Tuesday, September 11, 2007

church meetings

Church meetings. I hate them. Seriously. For many years I wondered how do you get on this Board or this Committee. I wanted to serve. So I asked. I got nominated. I served. It sucked.
Sausage is good. Sausage and hot bisquits with gravy and a good steaming cup of coffee... ummm ummmm. But have you ever seen sausage being made? Same goes for a church meeting. Looks okay until you see one in action. Makes it kind of hard to swallow after that.
Now I like serving. I am a servant hearted person for the most part. First I serve myself, then you if I have some extra time. Okay, that was wrong. Just sounded funny when I typed it. Church meetings are for the most part B.S. An exercise in futility. Or it is at my church that I am currently at war with. So much territorial issues. So much "to do about nothing". So much tooting our own horns.
I was in one last night. Two and One Half hours of trying to pick leaders for the next 3 years. Stupid method. In our denomination, we have a committee that selects folks to call and ask if they will serve on this committee or that board. That's how it happend to me. I was called. I was excited. I said yes. Years later I have learned to say no. Anyway, you call them and they say yea or nay and move on. The process is silly. I was wondering why don't we just put an ad out in the church bulletin "Hey do you want to serve? Is God calling you to do a certain thing for his kingdom through the church? Please respond by calling....." But no, we don't do that. We figure we know who's best for what position at the church. Who "fits". Who is dependable.
While I'm setting in this meeting I am thinking of Rev Ricks blog about Robert's Rules of Order and all the suits and just the stuff. I wanted to scream out "why don't we let God pick them!" Its ridiculous. So I nominated some people with passion, some who would question this or that, make some changes, challenge when it needed to be challenged. The Senior Pastor says that we need to make sure that our nominess are not Polarizing people, or too divisive. yes yes yes, that is what we need - more of those types. They have so much in common with Jesus. He was never polarizing or divisive. Good grief.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

you ARE a servant-hearted person. you're not an egomaniac or a power broker. that's part of why you don't care for all that committee shit.
you're right. best way to go is just to say, "Are you a part of this church/faith community? and do you care about this part of what we do? and do you have something to give [and i don't mean money - it's best for nobody to give a damn about who's got what money - the people who don't, and the poeple who do]? then come on." that's how we do it. it's not always pretty, but it's real. and if people argue or don't agree or don't see eye to eye on something? we figure we've all got our shit and we've all got our beauty and we are all children of god and we listen, listen, listen.
we figure god'll tell us something or other.
imagine that.
course, now that i've said that, it'll probably go way wrong.
oh, wait, was that my fear talking?

nonprofitprophet said...

Rev Rick said: "now that i've said that, it'll probably go way wrong.
oh, wait, was that my fear talking?"

no, that was past experience with dysfunction talking. ~npp

KJ said...

Oh, my Lord! Dude, this is some funny shit. The saudage analogy kept me laughing, and crying, for a LONG time.

Horribly sad, too. I've been there. Never on a committee, but on staff. That's either worse, or at lease bad enough. I shake my head all the time at the church. What we have created CAN"T be what Jesus intended. How did we get so far off track?

Well, church committees need people just like you. Oddly, I said something about this in my last comment to you (on the Football entry). The comment didn't show up for somes reason. I said the Revrin Rick had been telling me church stories about you, and that I was praying for you. I'll keep praying.

nonprofitprophet said...

Oh lord, the stories are getting out. Heck KJ, don't pray for me - pray for the church. They have got the prophet wired up and there is Hell to pay. Okay, not literally Hell...but you know what I mean.
(and go ahead and keep praying for me - i need them in more ways that you probalby know.)~npp