This weekend went by too quickly, as always. Gregg worked all day Friday for Panavid and came home at 6. He said how glad he was that the week was over and how much he does not miss free lancing- moving heaving equipment, the crazy hours, traveling. Yeah, I don’t miss that life either. Since I had no idea what time he would be home that night, I hadn’t started dinner when he arrived. I just threw some chicken tenders and fries in the oven and called it done, promising I’d actually make a real meal the next day.
Saturday we put the bill for Gregg’s week of work in the mail and spent a few hours at the mall window shopping. When we got home, I made my mother’s recipe for chicken soup which takes about four hours to make. It turned out really yummy. It’s been in the fifties here the past week, so I though it would be great to have a hot, hearty meal to eat that night. We left clean up for the next day and went to watch the last episode of The Apprentice online.
Sunday morning I went to my Breaking Free class and attended church right after. Our new interim pastor started his series on Romans which, unfortunately, I found difficult to follow. He was also hard to hear since he mumbles, and his wireless mic made him sound bassy. That afternoon, we went home & heated up some leftover soup for lunch. Gregg turned on the Nascar race and I took a nap on the couch. I was just waking up around 4:30 when he left to go back to church for the Missions Week kick-off. While he was gone, I did laundry and watched tv, and when he came home we had more leftovers for dinner.
Pretty standard weekend for us, just spending time together. We had the chance to talk more concerning stuff going on with the church that we’ve been unsettled about. On Thursday, Gregg met with Jonathan, who in addition to being the Young Adults Pastor is also now fulfilling a lot of duties of both youth pastor and senior pastor, and with Ron, the church administrator. He discussed his growing concerns about the place of the tech ministry, and they both expressed their desire to do whatever they could to help improve the situation. Ron said that he realizes there is no real, cohesive vision amongst staff members and that has led to everyone kind of going off in their own direction. He hopes that when Pastor Dan’s replacement comes on board, he will bring a lot of the vision and stability that our church desperately needs.
He also said that he had a similar conversation with the youth pastor in the months leading up to his termination. The former youth pastor has a lot of vision for the future, like fifty years down the road, and the church is content with maintaining things. They were at an impasse, and Ron told him he saw that he had hit a wall and could now either try to force change, continue to nudge it along, or just accept things the way they are. He chose to force change, and became insubordinate to church leadership. While I certainly don’t agree with the way he handled things, I can now appreciate the position he found himself in. What do you do when you’re going against the grain?
Gregg really appreciated Ron & Jonathan talking with him and hearing him out. Unfortunately, there are no easy fixes here. The church is in a very fragile state, and we’re in survival mode right now which makes maintaining appealing, even necessary. They aren’t interested in introducing even more change, understandably so. And staff hasn’t been working well together because of all the recent upheaval, people taking on more than their fair share of the workload to fill in the gaps for those who have left and whatnot. The ministries within the church aren’t jelling, either. This has made Gregg’s ability to do his job increasingly difficult.
In our conversations together, we both wondered if the new senior pastor they hire will really bring together everything that is needed in order for the church to move forward, or if we will continue to stay in this holding pattern of maintaining what is already here. It’ll be interesting to see what God does with CPC over the next few months.
It’s at times like these that I am so encouraged by the songs I hear on Christian radio. I just let the lyrics soak in and remind me that we are never alone.
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