I’ve been thinking about writing about this section of time in 2019 the most. I’ve wanted desperately to get it out of my system while also dreading the fact that I would need to relive it. This was such a pivotal moment for me. There are so many emotions attached to this single event. People told me that I overreacted…that I shouldn’t have taken it as personally as I did…to get over it, to move on, to have thicker skin… you name it, I’ve heard it. But I can’t make light of the emotions and feelings I felt, what this did to me, or the lasting impression it has had on my life. I felt this incident so deeply, and I still do. Maybe this wouldn’t have been a big deal to anyone else, but to me, it was a crushing blow.
Twenty Nineteen had already been a difficult and trying year. I had major surgery, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, and my son graduated from high school. As a result, I was tired before June ever arrived.
June, Twenty Nineteen…
The month began with a 150th church anniversary celebration. This was a special day the church set aside to celebrate being in existence for 150 years.
This day came complete with sermons, memories from previous pastors, special music, and a full meal afterward. It was an event on its own. If this were the only thing we had to worry about in June, it would’ve been enough. It was a big deal.
When I talk about these kinds of churchwide events, I’m not saying that the entire staff or I had to organize them on our own. There were lots of people involved. We had fantastic church members who would help and oversee things like this. I mention them only because if the church had any kind of event, the staff was heavily involved in the planning, execution, and clean-up. Anything added to the church calendar was added to all of our calendars. The bigger the event, the more time it added to our already packed schedule.
But this 150th Anniversary wasn’t nearly the only thing that summer.
There was also Day Camp for 1st and 2nd graders.
This camp was my baby; I loved everything about this day.
We took the kids to a nearby campground, and they got to fish, shoot bows and arrows, and play games… when we returned to the church, we had pizza, science experiments, and water slides… it was just a fun day. A day that me, my kids, my fantastic parent volunteers, youth volunteers, and the interns pulled off without a hitch.
There was also the VBS launch Sunday, which was always a big deal. We introduced the VBS theme to the church that morning. The theme was “In The Wild” that year, so we had three little girls drive their toy jeeps down the center aisle as the VBS theme music played. It was pretty adorable. We followed that with several people in inflatable animal costumes coming to the stage to help me announce the theme and recruit people to help with VBS. If our launch went as planned, the lobby would be full of excited people ready to sign up to help when the service was over that morning.
That all sounds pretty simple, but every aspect of even a short Sunday morning VBS launch must be thought out, supplies and costumes ordered, things printed for sign-up, tables decorated… it could be time-consuming and mind-consuming.
Another thing worth mentioning is that we always had tables set up in the church’s main lobby.
Each ministry had a table. We were in charge of keeping our table up to date with each upcoming event. Many times, children’s ministry events took up all the tables. The pastor didn’t want the tables to be simple. He wanted them to look professional. I could agree with that, and I didn’t mind doing it; it was fun most of the time, but they took quite a bit of time to plan and put together. This was valuable time I didn’t have in the summer of 2019.
We decorated and set up more than just one themed table for VBS sign-up. Again, the interns were great help with things like this.
The planning for VBS and Church Camp continued in earnest during June. The Wednesday night programs continued as well.
The church went on the mission trip, and while they were gone, The secretary and I took care of things at the office and took over the church’s social media to post updates about the trip to the church members. It was busy!
The next big thing in June was the summer youth camp I always thoroughly enjoyed. It was the one that I started taking the youth to when we didn’t have a youth pastor way back in 2015. I looked forward to going every year. Of course, I always had my own work to do while there, but I loved the atmosphere, the preaching, the music, and spending time with my own kids and the other kids I loved like my own. It was always a great week. My kids were in the senior high part of the camp in 2019. Although the camp officially started on Saturday, the first part was only for Junior High, so I didn’t need to be there the entire week, only the second half.
This allowed me to be in the office for a staff meeting on Monday, June 24th. But unfortunately, it also was the day the pastor wanted to do my evaluation.
I’m going to list the things I did as a 20-hour-per-week, part-time employee beginning when we set our goals in October 2018 until this particular day, June 24th, 2019. I’m not even going to list the things I did after the evaluation. And these are just the big ones, not all the little everyday stuff. For example, VBS and Centrikid camps were just around the corner, so although those events were upcoming, there had already been months of planning for them.
I probably can’t remember all of them, but I need to see them for myself. I need to know and remember why I was in such an exhausted place when this evaluation occurred. Honestly, I didn’t even have time on June 24th to have my evaluation; my list of things I had to complete that day before leaving for the youth camp was extremely long already. My day was full without this addition.
Many times I’ve thought that maybe I did just overreact. Maybe there was more that I could’ve been doing. Perhaps I wasn’t doing as great of a job as I thought or working as hard as I thought. Maybe I was exhausted for no good reason and wasn’t strong enough to handle it all.
