Sunday Bloody Sunday

Oh, U2 you sure have it right, Sunday can be very bloody. Every month we have the worship service led by the children. It works well, we have the children that can read to the reading parts and children that cannot read do non-reading parts. Makes sense, right? Except when a mother promises her child (who can't read) a reading part. And then, gets mad when they are told they can't do it. It makes you want to just pull out your hair.



When I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, customers didn't tell us how to make vaccines. They might want it labeled with private labels, they might want weird shipping arrangements but they didn't tell us how to make the product. But in a worship service, people want to tell you how to do things ALL THE TIME.



Now has this woman EVER actually helped coordinate or EVEN actually done a part of the service?? NO!! So does she understand the kind of coordination, NO. It was very frustrating.



And on top of it all, my daughter led all the music, used all contemporary music, and sang a solo but left the sanctuary crying after her solo. Because she thought I gave her an upset look. I wasn't looking at her. I was dying of heat exhaustion because it was so bloody hot in my robes.

On the bright side, I finished my second D.Min. required reading. This one was much better than the 1st. It was a totally secular book by Joel Arthur Barker "Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future". It had to be one of the easiest reads in a long time but it was interesting too. It made me see some of the shifting paradigms that make merging my church with the neighboring community seem much more necessary. Of course, it will make my life much, much harder.

Those women that got so mad over the moving of the pews, one of which was the mother of the non-reading child mentioned above, make going to church hard.

My daughter did say that when I told everyone how upset I was over the low Bible Study attendence "It was embarrassing". I made a rookie mistake. I had a great Bible Study going. Attracting new people, had to bring in more chairs, and then one of the above mentioned ladies who also chairs the Admin Council decided that I needed to more exegetical Bible Study. And now no one is coming. Not even the Admin Chair. I changed something to make the old guard happy. I beginning to believe that it was unintentional sabatage. Or maybe not. I'm feeling pretty stupid today.

I think that part of my problem is that I haven't had a Sunday off in over a year except for one where I was driving to Annual Conference. I can't afford to take a trip. I want to take a Sunday off and stay in bed, my own bed, but my parsonage is next to the church. Can I really get away with it??