What Happened to Our Membership?!

Yesterday was a good day for us, the Lord blessed our service in a great way! We celebrated our Men and Women in our morning worship service. I wanted to do something different this year and rather than having our service in the afternoon we attempted to celebrate during our morning worship. I made a few calls and it seemed like everyones interest was to participate but I didn't any confirmation calls so I called my nephew Louis and he preached:

Text: Romans 4:21 - "fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised".
Topic: "What Are You Convinced Of?"

The message was a blessing as he re-told the story of God's promise to Abraham and Sarah to have have son beyond their years of child-bearing. He did an outstanding job!
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I was in the office last week re-arranging my office and stumble across some photos of church events and members. I got discouraged because when I started my pastorate in 2002, we had great momentum. People were visiting, the church was growing, and within the last 1-1/2 years our membership starting decreasing drastically. So I started reflecting on what happened:

- 2 members passed away
- 1 family moved out state
- 1 family of about 12 just left and only comes on special days
- balance of membership - can't tell

The earlier part of this year was very challenging for our membership. In January of this, we began to seriously consider renovating our church by taking out a loan. It was my goal to use this project as a means to build unity where we can all come together and work together with a common goal, "To glorify God through beautifying our sanctuary". Amazingly that did not happen! Our first Restore the Land Project meeting was very good, until I laid out the proposal (which posted on our website @ http://www.fgmbc.org/restore_the_land_project_) that detailed work to be done, timeline, reasons, etc. The membership voted unanimously to move forward with the plans. Then, we needed to vote on signers for the loan and that's when it went south. One of my leaders who is a long standing member of the church and a prominent leader in our church went ballistic in the meeting. I shared in the meeting that I wanted the loan balance to re-pay itself to minimize our exposure to the high interest rate for at least five (5) years but within the next six (6) months each member should pray about a monthly payment amount. Contributions through members and fundraisers would go directly to principle balance reducing our principle loan amount to achieve a speedy payoff. He thought it was a bad idea and we should consider selling our building instead. Needless to say, this meeting was approx. 4 hours long. Relocating was out of the question for us. We would incur a higher debt because we wouldn't be able to sell the building for what it's worth with all the hazards in our church. I tabled the meeting to another time becuase tempers started rising and we had an afternoon service that day.

Unfortunately, a number of events took place between March and May that has turned our church upside down. Every meeting was painful, literally! Not only that but we lost some good members in the process of which I could not stop. This year the term of BOD ended and we needed to elect a new BOD. I, personally, did not think it was that important because our members had dwindled so that I wanted to focus on keeping unity in our church. I saw it coming and to be honest I did not know how to stop it from happening without creating additional conflict. People were being nominated for leadership positions without in any input from me as pastor.

The whole month of April, people were jocking for position as BOD member. People were talking to each other more the month of APril than I've seen in 6 years as pastor. They came to church on time was very vocal about everything when in time past they never said a word about anything. Now, that they didn't get elected as a BOD member, I have not seen them over 4 weeks. In this entire process, I had a family who lost everything in 1 year (job, house, car, and marriage). I'm fighting with our BOD over election while trying to hold the faith of this family in Christ. Unfortunately, I lost this family due to the turmoil within our church. I started praying for direction, should I stay or should I go? I'm still pastoring the church. I preached a sermon out of Jeremiah 20: 7-9 - "Don't Quit" during this time that I believe was preached through me to me. The point of the message is "Qutting is an easy thing to do but hanging in there is what God wants us to do."

Election day came (I hate this terminology) to vote for a new BOD and God worked a miracle. We have a new leadership team something I should thank God for and I do. But, I have mixed feelings about it and my heart has been broken because we lost members in the process and I have people in our church who's been hurt as well. We're working our way through it but man it's hard!

I'm taking the next couple of weeks off to spend time in prayer. There's going to be a lot going in this final QTR of 2008 for us with preparation for construction to start September 1st and won't be completed until January 2009. But while this is going on, I still have minister to the broken people every day with ministry of His Word. Please keep us in your prayers as we strive to keep the unity of faith in a bond of peace.