But, seeing it all in one place helps me know I wasn’t weak or crazy. I was managing and helping manage a lot of things.
- KidWorship (teaching and organizing; twice per month)
- LilWorship (organizing, recruiting teachers, ordering curriculum, and buying snacks; weekly)
- KidCheck (weekly)
- AWANA (no official title, just present each week to do whatever was needed)
- Fall Fest
- Operation Christmas Child
- Christmas Parade
- Pre-School Christmas Musical
- Happy Birthday, Jesus Party
- Soup And Chili Lunch
- Taco Supper and Dessert Auction
- Egg Hunt
- Baby Dedication
- The first half of Summer Nights
- Day Camp
- VBS Launch and Sign Up
Here we go…
Evaluations were never fun.
I dreaded them. I had always gotten good marks, but this year I was worried. I was concerned because we were required to have daily devotional and prayer time as staff members. I hadn’t had time, energy, or space to do that. So, I just knew I would walk into the office, and the pastor would immediately know that I hadn’t been studying my Bible and praying as I should have been. How do you lie about something like that? So, I went in, ready to confess.
I sat down in the chair in the pastor’s office that day. I was exhausted, I was overworked, underpaid… I had talked to the pastor several times, telling him that I was struggling to keep my head above water.
He was completely aware of my mental, emotional and physical state.
He knew.
He pulled out my evaluation sheet that he had been working on. He started by telling me that he would be stricter with the evaluation than last year.
Oh boy.
The evaluation was given based on a 1-5 rating. 1 (didn’t even try) (2 less than expected) 3(as expected) 4 (good) 5 (excellent)
He told the staff on more than one occasion that his own evaluation was based on our performance.
How we were performing as a staff directly represented how he was doing as a pastor and a boss, or so he said. So, before I go any further, let me tell you that his evaluation was 4.6 out of 5.
I know this because my husband was a deacon; I didn’t know this when I sat down for my evaluation.
The pastor told me that he was happy with the job I was doing, but there were a few things I could work on.
Let’s start with tithing, he said…. These are his words… “I spoke with the secretary this morning and had her pull your tithing record.”
You what? You asked the secretary, knowing she and I struggle to get along; you asked her to pull my tithing record? All this is going through my head but not coming out of my mouth.
Why didn’t he just ask me about my tithing? That’s all he needed to do; I would have told him the truth. I didn’t have anything to hide. Instead, he said, “I’ve given you a 2 on tithing because she said you haven’t given anything this year”. Wait… what?
He sat there for a few more seconds and then said, “but didn’t you tell me that because of your family business, you get paid once a year, and you write one big check when that money comes in?’” I replied, “yes .” He said, “well, I’m going to give you a 5 then”. I was shocked and confused. We were faithful givers. We gave much more than 10 percent, and we gave in different ways. We gave cash, which the secretary wouldn’t have a record of, we gave to individual families when they needed help, we bought supplies for several ministries out of our pockets, and we gave a large sum to go toward the pastor’s appreciation gift in October and his Christmas gift in December.
I felt he had purposefully driven another wedge between the secretary and me. Why would he involve her? It was ludicrous. How could he have done that? I was speechless.
I was completely taken aback and feared what the rest of this evaluation would look like.
I received a 2 for church attendance because I didn’t always return for Sunday evening services.
Now let’s not consider that I was at the church almost every other day each week…Much more than my job description required. And maybe he forgot that as a part-time employee, Sunday nights weren’t officially in my job description either (but don’t forget, we could never say something wasn’t in our job description)… It probably also wouldn’t have been to my benefit to point out that I lived about 30 minutes away from the church (27, to be exact). So, driving to the church every Sunday night and then back home afterward, just to hear two hymns and a 30-minute sermon, that the pastor didn’t even want to be preaching, wasn’t something I was willing to do. I always tried to attend when there was an important service or business meeting, but I was part-time, PART-TIME!! If I went every Sunday night, I would miss some much-needed time with my family. Many weeks Sunday evening was the only downtime my husband had. Our family time was more important to me than those Sunday night services. And for that, I’m unapologetic, and for the record, I was unapologetic on the day of my evaluation as well. I didn’t say everything I thought in my mind; I just told him if a 2 was what it took not to have to attend Sunday night services, then I would take the 2.
I received a 2 for Sunday school teacher training… the goal he added for me… in October… only eight months before, the goal I was supposed to have an entire year to meet. I had indeed sent letters to all the teachers (which he said was enough at the time) with new ideas and some literature for them to read. I had also met with the teachers individually, but since this wasn’t a group training I had planned, it didn’t count either. I was supposed to design one of my own.
So can we just stop right here and ask… when? When was I supposed to do this, and technically since it was only June, didn’t I have until October to complete that goal? And you know, maybe I could’ve done it in May instead of working on the new Wednesday night program he demanded I create.
