walk-through of the facility a year earlier knowing what the program involved and said it would be okay to continue the program. A year after the walkthrough? Time to shut it down.
9/12/13 – director’s cut – This would be 30 days after the city’s letter and therefore approximately the day the program closed.
Mid-September 2013 – director’s cut – Precise date is not mentioned in the director’s cut, but this is when Mr. Reinke told Jesse Moss of the pending resignation.
9/22/13 – I understand this is the day that Jay Reinke resigned. This would then be the date he read his resignation letter.
In the director’s cut, Jay Reinke indicates the reading of his confession letter was part of a public confession and absolution. He indicated this involved him confessing his sin publicly in front of the congregation. In turn, the congregation publicly gave absolution.
What does that mean? He acknowledged in public that what he had done violated God’s laws and that he had sinned against God. His comments probably also included an acknowledgment that he had sinned against the congregation and each of its members. The congregation declared, corporately and in public, that they forgave Jay for his sin against them.
I am making a wild guess, but will guess nevertheless, that Mr. Reinke also had a time of private confession and absolution with the district president. Such conversation, if it took place, would have involved acknowledging his sin against God followed by the district president declaring that God had forgiven him. The district president is a pastor who was Mr. Reinke’s ecclesiastical supervisor during the time Mr. Reinke was a pastor.
We will never know what took place in that private conversation. As another guess, the district president will go to jail before he reveals to anyone the content of that discussion.
Comments in the director’s cut indicate the voiceover during the scene is actually a recording of his confessions during the worship service. My impression from the documentary is that this section of audio was Mr. Reinke reading the letter to Mr. Moss apart from the worship time. Actually, it is from the worship service.
When movie was finished but before release – directors cut – I don’t know the precise date. The director’s cut was recorded right after the post production was finished. If I understand various recorded comments correctly, this would have been the first time Mr. Reinke saw the movie. Or, he may have seen it once and then they immediately sat down to record the commentary.
Approximately March 2014 – Overnighters DVD – The DVD of the documentary has an interview conducted with Mr. Reinke six months later, which is in terms of when the program closed and he resigned as pastor. That would put the interview in the March 2014 timeframe.
I’ll have more comments on things mentioned in the director’s cut later. Some of them are weird in light of Mr. Graves indictment.
Mr. Moss indicated in the director’s cut that he was filming for about 18 months of the approximately 2 years the program was open