Infrequent updates are now becoming the rule instead of the exception. For people who check this blog once a week or month, that is not a big deal. However, there are a few hardcore "El Gee junkies" who check this out daily and when I miss days, I feel that I am letting them down. I am sorry.
Saturday was pretty much a standard day for me with regards to chores and hobbies. I took care of the vacuuming, stripped and made the beds as well as helped out with laundry and dishes. My wife cooked and took care of a lot of the dog duties as well as assisting here and there. Mostly it was a 50-50 split.
After lunch I made my normal geocaching run, hitting grabbing seven or so (some of them were really nice, others just so-so). I made my way back home just as the sun was going down.
Sunday started out very typical with Sunday School and church service. However before teh sermon could be preached, a couple of...outspoken members of the congregation began asking questions about the search for a new senior pastor. The Admin board and the associate pastor agreed to meet after the service to discuss the issues. I was dreading the discussion. Little did I know how bad or which direction the meeting would go.
Maybe I should backtrack a bit to discuss the search process, jsut to give you an idea what has been going on. First a committee was formed of 7 people to provide a candidate for the admin board to consider. This entailed about 100 hours of work going over about 300 resumes. The 300 was reduced to three and the team voted on their choice. It took three votes but they decided on candidate A. That candidate was submitted to the board and the trustees (of which I am one) to meet and later the candidate would discuss salary wit hthe trustees. That meeting went okay and he was informed of the salary we were thinking of. It was at this point, WEEKS after he was first interviewed, that tells us what he wants as a ball park. We inform him that we have researched the issue and told him the median salary, which was "all inclusive", meaning benefits, base pay, and housing. He appeared to understand and agree. The next meeting was with the trustees a couple of weeks later to finalize the package. This is where the first major issue was noticed. The candidate's attitude appeared to be very "materialistic" when it came to money and he did not seem to be flexible with his pay. We were not sure if he had legitimate needs or not...he never let us know (however he did let the search team leader know a few days later). The candidate told the trustees that he would pray about it and call the contact (the associate pastor) the following day. Before he left, we told him about the finances of the church and offered to work with him in a variety of ways to reach his goal., but he was rather from about his requirements. Even the associate pastor was trying to get him to relax a bit. Needless to say the candidate did not call the next morning, but e-mailed the group in the afternoon (when I saw the e-mail, I was very offended. It appeared he was justifying his salary requirements based on his qualifications). The next day the leader of the search team met with the candidate to get feel for what went wrong in the meeting he had with the trustees. The following day (Thursday) all of us met to discuss the outcome of the candidate/search team leader meeting. The meeting lasted 3-4 hours and defined what each member thought about the situation. It was clear that at least 3 of the 13 member group were not happy with the outcome/choice.
Saturday the admin board met and voted on the candidate and then met with the candidate to give him the news. When he was told that he was not chosen he was given the option to ask questions but he declined. That brings you up to speed on the process.
The meeting on Sunday after church began with our elder giving the congregation an overview of the process, much like I described. After he was finished, he turned over the floor to the other members of the board to fill in gaps. The board was very open, but not derogatory at all to the candidate. The outspoken members who had asked for the meeting began asking questions but focused on the financial aspect of the process. The team tried to tell them that financial was just one part of the decision and that the candidates attitudes sent up several red flags that could not be ignored. That is when things got ugly.
The "outspoken" members began making comments about our associate pastor that were completely uncalled for and it really bothered me. It was the wrong forum and process for that, and to make matters worse, the associate pastor's wife and 19 year old son were in the room trying to keep from responding. It was not a scene that I would call "Christian".
After that meeting was over, I went to McD's to grab some lunch and then went home and took care of the dogs. I did not want to be in the house so grabbed my geocaching stuff and headed out for a couple of hours. It was good therapy. I came home and got cleaned up and ate some dinner before watching some TV and going to bed.
I did not have to work on Monday (MLK Day), so I spent a large part of my day watching the first 9 episodes of the series, "Lost". Okay I must admit...I am hooked. It is a great show, at least from what I have seen so far. I cannot wait to see more!
Well, you are now up to date. Hopefully I can be a bit more diligent on my updates in the future.
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