I got a 2 for the goal I set of giving kids the opportunity to share their faith with the community… because that goal was to be met in September with See You at the Pole, and this was only June. That was THE event I had in mind when he asked me to set that goal. It’s not as if you can take a group of kids out soul-winning door to door on a Saturday afternoon. Not that I even believe in that kind of thing. I’m just giving that as an example because how exactly do you organize something for kids to share their faith publicly other than something like See You at the Pole. And how do you do See You at the Pole, a National event, any other time than when it is scheduled. This made zero sense.
I got a low score for promoting staff unity because… are you ready for this… he told me to blow things up at the office so the secretary would get fired. Instead of promoting unity, he told me to report everything that happened in the office to him. He basically wanted me to spy on her. He set me up. He wanted me to do his dirty work. He asked me to do this and then docked me for not promoting staff unity.
I’m willing to bet that his evaluation given to him by the deacons gave him high marks for promoting staff unity when he had done everything but that. He had no desire for “staff unity.” He just wanted his way. Can we just park here for another second to think about something… We, as staff, were never once given the opportunity to evaluate the pastor as a boss. Not one deacon, no one from Personnel, no one at all asked us how we thought he was managing the staff. So how exactly did they know what kind of score to give him?
I received a 4 instead of a 5 for reaching my goal of seeing kids baptized. In 8 months, we had baptized 9 kids my goal was 10… we hadn’t had VBS yet, which was always a time when kids came to know Jesus, and we hadn’t been to camp, which was usually another time kids were saved. Those were the two most significant gospel-centered events of the year for children’s ministry, and those events hadn’t even happened yet, and we had already seen 9 kids baptized! This was amazing news! I technically had 4 more months to reach this goal, but even still, were we not thrilled that 9 had come to know Jesus and get baptized… nope… didn’t meet the goal.
This part of the story deserves some extra time… My immediate fear when the pastor told us that we had to set a goal of how many kids we wanted to see baptized was that something like this would happen. I feared that we would begin to look at the souls of these precious children as a number, a goal. And that day, my worst fear was realized. So as I sat in the pastor’s office on the day of my evaluation, instead of celebrating this incredible thing of 9 children coming to know Jesus and baptized in the last 8 months, we were commiserating that I was 1 away from the set goal of 10.
What pastor in his right mind would do this?
When did numbers become what mattered to God? Are we really supposed to make salvation about numbers? It seems wrong to put a goal on something you can’t control… it’s all up to God. It’s as if you are saying that you can and should control it. You can plan the biggest church event with the most sound theology. You can make it exciting, and it might be the most fun the child has ever had, but there won’t be salvation unless the Holy Spirit moves in that child’s heart and life. You can present the gospel over and over to a group of kids, but until the Holy Spirit moves, there will be no true profession of faith. How exactly was I supposed to make this magically happen?
This felt wrong when we made the goal, it felt wrong when working toward it, and it felt wrong being evaluated for it. How can you be judged personally on something that God has control of?
And why would you, as a pastor, ask that of your staff? It’s like giving a farmer a bad grade on a year when there’s a drought. The farmer has zero control of the weather. You can make the most of everything you are given, plant the seeds, water the fields, and harvest the grain, but only God controls the yield. It’s only our job to do what God tells us to do. We never know if we are the one who plants the seed, waters the seed, or sees the harvest. That part is up to God; we can only be obedient to what He calls us to do. Setting a goal and putting a number on salvations and baptisms is pure manipulation in the worst possible way.
I like the way this scripture describes it:
1 Corinthians 3:5-7
5) What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each.
6) I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth
7) So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God gives the growth.
The part of the evaluation that might have been the hardest for me to take was when I got docked for how I used church facilities. The pastor told me that I didn’t always clean up behind myself as well as I should. This one was personal. I was so careful after an event was over to clean up as much as I possibly could. If the event caused extra work for the janitor, I would always request that the church pay him and his family extra that week, and they did.
The pastor continued, saying, “you leave things lying around the church after events sometimes “…What was he talking about?
There were always things that I couldn’t put up by myself. Especially after the fall fest or the egg hunt, many of those things were just too heavy. I wasn’t physically able to put them in the storage closet myself, but I always made sure that they were put up. There was the absolute kindest man that would come to the church the day after an event and help me.
Now my office was rarely perfect because, first of all, I worked there, and second, people put stuff in there all the time, especially after an event. My office was also tiny, so I struggled to keep it as organized as I wanted. I will own the messy office, but I closed my door when it wasn’t clean.
But he wasn’t talking about my office; he was talking about something else.
