I believe that the remainder of 2018 can be summarized in this post.
Shortly after the church hired a new secretary, the pastor set about finding a youth pastor. The church, by this time, had been without a full-time youth pastor for over a year. I was still managing some of the duties as far as camps and helping lead worship on Wednesday evenings. I was still making around $150 per week.
This next part is significant to the story because it proves the intent to control. I know that sounds like lawyer talk, but trust me, it’s real.
Remember how I told you that the new pastor went against typical protocol in hiring the new secretary? His hiring of the youth pastor went against it even more. He asked the Personnel Committee to give him the authority to choose the youth pastor he wanted and then bring him to the Personnel Committee to interview. He wanted to be more “involved” in the hiring and wanted the final say since he would be working with this person daily. And that’s true, he would be, but this was more control than any previous pastor I’m aware of had been given.
This is just what he did.
He called pastor friends, ministry friends, people in the convention… he read resumes, made visits… Finally, one of his good friends recommended someone who was at that time working for another church. The pastor met with this youth pastor, liked him, and brought him to the committee.
I don’t know how other churches do it, I don’t know normal church procedure, but this went against all precedents set by previous hiring (before the secretary). For the 10 years that we had attended this church, it had never been done this way.
The guy he chose was sweet. Easy going, quiet, organized… His personality was much different than the pastor’s… and he was younger than the pastor.
I liked him. He didn’t know how to handle my more boisterous personality. He seemed almost put off by my frankness, so I had to be careful, but he was a good guy.
It took about a month for the pastor to begin complaining about how he did his job. The pastor had been a youth pastor for many years before becoming a senior pastor. He had very clear ideas of how he wanted the youth ministry to run, and this new guy wasn’t doing it the way he wanted.
The pastor wasn’t quite as vocal about the youth pastor’s shortcomings as he was about the secretary and the music minister. Still, he made lots of snide remarks to me in private. He thought his teaching was too long and boring, and the pastor would schedule times to teach for him for what he said was to get to know the youth better but was actually to show the youth pastor “how it’s done.”
He would give a short, funny lesson, and the kids would love it. The pastor loved this, and the kids loved it too. I don’t argue that this pastor was a good preacher/speaker. He was. He was excellent. He was easy to listen to. It was just the disconnect from the pulpit to real life that was hard to get past. And the fact that he wanted to be the one the people liked best… even the youth and kids.
I can’t help but pause here and remember the first VBS I directed after the new pastor was hired.
This particular year, VBS was a sports theme, and we played up the rivalry between our two state teams. The pastor would wear his team’s colors and cheer for his team, and I would wear my team’s colors and cheer for mine. But, of course, it was all just for fun, and obviously, the kids “liked” my team more because it was their state team. This bothered the pastor. He was so upset because the kids would heckle him, and he thought this was a terrible thing. Instead of playing it up and going along with it, he really let it get to him.
He was visibly bothered and asked me to change things up a little, so they would like him. This is such a tiny piece of the puzzle in the grand scheme of things, but it shows how much he wanted to be liked. I felt terrible that I had planned something that would cause the kids to do anything but welcome him. I felt responsible and went above and beyond to make it right. But in the back of my mind, I couldn’t believe that something so small bothered him so much. They were just kids after all, and the plan was to bring it around at the end and make him the hero… where he would cheer for our state team… as a symbol of him moving to our state and becoming a part of us. That was the “end game” but I had to change things up before we ever got to that point. He was shaken by the kid’s reactions.
The man really wanted to be liked…above all else.
Evaluations were held in June. This would be my second evaluation, but the first one by the new pastor. The pastor commented on many occasions to the staff that his evaluation would be based on our performance. Therefore, if we were performing well, it made him look good.
The evaluation was given on a scale of 1-5. There were certain areas of our ministry that we were graded on. This form had been put in place by the previous pastor. The questions weren’t tailored to many of the new things we had implemented since he left. So, it was pretty standard. I again received high marks. The pastor said there was nothing more he could ask of me. I was doing above what was expected. He told me he would recommend to the Personnel and Finance Committees that they pay me for 20 hours a week instead of 12. My workload wouldn’t be increased. I would just be compensated for the extra hours I was already working.
The pastor asked me if I would be willing to come into the office two days a week instead of one. He wanted to move the staff meeting to Monday mornings at 9 a.m. instead of Wednesday at 1:00. He thought this could make evaluating the Sunday services easier since it would be fresh on our minds. He also said that me being there two days a week would increase the “teamwork” vibe he wanted in the office.
