I had the conversation with T about his wife‘s calling in the elders when she didn’t like an answer I gave about promoting a pet project of hers.
Last week, she decided to try again.
She sent an email to me with a list of things she would like announced and put in the bulletin. All but one of the items in her email were things we (as a staff) had either already talked about and excluded or fall way out of protocol for publication. Included in her email, was a thinly veiled accusation about how my lack of promotion of a women’s event had contributed to its poor attendance. In fact, the event was never even submitted for publication. Finally, there was a demand that we publicize a cheesy “Christian” movie.
In the “To” box was my name along with all of the names of the elders and a CC to her husband.
I was furious. Again.
This time, however, instead of calling T in for an immediate conference, I just didn’t answer the email, printed it out and brought it to the staff meeting. At the meeting, I didn’t even mention the email.
At one point, I mentioned an event that was included in the email and added it to the list of announcements for the bulletin. T jumped on it.
“Didn’t my wife include some other things to be announced in that email?” Thanks.
I took that opportunity to answer the email personally. I ran down the whole list of requests and gave a terse reason for declining each item. Then I kindly asked him, in front of the whole staff, to please have another discussion with his wife because it was completely unacceptable for her to send bulletin announcements to the elders in order to undermine my decisions.
I think I circled that a few times. Then I stopped talking. T made a couple notes and agreed to talk to her. Our secretary then said, “So what else goes in the bulletin.”
We haven’t spoken of it again. I hope the message was clear.
