January 5, 2020… The first Sunday away from Tree Town Baptist… also my birthday.
I started my sabbatical off by sleeping in. I totally skipped church that Sunday morning. It was a strange feeling. I felt rebellious. I felt like a teenager, sneaking in after curfew. I laugh as I write this, but I was so hardwired to believe that missing a church service was so wrong that I honestly felt rebellious by taking a Sunday to stay home. I had to make myself do it.
I didn’t have to make a conscious decision to go to church. I had to make a conscious decision to stay home.
The whole time I wondered what people would think of me. I even wondered what God thought. I was forsaking the assembling of myself together…
The entire family stayed home that day. Besides the guilt that I felt, the rest and time together as a family were wonderful.
We had tickets to see “Wicked” at a nearby theatre on Sunday night. It was something I had been looking forward to for several months. The whole family was going, my parents, my brother and his family and my family. I had requested this for my birthday long before I knew I was quitting. When we made the plans, I worried about being in trouble for missing another Sunday night. As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about that any longer by the time we went to the play.
Meanwhile, back at Tree Town Baptist, the pastor had big plans…
Let me tell you what the pastor’s plans were for that day, and then I will also tell you how things went down.
The pastor and I had many conversations about the next steps for the Children’s Ministry.
We both agreed that the ministry had grown to the point that it needed a full-time person. I pushed for this. This was not a part-time job. It needed to be full-time.
We also agreed that it should be someone qualified who could take the ministry and just keep building it. It was in a very good place. For lack of a better term, it was booming. This was part of why I was so tired; it had truly outgrown the part-time status.
The pastor agreed that the next person should be seminary trained and ministry called since the lack of this for me is what he was so sure caused me to burn out.
I snidely remarked that they should hire a man because they obviously couldn’t pay a woman what she deserved.
There was one hang-up.
The pastor didn’t think there was room in the budget for a full-time children’s minister.
He thought it would stretch things too much. So, he concocted a genius plan. He asked the secretary to pull the tithe demographics.
This was something he had done many times before. He always justified it by saying that by just pulling demographics, he didn’t actually know who was giving what.
Let’s just park here for a minute…. This church had between 250-300 active members. If you “only” look at the demographics, you still basically knew who was giving.
There weren’t enough members to keep things from being known by just pulling the demographics. It’s easy to put a name and face to that.
If the church is divided by age and you know what age group is giving the most, you essentially know who is tithing.
It isn’t rocket science. Saying he only knew the demographics only made his conscience feel better. It didn’t change the truth.
He even printed this information for us to go over as staff. If memory serves me right, he also printed copies for the deacons.
Turns out that the people 60 and over were giving a large percentage of the overall offerings. That was why he was so intent on keeping those older people happy.
People ages 40-50 gave some but not as much as the older people.
Guess what… the younger crowd, the ones with kids in the ministry, were barely giving anything.
This made the pastor angry. The children’s ministry budget was the biggest one in the entire church budget. The church was spending money hand over fist to keep the children’s ministry running and thriving.
And come to find out, the people benefitting the most from these ministries weren’t tithing like the pastor thought they should be.
The pastor decided that if these parents wanted a full-time Children’s Minister, they needed to pay up, give, tithe, and put offerings in the offering plate….
He started concocting a plan in early December.
When all else fails, use guilt…
So, on January 5, 2020, he called a meeting of ALL parents.
He giddily planned this meeting. He showed me his notes, and I read them in their entirety, I knew his plans and even the words he would use. He was beside himself with excitement. He was really going to stick it to them.
He would gather all the files I made and pass them out to the parents. He would tell them that without a children’s minister, the parents would have to do all this work.
He expected that they wouldn’t want to handle this ministry on their own and would be ready to figure out how to hire someone soon after reading through the files.
If they thought the children’s ministry would return to a volunteer-only format, they would be worried enough to want to help get someone full-time.
They wouldn’t want to handle all the events, camps, and programs. The pastor knew that the parents liked things to be done for them. He was counting on it.
I wasn’t happy with this idea for a few reasons. First, those files the pastor asked me to make weren’t for church members and parents. They were for the next children’s minister. They included information about every detail of the ministry. And the pastor had asked me to include things about people who didn’t necessarily fulfill their obligations or didn’t show up when they volunteered. He wanted me to give a heads up to the new person, and I did include some of that in the files.
