Journal

Today I am simply journing some of what has happened in the life of the church for the last several months. You would find this boring and that's fine. I'm frankly ashamed to write this, but I must to straighten out my thoughts. Let me first say that I'm not pleased that we even have denominations and I think we overlook much of what Christ taught in order to advance our own adgenda. I believe we must focus on the basic teaching: love one another, do justly, do what is right and what humbly before our God.

We bought in a new pastor last Easter, his father is well known in our denomination but I believe that our search committee did an excellent job in seeking out who God wanted. Shortly after he arrived he brought in a man to be associate pastor. This particular church is structured such that the pastor can hire anyone he wants, we don't vote on that, but the church votes on the financial package (I think most people didn't realize that until now, other positions the pastors prior had always sought input from the congregation). As it turns out, the AP (associate pastor) is now well loved, but many of us were upset with how he was brought in.

The first hint I had of upset was when our music minister left. I knew no specifics, but for this man to leave without a job lined up was strange, and there was obvious tension. However, I thought very little of it. The man that replaced the music minister was also given the position of missions pastor. He has also become well loved.

Next you should know about our youth minister (YM). He's been at the church for many years but served with the youth as pastor for 5 years. I've been amazed at his passion for youth, for outreach, for everything. He is well loved and I for one have always felt like God will do much with this one.

So around November there was a man in the church that is very well respected: deacon, pastor advisory committee, Sunday school teacher, pretty much everything. He is also well respected in the community, even by people that dislike his stand on issues (he is involved in politics, but really, his "enemies" dislike his politics but all say he's a nice guy). This man began questioning some of the new pastors actions, things that when he was interviewing he said he wouldn't do. He tried to make appointments to talk with him and was put off for over a month. This situation escalated, meetings were held and the man was vilified. It became quite ugly. Lets call him Harry. Harry had 3 meetings with the pastor, he was only in the last meeting allowed to have someone with him, in between the meetings it was spread throughout the church that Harry was trying to take over the church, that Harry was upset because he wanted a different type of government, that Harry was spreading dissention. My children were told this by office staff. Harry ended up leaving the church, many people were confused because while they had known him many, many years and had never seen him act out, that surely the pastor would not lie.

Harry's Sunday school class, which I went to, was so confused. See, Harry never defended himself or shared publicly what had occured. While Harry is no saint, there is a reason he is well respected. Harry's wife is one of my closet friends, and even I was confused that such a thing had happened. Surely this was total misunderstanding, yet in my heart I knew better. Anyway, the AP was sent to the class to explain to us why this happened. The people in this class are overall quite strong Christians, that understand how to deal with conflict. Many of them work for a parachurch company that is located here. We were very kind to AP, however upset that the pastor would not come and talk to us. Fianlly he agreed to come. He brought with him: the SS director, music minister, and two of the deacons. Talk about intimidating, however, I even asked hard questions (mine was: do you think that in any of this that you have done anything wrong? He said no). And instead of giving us unlimited time, as was promised, he still left early with us asking questions. End of chapter one.