Struggling to decide about church

[pegkerr]

My 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?

Comments

[whapnoggin.livejournal.com]

I would suggest that you take a close look at the youth programs, both as they are and as they are likely to be. Will the girls feel comfortable there? Will the youth leaders maintain a healthy and interesting environment? Youth programs, if run badly, can be even more clique-ridden and distancing than the schools. You don't want your girls to get through confirmation and then drop out because they don't feel involved or welcome. Remember that the politics of the church at large are likely to filter down into the youth programs and the way they are run. You say that the girls already don't like the youth director; if she is replaced soon, you may have a chance to reevaluate, but if not...you're stuck. Are there others involved with the youth program who can make up for the failings of the director? Or does the director control everything? Think hard about who will be in charge of most of the youth activities for the next several years in making a decision.

I do speak very much from experience.