Hanging On

Just a quick post because it's late, and of course, tomorrow is Sunday. I had a good conversation with our lead elder. She did a great job listening. She said she felt that my lead pastor is actually in a pretty centered space; that she certainly sees a sense of urgency in where we are and the decisions that need to be made, but not a sense of panic. She said she hadn't picked up on anything related to the culture of our church changing, though she is admittedly not "in the trenches". As an elder, her role is to oversee the ends, not the means. My issue has been that the means can shift the culture of the ends, and that is what has me concerned. Her thought was to continue asking the questions I'm asking, which of course, I will do.

Immediately after that I had a production meeting with the new consultant, our lead pastor and the other worship leader I work with. It was a fun meeting and I think we worked through a lot of details that should hopefully make the services we have coming up much stronger. As we talked about the invocation, the thought was to also introduce this weeks' topic because it is a heavy one, and we don't want to take anyone by surprise. I gently reminded everyone that we also need to make sure that the invocation is also about remembering who God is. I didn't get a lot of push back on it, but not a lot of "OH yea, no doubt. Let's definitely do that" either. So I crafted it to fit both.

I left feeling somewhat more hopeful. My plan is to take notes during our meetings, writing down questions I have, frustrations or areas of compromise where I feel like we're making progress. I hope that after a few weeks I'll have a better sense of whether my fears are turning to reality or not. I certainly hope not. We'll see. More soon.