I know that I'm asking for prayer a lot right now. Boy do we need it. Dh & I have been under attack since May, & it doesn't seem to be letting up. Dh had a very tough day yesterday & is likely to have another one today.
Ok. My vent: I have heard it said that people get mad when the preacher doesn't shake their hand, but I've never seen it, until yesterday. We have a man in the church who is in his fifties or close to sixty & a fairly new Christian. He comes to church off & on. He'll come 2 or 3 Sunday a.m. & then miss for 2 or 3. You all know the kind I'm talking about. Well, dh got a call from him yesterday. He was furious. Dh did not shake his hand on Sunday a.m. (and according to him the Sunday a.m. before.) Of course, the man does not come to Sunday School. The only opportunity dh would have had was the 5 or 6 minutes between S.S. & church. The man got mad & left halfway during church, so dh couldn't even shake his hand after church. The funny part - the baby part- the part that I can't understand & makes me FURIOUS - is that he is demanding the keyboard (he gave to the church) & the riding mower (he supposedly GAVE to us) back. I don't care about the stuff, it's the whole principle. Not getting a handshake & now I want my stuff back. Of course, dh is going to give it back & is actually going to spend money to make the mower better before he gives it back. (What a guy huh?) Dh isn't going to give up on the man either. I said, if I talk to him, I'm just going to tell him to GROW UP!!!! He's almost 60!!! Christian or not, you shouldn't act like that!!
Prayer request: Dh is having an advisory committee meeting tonight. After last month's meeting when dh got his raise, one of the committee members started having second thoughts about the amount. For the first time in 1 1/2 years, we were actually able to meet all of the bills & have food in the house. Tonight, dh is going to "relook" at the situation & once again discuss everything. So, we may not be getting as much money as we had thought. (It's not a lot of money either.) Dh says that this is one area that he has to be careful about. (The church split before we came, a little over a year 1/2 ago. The previous pastor took half of all money that came in, missionary offerings, etc. So the church is leary when it comes to money & the pastor.) I get stressed out because I'm the one who handles our finances & pays the bills. I'm the one who has had to talk w/ the collectors when we didn't have the money to pay them. And I don't understand why people don't make taking care of the pastor a priority for the church.
As far as CA goes, he hasn't been to church for over 2 weeks now. He may still be bad-mouthing dh behind the scenes, I don't know. But I do know that God is at work. Dh was going to try to talk to him again, but God stopped him. Now we're just waiting to see what God's going to do.
4 days until we go on vacation!! Please pray that I can make it that long. I told dh that God is making sure that we really appreciate our time off.
We learned a long time ago not to use people's personal things for church use or let them pay for it. This is exactly what they do when something like this comes up. They take their bat and ball and go home. And they put you in a tizzy for a week while you're replacing whatever it is they took. You need that like you need a hole in the head. When we first got to our previous church, somebody in the church owned the sound system. And they would take it out whenever they wanted to use it! CRAZY! I would come in on Sunday AM's to find microphones just laying on the front row and everything unplugged. Apparently they thought this chaos was just fine. One of the best things my dh ever did was box it up, give it to the person and say, 'here you go, we've bought our own." You have to make sure stuff that is used in the church is paid for by the church, otherwise people control it in many ways that you don't want. The best thing to ever happen is for this guy to take the KB and mower back.
About the raise, I'll be praying. That's not right for them to decrease after the increase. I believe a church brings a financial stronghold on itself by doing that. Funny thing, a friend of ours church decreased his salary because they thought he was making too much. Interestingly enough the church general fund decreased by exactly that amount the next year. It was like God saying to the board, "I saw what you did...and I didn't like it!"
I just hate stuff like that, I'm telling you, it reeks. People don't realize what they are doing to themselves when they touch the man of God's finances. In a previous church when the board decided not to increase us as they should have, all but one board member had terrible things happen in their finances that year. Funny thing is, that one board member is the only one who really stood up for what was right and was fighting for more.
God takes stuff like this seriously - and church boards should too.
AARGH!! People who act childish really bring out the primal child in me...
Don't you just want to walk up to someone like that and say, "Oh, yeah? Well, you're just a Mr. Poopy-Pants," or "Be quiet, Stupidhead!"
We have a couple who nitpicks at our SP with ridiculous things like, "The pastor didn't preach in a suit coat," or "I think the piano player was dressed too casually." The female half of the couple came up to our PW a couple of weeks ago and said angrily, "Did you know that _________ has pneumonia? Why hasn't the church done anything about it?" The ailing member was one of my children's workers, who really didn't want anyone to feel sorry for her. We tried countless times to send her home (she was past the contagious phase!), and she wouldn't even go home.
This couple has also threatened to "withdraw their support" if the SP doesn't do things the way they want. Buh-bye, then, as the old SNL skit used to say!
