Weekend woes

This has been a difficult weekend. Not all bad, and arguably even the bad things are good, but it has been draining.

Our church has been going through some transitions. For the last couple of months I have been on a committee that was commissioned to make some financial decisions for the future of the church, and it has been a very difficult task for a lot of reasons. For one, I didn't want to be on the committee in the first place, but the pastor wanted me on it and I bow easily to pressure of that kind. SO I have felt a lot of the time like a fish out of water in those meetings. But aside from that, I thought the meetings went well. However, recently we met with the pastor to give him our recommendations, and it didn't go well at all. There were a lot of misunderstandings about certain recommendations, and it led to a lot of frustration and heartache. We had a second meeting this past weekend to try and clear some things up. Some of the problem stems from him thinking that we went beyond what he had commissioned us to do. The committee all agreed that the Lord was calling us to grow as a church, and so we made recommendations to encourage growth. The pastor was a bit upset that we took such liberties with our commission. This was very hard for me, as I felt that we reported what we felt God was calling us to do. How can we keep silent about that? But maybe we should have made those suggestions as an "aside" and not an official recommendation. In any case, its been said. And some of the most important points were the ones he disagreed with most (and not just because they were beyond the parameters of our commmission). This is very hard for me to accept, because, as I said, we all felt that that was what God was calling us to. Furthermore a comment was made that implied that it was his job to hear from God about the direction of the church, not ours. I took it to mean that he felt we could not have heard from God on these matters because God wouldn't lead us in that way(OR that we're not spiritually in a place to sense the Spirit leading, which is an even worse assertion, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he only meant we weren'tbeing led, not that we couldn't be).

Anyway, the wonderful outcome of it all is that I, though hurt, still deeply love our pastor and our church, and I have seen God's hand of grace at work preserving our unity despite wounded feelings. He is much bigger than our hearts, and able to sustain His children and preserve His Body.

The other hard thing is that I have decided to step down from the children's ministry. This decision was made before the meetings went awry (thankfully, or my motives might have beebn questioned). I felt God calling me away, and though I am a little sad, I am also excited and filled with peace about it. The thing that is hard is that I know it must've been hard for the pastor to hear, and I wish this wasn't all happening at the same time. But God can take care of His own, and I know things will work out for the best. We've developed a new program for the kids that will hopefully get more people in the church involved. My heart all along was to start the ministry and then turn it over to people from the community--I went as a missionary of sorts. So now it is time to pass the baton.