Church Decision

After long and deliberate thought, I have decided not to name the church that is at the center of this post. Writing this has been hard and it was equally as hard to come to decision to speak my mind in the church last night after 15 years of holding my opinions and feelings in. In personal conversation I don't think I would have a problem identifying it, but not in a forum like this.

In recent months, I was coming to the decision to start returning to church after 15 years by attending Wednesday night services. I'll probably never be an every Sunday morning church service attendee but I have started to like the informal yet informative nature of the Wednesday night services and I have taken a liking to the current Pastor.

During the last year, a committee has been working on new bylaws for the Church. Last Wednesday, they presented copies of the old and new bylaws to the Church and there was to be a vote on them this Wednesday night. I read the new bylaws and was immediately struck by the fact that they could have the effect of reversing some of what drove me away from the Church and from organized religion as a whole over the last 15 years. These bylaws would remove the political power of the Church from the hands of a select few and spread it among the Church membership by rotating committee positions and chairmanships and by imposing a form of term limits. To me, things were looking up.

I attended the service last night so that I could cast my vote in favor of them (I have never given up membership in the Church, I simply stopped going for the most part). During the business meeting, it immediately became apparent that there were those who were opposed to the bylaws because they realized that their power in the Church was threatened by them. After listening to almost an hour of the debate, I finally raised my hand and said what I've been waiting for 15 years to say. I told the assembled that they hadn't seen me much for 15 years, then went on to explain why. I told them that I was disgusted by the way previous Pastors had been treated (backdoor politics and backstabbing come to mind) and that I was turned off by the fact that the Church was run by a powerful few. I concluded my stating that the new bylaws would be just the thing to help remedy those problems.

In retrospect, I should have realized that the process was doomed to fail. It did fail. The powerful few were able to garner just enough votes to make the vote fall short of the 2/3 majority by 4 votes. Personally, I think that the failure to pass the new bylaws could very well have been the torpedo that broke the ship's keel. It has led me to reconsider becoming active in that Church again. In closing the service/meeting last night, the Pastor asked if we were serving the Lord or if we were serving ourselves. I truly believe that those who led the defeat of the bylaws were serving not the Lord but themselves. I will be going through a lot of deep thought and consideration in the near future. If you are a religious person and reading this, please keep me in your prayers. There are some hard decisions to come.

Mac McCormick III
kf4lmt@comcast.net