I arrived for prayer like I do every Monday morning at 6. The elders, T (our associate pastor) and I pray for the body.
After the prayer time, T had a question for me. He is going to be out of town at a board meeting and would like to stay over the weekend and preach for a pastor in the area. He wanted to make sure that would be ok.
We have just retooled the whole church program to center around small groups. Every single program in the church is being reworked or scrapped if it doesn’t fit with moving people from worship to small groups. It is a big deal. T is in charge of the small group ministry and we are kicking it off the week before he wants to be gone.
I was floored that he wanted to be gone.
I told him, “No, this small group ministry is your baby. You need to be present to make it work.” “But I have it all lined up?” “No, you have to be here.”
He got a dejected look on his face. He thought a minute and began to speak.
“I really miss preaching. I would like to make myself available to churches in the area to preach–about once every 6 weeks. Would that be ok?”
I paused for a second. I thought this was surely not really happening.
T is the highest paid person on staff. He makes $10,000 more than I do. He gets 4 weeks of vacation and then wants to be gone once every 6 weeks. That would make him gone 25% of the time. That is nuts. Completely nuts.
I told him there was no way. He has a job here and needs to apply himself to making the small group ministry go well. He doesn’t know what to do. He really wants to preach.
Maybe he should. But if he wants to preach, he needs to find a position at a church where he is not the associate in charge of small groups.
Sheesh.
the assoc. makes 10k more than you do? but they can’t pay you more? sounds like a lot of issues.
I was really floored by your post…I had no idea that the head pastor of a church would not be making the largest salary. The head pastorship is the most intense job, the leader, the boss so to speak. I just have no words to describe how odd this was to me.
I just wanted to say that the small group idea is so important. When we were first having our babies we were in a small group for about 7 years. It was one of the most precious times in my life. We prayed together, played together, had our children, supported each other in every way. Studied the Word together. These families came together to pray for Gideon and support us in every way. To this day even though we have moved, if a need arises, I think of these families to call for prayer. And, this group was run for free. There was no paid staff looking over us. God really blesses us when we get together in love and grace.