Remember that CAs are like the mythical Hydra monster - you cut one head off and another one grows in its place. Keep praying and doing what God has called you to do. Our pastoral staff finally came to the conclusion that we're doing exactly what we're supposed to be doing, or the devil wouldn't be so teed off. You're in my prayers!!
P.S. Deanna - you are right about God messing with those who mess with His anointed! One of the parents who had been giving YP trouble because she disciplined his daughter (he was trying to rally all the parents against her, which didn't work!) had his basement flood over the weekend. Coincidence? Maybe, but we couldn't help but smirk a little...
What goes around comes around...or as the scripture says it - what you sow, you will reap! I don't think the basement flooding is a coincidence. You mess with God's people, and stuff happens.
We had a couple that came in on Easter Sunday this year. They were first time guests. You won't believe what happened. They came in and sat in the back waiting for service to start. While sitting there waiting, my husband walked by in the sanctuary and one of the members turned around and said, "That's the pastor!" They heard that, and took one look at my husband and said, "This is not the church for us!" And they got up and walked out a little miffed. The reason? They did not like his suit. They thought it was too flashy and inappropriate. These people were really old school and if I do say so, my dh is a very sharp contemporary dresser. Anyway, they thought he was just too fashionable, and they headed out. They went to the parking lot and the husband was in a bad attitude, and put his car in reverse and hit the gas, and...slammed right into a huge oak tree in our parking lot and busted out all their back windows including the back windshield!!!!! They were so mad and just kept on driving. One of our staff cleaned it up. Weeks later they came back and decided to try the church again. They had found nothing in Tampa that they liked. They said, "let's go back to that church where the pastor dresses crazy and see if it's any better." Well, wouldn't you know it, I was preaching and leading the service that night. They walked in and saw this, and...guess what --- THEY DON'T AGREE WITH WOMEN PREACHERS!!!!!!!!! Is God hysterical or WHAT? Well they were miffed again but decided to sit through the service. At the end the wife came up and told me the whole thing about my husband's suit, how they didn't like it, etc. and how they came that night and saw me preaching & didn't agree with it. But then she said, "my husband and I saw how you really loved the people and the great rapport you have with them, and we must say we did enjoy the service though we don't agree with women preaching..." Then she proceeded to say they were praying about making this their church home. (I'm thinking, "Oh dear Jesus.....)
Well, a woman in our church who is a dear saint was in earshot of all this and she came right over and said, "Excuse me, mam, but I heard what you were saying regarding our pastors. What you say really bothers me because.........." and she went into a whole litany basically telling this woman, "My pastors are the best in the world and if you aren't going to be as crazy about them and this church as we are, you might as well hit the door..." The lady looked at her a little flabbergasted. I just walked away and went up to choir practice and by this time some of the choir members were laughing so hard they were crying. The reason they were laughing is because they heard about the windows being busted out when they had an attitude and they couldn't help thinking it was the funniest thing they ever heard.
The couple said they would be back the next Sun. despite all this. The choir members begged me..."please prepare Pastor's flashiest suit!" (They know I select his clothing for every service.) We finally settled on a black suit with a pink tie. Well, sure enough the people were back the next Sunday. They actually CALLED THE OFFICE and told one of our staff, "Please relay the message that we did not appreciate how the pastor was dressed on Sunday morning." Well, the staff got a real knee slapper (laugh) out of that one.
The next week, I was in the pulpit preaching on Sunday AM and...they never came back.
Such is life in the ministry! Sometimes it's all so ridiculous you just have to laugh. I'm glad - in my church - the people are laughing with me at it!!
As my late grandpa used to say, "Ya gotta have humor, or it ain't no fun!"
So true, especially in the ministry...
We were rolling on the floor laughing when we found out that CA said we played "bar music" in church. We thought she was referring to the music we played at our Kid's Outreach (she was actually complaining about the worship team "jamming" after worship practice - playing some jazzy, bluesy music - either way, it's pretty stupid, and the SP pretty much told her so, albeit much nicer than I would have ).
But when we thought it was the music from the Kids' Outreach (which was Go Fish and the Veggie Rocks album), we were laughing so hard, gasping for air at the thought of scouring the metro area for a bar that plays Veggie Tales.
Thanks ladies. You do always encourage me & help me put things in better perspective. I had to laugh when dh told me the man who got mad about not shaking his hand actually said "You went & shook someone's hand that you didn't know & didn't shake mine." Imagine, the preacher having the nerve to welcome a guest before a "regular" member of the congregation. I tell you, pastors nowadays.....
Count down continues to vacation. Just 2 days to go. Ordered Disney tickets today & made reservations for lunch w/ Pooh & the gang. I'm already singing "It's a small world after all..." (Of course, now I'll be singing "Oh Where is my hairbrush? ) Just hoping our new tropical storm doesn't mess up travel plans.
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