Let me start off by
saying I believe God led my husband and I to that church, not only to
get me out of it, but so we could meet and expose the corruption.
That church, like most abusive churches over time, is slowly dying
and more and more families are leaving it and have been for over a
year. It’s not just due to the catastrophic hurricane that hit our
area either.
So, I convinced Geoff to
start attending in August of 2017. We were friends, possibly band
mates, and He most certainly had a calling for ministry on his life
that was not being utilized in his current large church. By the end
of September we had realized our feelings for each other after months
of just being friends and numerous hours of bible study and
discussion. I was so extreme in my anti-dating that I was clueless as
to what was developing and everyone else just looked upon us with
gleeful expectation. We were kind of hilarious. I was the last to
know and realize something was going on.
By the time Geoff
joined the church, I was pretty involved in the music ministry and
the current director was easing me back into being a worship leader.
But then shortly after her and her Elder husband left the church and
she strongly suggested to the leadership that I take over as
director. Instead the Senior Pastor promoted the only remaining, in
town, elder to the position, who had little experience to my 12
years. The Pastor claimed ignorance of the prior Director’s
recommendation even though she immediately upon leaving told me she
had made the recommendation.
Okay, it was no real
bother. I wasn’t sure I wanted the responsibility as I was a single
mom anyway. I had enough on my plate during that time and in all but
one position, (remember I was promised a paid staff position, but
they never followed through), I’d been paid staff. Not that I won’t
do it for free. I had done it always for as little as 200 per month.
But to take on the responsibility as a homeschooling single mom
without pay, in a church that was bigger than my first ministry
position church and consistently reaching 175 people, that was a bit
much to ask for. I brushed it off and gave the Pastor the benefit of
the doubt that he’d somehow misunderstood.
Also, we’d later
find out that the Elder and his Worship Director wife leaving was
because of serious conduct issue with the Remaining leadership
running the church. They DID NOT agree with how the church was being
ran and left. There was a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes.
So, it ended up the
Pastor came and asked me to run a worship team under the headship of
this Elder, the new director of Worship. I offered all my years of
experience but it was dismissed at every turn. The current volunteers
were divided up into three teams and rules and guidelines were put in
place.
Within a month, my
team members were being borrowed and overworked by the director and
it left me scrambling to fill slots. I had me, my two children and a
single male singer that were consistent and available, yet the rules
stated I could only lead maximum 2 out of 4 to 5 songs. I kept trying
to talk to and reason with the Elder/Director to give me a guitar
player and some more singers. His own team had grown to over 13
people and he required that every new member to the worship
department be on his team for at least 3 months. Meanwhile, I ran my
team on a skeleton crew. The other worship leader was fortunate to
have 8 people on his team, which also included his wife and two
children.
So there was this
very big, extremely obvious power struggle going on. It was like the
silent war against me and my family and privately, when no one was
looking, this Elder got pretty nasty and condescending.
There were a few
times that Geoff and I went to the Lead Pastor/Elder for advice and
help. Also we expressed concerns over the fact that one of the Elders
was on deployment and the only active longterm Elder/Worship Director
lived upon the Pastor’s property. We felt like that was a serious
conflict of interest and if the Pastor were to be caught in sin, who
would hold him accountable? Surely, not the Elder living on his
property who could be evicted just because of offense. Two other
Elders had stepped down recently and then one Elder was brand new.
But within just a month more that Elder too stepped down.
No comments:
Post a Comment