what will happen sunday night?


my mind is racing in a hundred different directions as i try and filter through some of my thoughts concerning the process that has led to sunday night. sunday evening at 7:00, HUMC will have it's bi-monthly disciples council meeting. for those not in the know, the disciples council used to be known as the administrative board of our church, made up of at-large voting members and the chairpersons of each of huffman's (or any methodist church's) various committees. the meeting is always open to the congregation (unless noted as a closed meeting, which has never happened in my time at the church), but the congregation rarely seizes the opportunity to come listen in. i don't really blame them. the meeting is not usually very exciting or informative, one or both of which is a requirement for anyone to tear themself away from a lazy sunday evening at home. the meeting usually runs as such. the meeting is called to order and then a short devotion is delivered. shortly after, the chairperson of the board/council opens the floor up to the committee heads and asks for them to volunteer reports to the group to enlighten this representation of the church as to what our ministries have been working on and are working towards. some committees will report at every meeting. some committees will never report. the pastor will, next, deliver some sort of charge and then you are out.

you can get an idea of which committees hold the "power" and which are the "second-tier" groups that don't have much pull by sitting in a couple times. as a staff member at the church, i held a voting seat at "the table", but most of the time played the youth ministry's cards fairly close to the vest. if i had good news, i'd praise the group or the parents or shout thanks to those in the room for everyone to feel good about our progress, but if there was any help i needed, i rarely looked for it from the administrative board. i knew the folks that i needed to talk to to "get things done" and, for the most part, that worked best for the group and for the church, even if the "represented" church never really knew about it or ever really cared.

highlighting my (somewhat perverted, admittedly) approach illustrates one of the problems that our church (and i am sure many others) has faced for quite some time. for, even as a young and inexperienced staff person, i was well aware that the group that is responsible for the "big decisions" in the church wasn't that responsible for anything. in my own opinion, i have never seen this board or council as anything more than the church's figurative (or figurehead) cheerleader, there to put as much emphasis on the positive as they could and find ever-new and unique ways to throw a carpet on top of sensitive issues that could lead and have led to the church's serious decline over the last twenty years.

i've spoken (not terribly candidly yet) about the undercurrent of angst directed towards the hispanic "ministry" of our church. my personal thoughts on it aside, that there is angst is nothing more than a symptom of our greater problem.

that greater problem, whatever it is, has tripped up my sunday school class for months on top of months now. we "hear" that it is tripping up other groups and other classes, but those groups and those classes have the same obstacle as we do. we don't know where to go with the frustration. we don't know which door to kick in. we don't understand how so much lack of understanding and communication exists in a church that worships with just over 200 people each sunday morning. and so, as a group, we have decided to address the greater problem. (i take some of that back. we know how the system works by definition. we just don't live by that definition. haven't in a long time.)

i hope to make the room the by the time the meeting starts, but at some point during the session, one of my classmates and ex-softball teammates will be making a presentation and asking some very pointed questions to unsuspecting people gathered for what they thought to do who-knows-what sunday night. our hope in making the presentation is to stir enough confusion and eventual feedback that some of the questions (which should ((and do, in theory)) have obvious answers) that are asked sunday night may ultimately be easily answered or found by every member of or visitor to our congregation. we hope that it shines a light on how poorly handled the church's infrastructure has been. we hope that it, in some way, opens (or kicks in) a door that will allow members or groups in the church to have conversations with the leaders of HUMC about issues important to them without being fearful that they will step on someone's toes (or culture). we hope that it will be positive step in a forward direction.

my fear is that some of our "leaders" will take personally and be offended by some of the questions that cannot so easily be answered. my fear is that, because of this, some will respond in a defensive manner and cloud the overall purpose of our reclaiming a point to what is usually a pointless meeting. my fear is that i am going to have to make an ass out of myself at a meeting that i am always "invited" to but am not really invited to and have to blog about my disappointment when i am off again next wednesday.

but fear is just a state of mind, right? that's what i tried to claim tuesday. and i do believe that, in some cases, things must be torn down in order to be built back up. we'll see what happens.

obviously, i'll keep you posted.