I knew this wasn’t completely true… He wanted me to be there more because I was his friend, and he didn’t exactly jive with anyone else in the office. He also wanted the staff meeting on Monday mornings because the secretary wouldn’t be able to come to the entire staff meeting. The money counters were in on Mondays and had to be monitored by her. So, she wouldn’t be able to come in until at least 10, and he thought that would make the meetings better. In short, he just didn’t want her in there.
The extra day was something I really had to consider. One day a week is what we initially thought as a family that I would be working, but in all honesty, I was already working more than that. The ministry had grown so much that it kept me busy, and I loved it. So we decided as a family that we would be ok with this change. I would begin to go to the office on Monday mornings and then at noon on Wednesdays and stay through the end of the services that night.
I did get my extra hours and a little raise. I was finally making over $200 per week.
I loved what I was doing. I was adding new things to the ministry. I was managing a large budget. I was involved with community activities and school activities. Even on my days “off,” I would go to dance recitals and ball games.
I ate lunch at the school once a week.
I worked way more than 20 hours per week, but I didn’t mind.
In October of 2018, the pastor asked us to work with him to create goals for our ministries. He wanted to add these goals to our evaluation to give us tangible things to work for. It sounded like a good idea to me. However, he added some things I wasn’t entirely comfortable with and some that I didn’t know how I would be able to fit into my already full schedule.
The one that bothered me was this… The pastor asked the youth pastor and me how many children we wanted to see baptized within the year. I told him I couldn’t put a number to that. I wanted to see as many kids saved and baptized as possible. It felt wrong to put a number to something so precious. But, he insisted. It would keep us honest and working hard, he said. I asked how many were baptized the year before, and based on that number, I decided on a goal of 10 kids to be baptized within the year. I was concerned that I would always have that number in my mind and think of my “goal” when talking to kids about Jesus. (This part comes into play in a major way as the story continues.)
He also asked us to add Sunday School training to our goals. He wanted us to have 2 Sunday School training events for the teachers in our department each year. I visited them and worked with them weekly. But I couldn’t for the life of me figure out when and how I was going to add two teacher training events to my already packed schedule. This seemed like a small thing on paper, but when your schedule is already full, something like this can be just the tipping point.
The pastor was getting quite aggravated with the music minister by the end of 2018. He came up with a plan. He told the music minister that he could take Christmas Eve off; we would handle the service. This was a special, well-attended service the church held every Christmas Eve. It was a big deal, and for one of the staff not to be there wasn’t normal.
Me, the pastor, and the youth pastor set out to plan the most amazing Christmas Eve Service. We chose the songs, and the scripture readings, and we set up the stage differently with couches and pillows. We were going big or going home. We were pulling out all the stops. We had rehearsals and lights… we were excited… we had something to prove. And what we had to prove, the pastor said, was that even the three of us who were far from qualified to plan a musically centered program could do a better job than the music minister.
The night went off without a hitch. When it was over everyone came forward to tell us what a wonderful job we had done. We were riding high, we were proud of ourselves.
I hadn’t ever really taken much time to think about this one until I started writing this. Wouldn’t this have been a great time to promote staff unity? What if we had all planned it together and then felt like we had pulled it off as a team. Instead, we pulled it off without one important team member, and it was calculated. It was meant to make him look bad and to hurt him. The pastor hoped people would brag about what we did so much that it would either anger or destroy the music minister. He was working really hard to get him to quit because he wanted him gone but didn’t want to fire him. He thought once again that it would be easier to let someone hang themselves than be a real boss and handle things. He had spent almost a year “training” the music minister and still, he wasn’t pleased with the way he was doing things. I don’t have a problem with a pastor letting an employee go, but this pattern of wanting someone to fail so it doesn’t look bad on you is horrendous. This plan to outshine the music minister was shady at best. Again, where’s the mercy in this, the grace… where’s Jesus. If our motivations were so selfish and calculated, to begin with, did anything we do really please God that night? I can only speak for myself, but I was proud that night… really proud. We were successful, we did what we planned to do, and the pastor was thrilled with the outcome. It was dirty, and at the time I didn’t even see it.
At the end of 2018, I was thrilled with my job. Kids were coming to know Jesus. The events we were planning were getting bigger and bigger. Young families were joining our church. My job had a new pace. I had taken on quite a few more responsibilities. The pastor and I were good friends. It was a comfortable working relationship. I was exhausted but loving what I was doing.
Then came 2019…
Until Next Time,
Whitney