Month: October 2015

Or so the congregation says.

Apparently, the general announcement of my other half’s termination on Sunday was met with shock, disappointment, anger, and threats of withholding pledges.

The question is, will the congregation actually do anything about it and if they do, will they fire the pastors and try to rehire the other half? 

I doubt it. 

The only way I’ll let the other half go back to work at that church, is if both pastors and a significant number of the personnel committee are gone. Otherwise the possibility would be far too great for retribution and exposure to more heartache.

I’ve heard of so many situations like this. Small churches seem to be the worst about this kind of behavior. But I’ve heard of similar politics and gamesmanship across the spectra of all churches.

We’ll see what happens next. 

Neither of us are holding our breath for any of this to go our way. 

The other half was just notified that their employment at one of the religious venues is terminated. This was a shot out of left field, and came with no warning.  I get the feeling this is nothing more than petty politics, unfortunately the other half ran slightly afoul of a female minister and that’s pretty much the end of it. Kiss 1/2 of our current income goodbye.

Greaaaatttt!

Having been persecuted, and abused time and again by women in power since I was 18, I recognize all too well the familiar pattern. You do your job, you’re honest, and never intentionally mean to do anything wrong. You make normal mistakes once in a while and nothing is said. Then one day you’re on the shit list and you have no idea why.

The hostility grows and grows and you chalk it up to perhaps the woman having some family problems, the same as you would if it was a guy. Equality and all that bullshit, and it is bullshit because of what happens next. 

Then your female boss is pissed off all the time at you… but you don’t know why, because you’re supposed to know what you’ve done wrong psychically and you’re supposed to be held accountable for some misdeed from 6 or 8 months back that you’ve forgotten and she’s held onto.

The last year of my employment at a government contractor was absolute HELL due to a nasty fucking co-worker who was in the habit of screaming at me for no apparent reason.

The day she walked out the door she finally told me what I’d done to piss her off. You know what it was?

My house burnt to the fucking ground, and I was off my game for about 4 months while I tried to put my life back together, for me this was a devastating event.

I was happy that each day a bit more of my life fell back into place. But there is no stress like that of building a house. That stress increases exponentially when your contractor is ripping you off for thousands, and you’ve got a 90 mile commute through LA to a job where lay-offs were imminent but every day is like fucking Russian Roulette.

But my “weakness” was unacceptable, I didn’t bounce back fast enough to meet her expectations.  She tried to apologize, saying she didn’t know what it was like to have your life fall apart around you, until she and her husband split up. I didn’t buy her apology or explanation, I think she was just cruel, mean, and bitchy, because she knew she could get away with it. She was an Asian Woman and I was after all, only a white male.

She was right too, all of HR was women. Who are they going to believe? The minority woman, or the mean white guy reporting a hostile workplace?

Duhhhhh…

Anyhow, I saw the pattern developing with the other half’s interactions with the pastors. I never trusted them, because they weren’t very pastoral. In fact they were cliquey. Almost eight months ago, I warned the other half to tread lightly, there was an ill wind blowing. I thought my warning had gone unheeded. 

Apparently not. The other half has saved all the emails, documented the time spent on church projects and done what I think is a fine job of ass covering. The question now is, Is anything actionable?  Also to the other half’s credit the “Severance letter” had some kind of gag order and other constraints built in. SO the letter went directly to our attorney for evaluation UNSIGNED.

Apparently the minister tried to force the issue, and my other half said, “No I’m not in a proper state of mind to be signing legal documents right now, I’ll review the document and make a decision about the terms you’re demanding then agree or not within a day or so.”

The pseudo-religious place is maintaining a co-pastor, and yet they’re claiming they have financial stresses due to a declining congregation. So WHY do you need TWO pastors? Surely, the pastoral job can’t be that arduous. After all, with a declining congregation, the work load should be less shouldn’t it? 

The real problem with the declining congregation is that both the pastors are so boring that they  create lecture hall hell.

They’re not engaged in their own sermons, they’re parroting the words, but those words have little meaning to either woman personally. And of course, rather than looking at themselves they’re looking outward and blaming other factors.

Basically they just wiped the music program out. Ironically, it may be the music program that was keeping a number of people in the congregation. I think there will be quite a few checks missing from the Oct and Nov pledges.

Typical management fuck-up. How many companies cut the meat before they cut the fat? Software development companies always cut testing, then bitch because quality goes down.

Then they cut programming, and bitch because products are late. Then revenue drops because the product is always late and is of poor quality, the managers start climbing into their golden parachutes and bailing out.

Then the company folds leaving the workers trying to keep it together holding the bag with shitty unemployment benefits.

Meanwhile the managers who caused the problem in the first place land like locusts on the next unsuspecting company with 100K + bonus checks and the process starts all over again.

As it turns out, religious organizations do the same thing. Who Knew?

You can equate the music, fellowship (Community involvement), and sermons to products. A congregation with two of the three can survive and possibly grow even if all three “products” are mediocre.

Bad or boring sermons are the price you pay to hear good music, be able to participate in choir, or the weekly potluck to feel connected to the community. Likewise bad music can be compensated for by good sermons and community. You can mix and match with the same results.

But you remove one of the elements and now you’re teetering. You better have an awesome game in the other two areas. (Helpful hint, you can’t build fellowship on hurt feelings. In this case there will be folks who are hurt because they’ve had something they enjoyed taken away from them. The 20 members of the Choir for example.) 

My other half spent the past 14 years or so building the music program but it’s not stand alone, you’ve gotta have a music person in charge.

I mean someone who really knows music inside and out, a professional.  Not someone who can read music and make the pipe organ wheeze out Amazing Grace. In this case, my other half played at least three different instruments, directed two choirs, and a handbell group.

That’s gone now, right before the holidays, and not all the congregation has been informed.  I’m thinking the first couple of Sunday services after the formal announcement will be very interesting.

I suspect the Pastor will try to spin it as my other half leaving to go to a better opportunity.

That is a bald faced lie! Isn’t there some commandment about lying? My other half didn’t quit. This is a termination plain and simple.

In fact the letter that went to the attorney makes some noise about resignation. Then to add insult to injury they wanted to have a party to say thank you for all the years of service. WTF? Really? 

Once again the hypocrisy of organized religion rears it’s ugly face. These pastors aren’t about turning the other cheek, forgiveness, or the ten commandments. I don’t know what they do stand for, but DAMN!

It’s people like these, that made me give all churches wide berth. 

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20 years ago I was constrained when a corrupt, porno-surfing, affair having, scumbag, break-away Episcopal priest screwed my other half. At the time my other half was about honor and not wanting to punish the congregation for the sins of a shitty priest.

THIS TIME, I’m not being constrained, and I also have plenty of time to represent my other half’s interests.  Unlike last time, we will sue if we have grounds. This time around, I’ll see to it we will show no mercy, no quarter will be given, and we will have our due.

I’m so tired of being nice and getting continuously screwed over. Because somehow being nice equates to being a soft target these days.

Stay tuned for the continuing saga if you’re interested, you’ll be able to zero in on these posts using the tags & categories.