Struggling to decide about church
Sep. 12th, 2004 08:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrMy church is in trouble.
There has been some problems there for a long time that I have not completely understood. A woman that the girls were very close to, whom they had adopted as sort of a honorary grandma, the parish nurse, got into some sort of power struggle with the pastor and quit the church. We have had a turnover of the entire church staff in the past year: youth director, worship director, education director, church secretary. Membership has been dropping and so the budget was cut, including the pastor's salary by 40%, and the pastor announced his resignation two weeks later. I talked with him and with some other people, and learned that there had been (among other things) a power struggle between our long term worship director (who had been at the church for 37 years) and the pastor, because the worship director didn't want change. After he retired, he still kept interfering with what was going on, through people who were still loyal to him. The girls don't like the education/youth director. She's a kindergarten teacher with an extremely syrupy personality--think of Dolores Umbridge, without the malevolence--and she treats children as if they are much younger than they are ("I don't need to be gluing cotton balls on lambs" as Delia puts it). The position of council president, vice president and secretary are vacant.
Now, in another blow, I have just learned that the man who ran the Forum, which is the adult education I really liked, is leaving the church.
So what do I do? We have a new interim pastor starting soon, and we'll be searching for a new one. The new choir director is good, and the new organist is absolutely terrific. I've heard speculations that the education/youth director may not stay, because her internship was somehow tied to the identity of the pastor, the one who has left.
I want the girls to be in a strong church by the time they are ready for confirmation. This one is more conservative than I like, and I'm not sure it is going to survive. But it is our church. The girls were baptized here, and there are people here I still love to see. Isn't it part of our responsibility as members to help turn things around? Shouldn't we be acting as members of the body of Christ, trying to heal the body, rather than consumer/shoppers who reason, "This isn't meeting my needs, so I'm outta here"? What is my responsibility? What should I do?
There has been some problems there for a long time that I have not completely understood. A woman that the girls were very close to, whom they had adopted as sort of a honorary grandma, the parish nurse, got into some sort of power struggle with the pastor and quit the church. We have had a turnover of the entire church staff in the past year: youth director, worship director, education director, church secretary. Membership has been dropping and so the budget was cut, including the pastor's salary by 40%, and the pastor announced his resignation two weeks later. I talked with him and with some other people, and learned that there had been (among other things) a power struggle between our long term worship director (who had been at the church for 37 years) and the pastor, because the worship director didn't want change. After he retired, he still kept interfering with what was going on, through people who were still loyal to him. The girls don't like the education/youth director. She's a kindergarten teacher with an extremely syrupy personality--think of Dolores Umbridge, without the malevolence--and she treats children as if they are much younger than they are ("I don't need to be gluing cotton balls on lambs" as Delia puts it). The position of council president, vice president and secretary are vacant.
Now, in another blow, I have just learned that the man who ran the Forum, which is the adult education I really liked, is leaving the church.
So what do I do? We have a new interim pastor starting soon, and we'll be searching for a new one. The new choir director is good, and the new organist is absolutely terrific. I've heard speculations that the education/youth director may not stay, because her internship was somehow tied to the identity of the pastor, the one who has left.
I want the girls to be in a strong church by the time they are ready for confirmation. This one is more conservative than I like, and I'm not sure it is going to survive. But it is our church. The girls were baptized here, and there are people here I still love to see. Isn't it part of our responsibility as members to help turn things around? Shouldn't we be acting as members of the body of Christ, trying to heal the body, rather than consumer/shoppers who reason, "This isn't meeting my needs, so I'm outta here"? What is my responsibility? What should I do?
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Date: 2004-09-12 08:49 am (UTC)My perspective of this situation is vastly different from yours--I grew up Mormon, and they are a very hierarchally oriented church, nearly corporate in their structure. Your ward leadership changes every few years, and there is constant change in who the humans running the programs are, but very little change in the program. (I was shocked and amazed the first time I realised many other churches reviewed their pastors and/or paid them a salary. Shocked and amazed, I tell you.) It's a church that was once less conservative than it is now, but the rulings all come from the top down, so there was little way to change the environment to make it more "spiritually conducive".
I like your attitude about staying to enact changes. I think it's a good one--one that most churches should be about. But I also think that the church as a whole should have the same attitude: Trying to heal the body and mind of individuals instead of bean-counting members as just another statistic for the glory of God. It should work as a symbiotic relationship, I think.
From a strictly anthropological perspective, I think that most religions and dogmas start off as a nifty idea, a great experiment, and for as long as they retain that openess to change, they can do a great deal of good as they flexibly approach each members needs. But eventually the group becomes codified, inertia sets in, and conservative tactics rule: The letter of the law prevails, rather than the spirit.
What are your goals for worship? Do you feel that the church you are at serves those needs? If it doesn't, do you feel that the atmosphere is one where you can discuss your beliefs openly? That you can help make changes? Help make other people stronger? Most importantly, how is this environment going to help your children? (Example: Even if I thought I could make a change in the Mormon church--from the inside, rather than my current status as outsider--I wouldn't want to raise my children with the ideas they could get exposed to every Sunday--particularly given the way women are marginalised subtly in Mormon doctrine.)
Are the doctrine and worship tied to the people or the building or the community or any of the above? Is there another place you can find that has the same attitude you desire? (While I understand the joy of continuity and wishing that your daughters could be confirmed in the same environment in which they were baptised, I also think it is rare for any one community or group to remain as they were when your memories of them are best and brightest.)