It wasn’t any kind of scathing information, but it was somewhat private, and it wasn’t for the parents. If he had told me this initially, I would have created a simpler version for the parents and a more detailed version for the new person. I knew he would have the meeting, but I didn’t know he would share the files until I had already turned them in. So, I was concerned.
This also seemed like such a manipulative way to handle things. It was another way for the pastor to get his way without asking for things outright. It made him look better. I think this might be called passive aggressive.
He was good at this tactic. Let us not forget that the pastor the people saw wasn’t the same behind closed doors.
The same people he would “pet” in public were the ones he belittled in private.
He had been trying to figure out how to get this group of people to tithe more for months. If he could dangle the carrot of withholding a children’s minister due to lack of funds, he could probably get them to give more.
More money in the offering plate… more money in his pocket.
This whole thing reminds me of his push for the end-of-year giving. He came up with the idea of a day of sacrificial giving the year before…
He told these grandiose stories of his old church and also the church of his childhood. He talked about how large the offerings were. He wanted to try this at Tree Town Baptist.
And so, he planned one for December of 2018. We would plan a day of sacrificial giving for the last Sunday of the year. This was when people were looking for tax deductions. They were more willing to give during this time, so it was the perfect opportunity to capitalize.
We would do a big push through December, gearing up for this day, and then plan a special time during the worship service for people to give.
It was printed in every bulletin, every newsletter… it was built up in a huge way.
And when the day came, we saw the biggest offering in history… and the pastor was thrilled.
The initial idea for the offering was to use it to fund the youth and children’s budget for the year, so we didn’t have to beg for money all the time. However, when it was all said and done, more money went toward the mission trip planned for that summer instead.
I guess I’m on a streak of tangents, but something else that always bothered me was how tied the pastor was to his former state and all his former friends. It was like he left and found greener pastures, but he didn’t really leave mentally. In fact, it seemed like he wanted his old friends to benefit from these new, greener pastures.
It was his friend that the church would use for the mission trip… it was also his friend that would preach the revival we had… it was his friend that would recommend the youth pastor… there was always some tie to his previous state and church. And that pattern would continue and, as far as I know, continues to this day.
Back to the parent meeting on January 5, 2020…
He showed the parents all of the files. He told them what all would need to be done in the absence of a Children’s Minister. He asked them to volunteer to take these files.
He went over the “demographics” of giving with the parents.
Then, he essentially shamed them for not giving and explained that if they wanted a qualified, full-time Children’s Minister, they would need to ante up.
He ended this meeting with a pep talk about giving… and then he introduced…
Drumroll, please…
A Dave Ramsey course the church would offer to help people get their finances and priorities in order.
This course had been offered a few times since we had been members. We participated the first time and learned some good stuff. Still, we never felt completely comfortable with the program as a whole.
One individual in the church was a real Dave Ramsey guru. He followed the program to a tee. He would be the one teaching the course.
I received text messages from friends throughout the meeting and afterward as well. They weren’t impressed.
They felt somewhat manipulated… because they were being manipulated…
They didn’t want to take another Dave Ramsey class.
They didn’t want to be guilted into tithing. It had all been done in bad taste and that wasn’t lost on them. This wasn’t what they thought this meeting was going to be about. They felt blindsided.
While sitting in the theatre watching “Wicked,” I got a text from the pastor.
It said… what have you heard, because I know you’ve heard… followed by, Oh yeah, and Happy Birthday.
He wanted to know all the details. He wanted to know what people thought about his meeting.
I decided not to divulge all the information I had and simply said that by some people, his meeting wasn’t well received, especially the Dave Ramsey part.
I was a little pissed about the whole thing, honestly. It was my first Sunday away.
It was the first day of my “sabbatical” from Tree Town.
It was my Birthday.
The previous Sunday, there was no mention of anything about it being my last day. No one seemed to care, yet he’s dragging me back into the conversation the following week because he wanted information.
This wasn’t a place I wanted to be in. When I turned in the files, that was my last tie to the job. Now just one week out, he’s bothering me about things and doing it on my birthday.
Should we recap? I think we should…
I resign…
I’m getting a little more than $16,000 yearly for my “part-time” job.
I’m burned out because I’m not seminary trained, and ministry called.
The position needs a full-time qualified person.
The parents aren’t giving.
The parents can either do the work or provide the money.
Dave Ramsey can fix everything.
And the pastor has no idea who gives what because he just looks at the demographics of the giving.
Insert eye roll after eye roll.
Can you say manipulation?
There are so many things wrong with this.
By this time, I was starting to see things more clearly.
Until Next Time,
Whitney