At this church I am not one of the elders.
Not even close. They take the opportunity to tell me that regularly.
We have an elders meeting tomorrow. Normally, I am a part. This week, the chairman sent a note saying they wanted to meet the first hour without me.
It wouldn’t be so bad if I trusted them, but there have been so many things in the past year that have eroded that trust…
Oh, by the way, 1 year last week. It seems like longer.
I should clarify, though I hated the movie–cheesy, dumb, preachy–I would not make a big deal over the elders wanting to promote it. The BIG problem was the tantrum that was appeased.
Just sayin’
In a world where Hollywood seems to push us in every direction except toward God, it is refreshing to see a film that is unashamed of the God and of the gospel.
Last year, SF attended a children’s conference where the pastors of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, GA were keynote speakers. Their church is the driving force behind Sherwood Pictures which has produced a number of feature films—Facing the Giants, Fireproof, Flywheel and soon to be one more. They brought a prescreen copy of their new movie, “Courageous.” Sarah came home really excited about the movie. She arranged for the staff and elders to preview the movie a few months ago.
It is a movie squarely aimed at raising the level of fatherhood among both Christian and non-Christian men.
We would like to encourage everyone to see this movie. It will be released on September 30—coming to a theater near you!
….Yet another 2 year old who learns that temper tantrums work.
Perhaps the best way to get things done is through the back door.
T’s wife got exactly what she wanted. The elders wrote me tonight to tell me to promote the movie.
So, two million dollar questions. Do I promote the movie by publishing my review of it–Sexy Evangelism? Second question. Do I give T’s wife my office?
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.
For those who follow…
I’ve kind of been out of posting for a while…I’ve started a number of posts and haven’t finished them. So over the next few days, I’ll finish them and get them posted. I think I can get them to post on the proper day (back a couple weeks) but if not, they will come after this post.
I guess you guys can figure it out. :)
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.