He continued… “like those black rubber mats that have been laying in the yard over there; you never put those away .” Are you kidding me? I have never felt more set up in my life. He knew I couldn’t move those things, and he’s the one that got them out. These were THE rubber mats, the ones left from the slip and slide summer night he was supposed to help me with. So exactly what part did he play in helping me with this summer night program as he promised? Obviously, it wasn’t helping with clean-up. Did he drive by those mats every day and think, why hasn’t she put those up? He parked in that same area every Sunday morning; he had every opportunity to put them up. These mats could barely even be seen lying in the grass; you would have to look to see them. I have to wonder if he saw those mats every day and thought to himself, if she doesn’t pick those up by the time I do her evaluation, I’ll bring that up. Instead of thinking, hey, I got those out, she can’t move them, so I should put them up.
I was so upset. I was angry, I was sad… I was crushed. I was being punished for something that I couldn’t physically do. It hurts even more now when I think about it that way. I had worked my entire life to overcome my disabilities and pushed through to do things many times when I shouldn’t have. I was teased and ridiculed during my school years. I was called broke back more times than I care to remember. I would do almost anything to keep from drawing attention to what my back wouldn’t allow me to do. This was something I should never have been required to do and for sure not judged because I couldn’t do it.
Would you like to know what I received a 5 for on my evaluation? Yep… Personal Bible Study and prayer time… the only thing I was really worried about. I’ll just be honest with you. When he assumed, based only on my telling him about a prayer walk I went on one day, that I deserved a 5, after all the things I had unfairly been given a low score on, I just let him believe it. It was one more way that I realized he didn’t know anything about the people who worked for him because he didn’t care. The one thing on the evaluation that probably meant the most, my spiritual health, was the one thing that he just casually passed over.
I was at the end of myself, and my spiritual health was suffering tremendously. In fact, I was probably as far away from God as I had ever been. I was hurting. I was working in a ministerial position struggling to find God in what I was doing. But as long as I checked all the boxes during Monday morning staff meetings… had gospel conversations… check… read my chapter on leadership…check… made sure I made heroes out of some church members… check… petted the appropriate people to keep them happy… check… I was good. And for the evaluation, as long as I had an excellent tithing record, got along with other staff members, picked up around the church campus, and held sufficient Sunday school teacher training, all the things that people could see, I was good. But as far as my spiritual health, the place from which I ministered, the place no one could see, the thing that really mattered, he couldn’t care less… as long as he looked good.
I walked out of that evaluation completely defeated. I received a 3.65. A score the pastor continually told me was excellent… the highest score in the office, he repeatedly told me. But if our goal was to be a “5” staff, and I was doing all I could possibly do, how could I improve my score?
And he was my friend… my good friend. How could he not just pick those mats up for me? I would’ve done that for him. I would never have allowed his evaluation score to be docked on something I could have helped him with. How could he not just ask me about my tithing instead of bringing the secretary into it? How could we not rejoice over the 9 souls saved? How could he punish me for not promoting staff unity when he told me to do it? How could we focus so much on the Sunday night services I missed instead of all the other times I was at the church when I wasn’t supposed to be?
It wasn’t the number, not really. It was the fact that I was doing all I could, and it simply wasn’t enough. It was that the pastor knew how distraught and exhausted I had been that year. It almost felt like he wanted to intentionally add to that, or maybe even that he had an ulterior motive. Whatever it was, it was more than I could take.
My head was spinning. I couldn’t even argue with the pastor. . I went to my office, closed my door, and called my husband.
To end this post, let me tell you how the rest of the staff scored…
Pastor: 4.6
Me: 3.65
Youth Pastor: 3.25
Secretary: 2.2
Would someone please explain this to me…
If the pastor’s score was a 4.6 and our scores determined his…
Something doesn’t add up.
There’s no way I could be the boss of people and parade around with my high score, knowing that I had given those who worked for me a score substantially lower than my own. In fact, if you were to take our three scores and average them to get the pastor’s evaluation score, he would walk away with a 3.03. Something tells me he wouldn’t have been happy with that.
I have always believed that there was more to this story. However, I can’t help but wonder if, wanting the secretary to fail, he lowered all the scores so as not to make the low score he gave her quite as obvious.
I was his friend; he couldn’t give me too high of a score, or people would think he was playing favorites. The youth pastor was doing everything that was asked of him, but if he gave him a high score, it would also look suspicious. So if he brought us down into the 3 range, he could give her a 2, which wouldn’t stand out quite as much. I can’t prove that theory, but I’ve always wondered about it. He wanted her to quit so badly; did he think a low evaluation score would do the trick? Or possibly he wanted me to feel the same way? Maybe he hoped I would quit too.
After recovering some from the blow of my evaluation, I made the argument much later that year that it would seem more humane to bring us in throughout the year to evaluate us a little along, so we would know how we could work on things before the main evaluation at the end of the year. If our yearly raise depended on this evaluation, it seemed unfair to keep us in the dark for an entire year. Wasn’t the job of the boss/pastor to build up the team, to give us goals that would encourage us to grow?
Until Next Time,
Whitney