13 May 2010
In a conversation yesterday
a friend shared with me how much he hated going to voters meetings. I think the typical attendance at the meetings attests to the fact that my friend is not alone in his feelings. And yet I urged my friend to go and I'd urge all blog readers to go. To go to the painful and sometimes long meetings. It is one very tangible way that you can love your pastor. Sometimes those meetings become the places where the folks with (what I'll call) the gift of negativity congregate in disproportionate numbers. It's viewed as their place to kvetch. And some REALLY excel at it. And way too often it goes beyond kvetching. How important, then, is the presence of persons who are there without "an agenda." Just there because they love their Lord, appreciate the work their pastor does, and want to further their congregation's mission in the community and the world. Those are the voices that are absent in too many parishes at these meetings. So, please, no matter how much you despise the tedium of them, go. Go, be a voice of calm and reason and encouragement to the pastor and other workers in your parish. Your pastor will thank you.
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7 comments:
Very important indeed!
A hearty Amen to that, Pr. Weedon!
Thanks for saying that. I never thought of that before. I will stopping avoiding them!
The people in Burt, IA certainly show how much they love their pastors by the way they hold voters meetings. Meetings are held quarterly after Sunday service, attended by around 70-80 people, and generally last 10-15 minutes.
The longest voters meeting I have experienced in four years as pastor was around 20 minutes, and that was the day we voted to change hymnals to the LSB.
Is it okay if I agree to go, but don't pretend to not hate them?
Both my husband and I and my parents (at their own church) have had occasion to pull a "smack down" (ok, not really, but figuratively) at a congregational meeting that was heading towards pastor-bashing. We were happy to do it, esp. in the case of the "Now that pastor's not serving as school principal, he's got his week free" comment. Ummm... no.
I so very much wish that child care could be organized for such meetings. There have been many meetings we have skipped because keeping a small child who's already sat thru a worship service with us in the meeting would have been quite difficult.
People who need child care should get together and take turns "caring", unless they want to, and can, hire a couple of teenagers to cover for them.
If we have a major voters' meeting it is after the late service and preceded by a lunch served by the high school youth for a free will offering to support their program.
Helen
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