Staff meetings

After the Youth Pastor came on staff at our church, bi-weekly staff meetings became a regular thing. We would sit down on a Wednesday, eat lunch, and give updates on each of our departments. The Updates were never really updates, but were more like glorified gossip sessions. We were all expected to openly discuss people that were causing problems within our departments. Then we would all analyze and discuss what their problems could possibly be; the outcome of our discussions usually resulted in the problem person not being “in line” enough with God and the vision of the church. Most of the time a problematic person’s behaviors were not the result of a faulty church policy or leadership issue, the issue was always with the problematic person. We would then discuss how to fix the problem and that usually meant discussing the possibility of removing the person from their volunteer position.

Removing people from their volunteer positions rarely happened but the threat of doing so was always used as a manipulation tool during meetings with the individuals. If a church member didn’t serve and volunteer with a smile on their face, and dared to complain, it would result in a trip to the “principal’s office”. It’s always sad when a congregation jokes openly about going to the Principal’s office when referring to a meeting with the Pastor.

The only time our staff meetings weren’t based on gossip is when there was a reprimand from the Pastor. The Pastor began to use staff meetings to openly humiliate and reprimand either the youth Pastor or myself in front of the group. This was another manipulation tool to get us to tow the line.

On one such meeting, I was caught totally unaware that I had made an error as came into the crosshairs during one of “those” reprimand staff meetings. The Pastor began the meeting discussing how certain staff or staff members had failed to respect him by not doing what he had asked of them. He glared at me as he spoke, and never took his eyes off of me as he went on with his tirade. He kept going on and on about how he was disrespected and that this staff member obviously did not respect him as the leader of this church. This staff member needed to remember that the “anointing flowed from the head down”, and if they could not get in line, they would not be blessed and they would be fired as well.

At first I was stunned and my mind went into a tailspin as I desperately tried to remember what task I had been asked to do and had failed to perform. Finally, it came to me about half-way through the tirade, after I had already started to sob openly in front of the group. It was a song that he had asked me to learn about two weeks prior and I had yet to even bring it before the team to practice it. My failing to learn the song wasn’t because I was intentionally disobeying him; it was because I could not locate the music for the song anywhere. I had asked him for a copy of the song so I could learn the song by ear and write it out for my team on at least two different occasions, but he had never given me a copy of the song. I couldn’t learn a song I didn’t have access to.

The tirade kept going as I tried to stammer out an apology for my over sight. I hadn’t meant to disrespect him or the other Pastors as he had stated, and as I sobbed out my apology four other staff members sat there like stone statues as I was openly shamed and humiliated. I sobbed through the rest of the meeting as it continued to go on around me. Not once was I acknowledged after that point of my humiliation. When it ended, I left the meeting for the refuge of my office and sobbed some more. Soon after, it was time for me to go and get my children from school and all the way there I continued to cry, resting my head on my steering wheel at stoplights to hide my tears from curious motorists. I had never been so openly humiliated and I soon began to wonder how the youth Pastor had endured so many of these open reprimands. To have that happen behind closed doors is one thing, but in front of the other staff was more than I could endure.

Later that day, after all the other staff were busy in their offices, or had left to do some errands before the service, the Youth Pastor slipped into my office and asked me if I was OK. No one else on staff even bothered.