The driveway situation is beginning to annoy me.
We have our schedules pretty well worked out during the week, but two Sundays in a row, I had to wake them up at 10:40 to ask them to move their car so I could go to church. After all the talk they gave me the night I met them about how they were led to the church they chose, I was surprised that for two weeks in a row they didn’t bother going.
I wouldn’t care so much if I was still driving the Daewoo, but mine’s a brand new car, dang it. I have 5,000 miles on it. As far as I’m concerned, the car with the lowest miles should get the driveway.
For the time being I’m going to have to live with it, but for this and other reasons (money mainly) I eventually plan to sell this place and get an apartment. With lower utility costs. And my own parking space. First I need to scale down and get rid of stuff. It’s dangerous for a single woman to have a house all to herself. I’ve accumulated a LOT of stuff.
This is very similar to what’s going at church, actually…
Our church, like many, is financially tight. I go to one of those grand old traditional churches. When it was built, it was filled to capacity every Sunday, just like all of the other churches nearby. But now we have a huge building and a small congregation. We have gradually made some changes to try to manage the expenses of a struggling church. These past few years, after Christmas is over, we have moved our services to Grace Chapel, a smaller room that is less expensive to heat than our huge sanctuary with its high ceiling. We refer to the chapel as God’s family room. I enjoy these services; they are more intimate and less formal. But there are those who lament the loss of services in the sanctuary with the beautiful pipe organ.
We agreed recently to share our building with another church (holy roller type - very contemporary) in exchange for $$ after they sold the run-down hotel they were using for their church. People were enthused about being able to use our sanctuary through the winter with the holy rollers paying half of the gas bill.
At first I tried to keep an open mind about it, despite the complaints I heard from the start. But things are not going well at all. Our sanctuary is long and narrow, and is not able to accommodate a full scale contemporary service (or show) with a live band. It looks trashy with all of the instruments, microphones, duct tape, monitors, spotlights in the balcony, etc. I’m waiting for the day the projection screen goes up over the stained glass window so they can project their little praise choruses onto it.
They are storing tons of other stuff upstairs, moving what was in the rooms into hallways or wherever, They don’t seem to respect our property at all. It’s just stuff in the way for them to move. Someone said we have things that people have donated to the church and they just treat it like it’s nothing. With all due respect, I’m sure that, like my house, stuff has accumulated in this building that just needs to be gotten rid of, but the holy rollers shouldn’t be the ones to decide what stays or goes.
They have a smaller version of what's in the sanctuary in Grace Chapel. They have shoved our piano into a side room out of the way and now there’s a baby grand in the chapel. But they don’t seem to want anyone to actually use it; we had to move a pulpit and a monitor away from the keyboard before we could use it to rehearse.
I've heard nothing but complaints, and it's getting worse every week. My organist is very high strung, and she gets fueled by the complaints of the others, and pretty soon it's a drama fest. I'm having trouble getting her and everyone else to settle in to rehearse. It’s taking the joy out of choir practice.
There was a meeting last Wednesday with our trustees and trustees from the other church. From what I’ve heard, we did not present a united front. There are those among our members who think this is a wonderful arrangement, but I don’t think they are here enough to see how bad it’s getting. Our pastor isn’t here much these days, either, because he messed up his knee around Christmas time, so he’s in a cast and unable to get around well.
Two people in my choir said they were thinking of leaving the church over it. There are always people who will threaten to leave and don't do it, but for every one like that, there is someone who will say nothing and quietly disappear.
There is a church council meeting next Wednesday. Needless to say, I will be there. I expect it will be well attended.
If something isn't done, I'm afraid of what will happen to the church, let alone my job as choir director.