Part 3: Missing Music

Then something strange happened the month after the second Elder and his wife left (remember this makes two Elder couples within a span of 5 months who have left). We had started our marriage counseling with the Pastor, and Geoff and I, rather than discuss our upcoming wedding, took the opportunity to express our concerns again about this Elder/Director living on the pastor’s property with no other governing accountability to the Pastor himself, and this Elder’s treatment of those in the worship arts department. Another email had come from the Director that was total lies and it implied conversations that hadn’t happened and required “accountability” from me and informant attitude from the rest of the worship arts department if I didn’t comply to the “rules”. I was appalled! The email banned me from borrowing anyone not assigned to my team, but my team was severely short handed without borrowing a guitarist and singer. I’d been begging for some new people, specifically a guitar player for months!

That week, it was my week to lead. We had met with the Pastor on a Thursday morning. The night before, the Wednesday night worship practice had been great and had been fluid. Friday we had co-op like we always do, which consisted of my kids, the pastor’s kids, and the other worship leaders kids. Three moms, just a small co-op and we always had a blast. Saturday, no one but the worship director and his wife were at the church and they did some cleaning. Sunday morning, all my binders with my current week’s music was missing from the stage as well as from our filing box where all our extra sheet music was stored. Only my current weeks music was missing from that filing box. I’d filed and put away all the extra sheets just the Wednesday before and they were missing. Every team member went on a hunt and looked everywhere in both buildings. The binders and the extra copies of the sheet music were missing.

Thankfully, one of my team members, who showed up late, had been trying to get better at the guitar and had taken his binder home to practice. I made copies using his music. When I asked the Director if he’d seen the missing music, he blamed it on the Co-op kids that were at the church on Fridays. He called them the Classical Conversation kids, or CC kids for short. He had no clue that the co-op that met on Fridays weren’t Classical Conversation kids, but just three families meeting and he was accusing the leadership kids of sabotage.

I couldn’t prove it, and I still can’t. But I’m fairly sure what happened. Coincidences just don’t happen like that. My Fiance and I had voiced concerns about the Director’s conduct and then two days later my sheet music goes missing! The music binders did eventually turn up in the second building, in the kitchen, three weeks later, in plain sight, sitting upon a stool. Tucked into one of the binders was the rest of the missing music that had been previously filed, but removed from the filing box. My Daughter was the one who came upon the missing binders!