On December 6, 2018… our family was in California for a company meeting, and we had a family vacation planned afterward. A trip to Disneyland and Universal Studios was something we had been planning for a couple of years.
My son, who was 17 years old, randomly started running a fever. We thought that maybe he had picked up the flu on the plane. So we took him to a local clinic, and they thought the same thing.
He didn’t get better on the trip; in fact, he was still running a fever at the end of December. He would get better and then relapse. I was one scared mom. I imagined all the horrible things it might be. By the middle of January when the fever continued, we had been to the family doctor five times and the ER twice. Every test that could be done was done, every x-ray, every blood test… we still had no answers. Finally, at the end of January, we received some results. After visiting an infectious disease doctor, we were able to put together some pieces to the puzzle. But, by the time we got answers, I was just a mess.
During those months, I maintained my regular work schedule at church. On top of my everyday things, I worked on the Pre-School Christmas musical, planned a Happy Birthday Jesus Party, organized the same party, and then worked to set up, run and clean up that party. There was also a city-wide Christmas parade that we entered each year. This was so much fun, and there was a wonderful team of people who helped put this together. I had help. I’m not trying to say I did it all on my own. I had wonderful parent volunteers who helped me. I’m just saying that I organized and oversaw these things. And this was just one month out of the year.
In January, my husband and I helped chaperone a youth retreat, which was a nice reprieve from my regular ministry obligations. I also planned a chili cookoff/ fundraiser for the first Sunday in February, along with the youth pastor, to raise funds for summer camps. This was a popular event in the church. We always had a huge turnout. There was a lot of planning that went into it. This particular year we also gave out handmade prizes. I had fun designing these and making them with a good friend.
Two days later, I had surgery to repair a hiatal hernia. This surgery would require a 2 week liquid fast until my esophagus healed. It also required that I not strain any of my core muscles for several months. Even though my job was technically an office job, after I told the doctor how much it actually entailed with all the lifting, bending, and being on my feet for long hours, he decided that I needed to stay home for a while to heal. I lost 8 pounds in 7 days. It wasn’t an easy recovery. I struggled.
The doctors told me to take an entire month off from work. I was initially scheduled for surgery in January, but I got really sick right before, and they rescheduled it for February. A whole month off work. Was this possible? I didn’t go into the office or attend services, but my text messages and emails didn’t stop. There was too much to get done. I had too many events coming up to just not do anything. I kept up with as much as I could from home. I never expected to not do anything work-related for an entire month, but I did expect to at the very least get a week off.
One of the text messages I can’t forget came just a few days after my surgery. It was from the pastor, and it said something like you’re going to hate me, but I want to start new classes on Sunday nights, and you will need to figure out something to do with the kids. What say ye? I said, “I think maybe it’s time for me to resign because I can’t handle anything else.”
If anyone reading this has ever worked with kids, you know that even an hour with kids needs to be planned. Teens will sit around and visit, play games on their own, etc. But kids don’t do that. Five minutes of unplanned time can end up in a chaotic mess. So kid’s ministry must be structured and planned out. Adding a class on Sunday night for kids was not just a simple thing.
My counselor and I had been discussing my job for quite some time. We had discussed on many occasions that I might need to be willing to step down from my position if it started to need a full-time person. When I took the job it was an 8-hour-a-week position, then it was increased to 12 hours and then 20 hours. A required 20 hours a week was as far as I was willing to go. I had no desire to work full-time, so when this message came through, I offered to step down so they could hire someone and increase the hours to a full 40-hour per week. It was not a threat to make him change his mind, it was me legitimately wondering if it was time for me to resign. The pastor said he didn’t want me to quit, we would find a way to make it work.
I reiterated to him that I genuinely wanted things to be the best for the ministry and if the position needed to be full-time, I wanted to make room for that. I didn’t want to hold onto something if I needed to let go. I wanted the children’s ministry to flourish whether I was the children’s minister or not. This ministry to me was so much more than just a job. I loved these kids, the parents, and the church I worked for.
Maybe what bothered me the most is that he chose to bring this up just a few days after my surgery.
I was in a lot of pain, I struggled to eat, and he wanted to talk about making me work more. That’s what it felt like to me. This Sunday night program wasn’t necessary to the church. It was just something new to add.
It was a way for him to get rid of the traditional Sunday evening service and train the church to do something different. This was something he had been wanting to do since he was hired. The church in Tree Town had 3 services each week, Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. This is how it had always been done. The new pastor didn’t like this but knew that the older crowd would crucify him if he just changed it.
If we were to boil it down, the truth was that he didn’t like having to preach 3 times a week, and this was one way to take some of his responsibilities away yet keep the schedule the church wanted. He could have other people teach the classes, and he wouldn’t need to prepare anything. He was thinking of himself. He continually complained that he only had to preach once a week at his old church, and three times a week was more than he could handle. It was too time-consuming and too heavy of a workload. He was probably right but, tricking the church into eliminating the regular Sunday night service wasn’t the correct way to handle things.
He obviously didn’t mind adding something else to my already full plate to remove something from his own, and I thought this was incredibly selfish. Since we were friends, I didn’t want to make much of it, but obviously, it bothered me enough that I still remember it. It was the first inkling I had that maybe it was time for me to quit. It was a strange, unsettling feeling. I tried to ignore it and move on.
After that text message, he never mentioned this Sunday night program to me again.
When I returned to work in March, I was still struggling with my recovery. I was also fatigued. My energy levels weren’t where they were before the surgery. Going back to my “part-time” schedule was brutal. Fake it till you make it, right? No one seemed to notice… the show must go on, and so it did.
These instances alone are very minor, and they are things that are easily dealt with in the workplace. It’s the culmination of events and the repeated authority issues that pile up that make my story what it is. I don’t mention the little things to be petty, but mostly to remind myself of how I got where I am today, and how I ended up hurt. It wasn’t until I stepped away from things that I was able to see a culture in the church that allowed for this kind of thing. How many other churches out there are experiencing the same issues? How many people are working for a church and find themselves overworked, underpaid, and feeling like they can’t keep their heads above water with no way out? How many pastors have assumed so much power that they are a one-man show calling all the shots? I feel like what I experienced at Tree Town wasn’t an anomaly. I fear it’s more common than we care to believe.
Until Next Time,
Whitney