LJ Idol Week 1 - Empty Gestures
"We'll pray for you."
I'm sitting with the Staff/Parish Committee. It's the Thursday after Easter, two hours before choir practice. We had a triumphant holiday, a full three services during which I conducted two choirs and a full orchestra at each one, to great effect. And now I was being fired.
"We just don't think you're mentally or physically healthy enough for this job. But we'll pray for you."
I had started working at the church 3 years before. At that time, there were two services and 8 ensembles. Sitting in front of the Staff/Parish Committee, I thought about the 14 ensembles that I was involved in now. I thought about the Praise and Worship service I'd started from the ground up, conducting research, creating a music library, putting together an ensemble. I thought about the Taize service I had started two years ago for Lent, the Christmas pageants I'd written and directed, the concert series I had created. But a new pastor had taken over the church 6 months before, and was slowly restructuring the staff to suit his preferences. I obviously wasn't his choice.
But hey, they were praying for me.
No lawyer would touch a discrimination suit against a church. I found, to my horror, that churches are exempt from paying unemployment insurance, so I would have no money coming in at all. And the church's prayers saw me through six months of unemployment, filing bankruptcy, going without medical insurance, and a crippling depression that was almost the end of me.
Thanks very much for the prayers, but no thanks.
I believe in the power of prayer, karma, good universal vibrations, whatever you'd like to call it, when offered sincerely and in a spirit of love and hope. But when used as a method to make yourself feel better for acting unfairly, for acting judgmentally, for acting against the basic precepts of your religion.....no.
Screw those prayers.
It all worked out for me in the end. I gained great skills at another job, found my passion and my family of choice, and am happy. The church, however, is now on their 5th music director in the last seven years. All of them have been fired.
And I'm sure they prayed for all of them, too.
I'm sitting with the Staff/Parish Committee. It's the Thursday after Easter, two hours before choir practice. We had a triumphant holiday, a full three services during which I conducted two choirs and a full orchestra at each one, to great effect. And now I was being fired.
"We just don't think you're mentally or physically healthy enough for this job. But we'll pray for you."
I had started working at the church 3 years before. At that time, there were two services and 8 ensembles. Sitting in front of the Staff/Parish Committee, I thought about the 14 ensembles that I was involved in now. I thought about the Praise and Worship service I'd started from the ground up, conducting research, creating a music library, putting together an ensemble. I thought about the Taize service I had started two years ago for Lent, the Christmas pageants I'd written and directed, the concert series I had created. But a new pastor had taken over the church 6 months before, and was slowly restructuring the staff to suit his preferences. I obviously wasn't his choice.
But hey, they were praying for me.
No lawyer would touch a discrimination suit against a church. I found, to my horror, that churches are exempt from paying unemployment insurance, so I would have no money coming in at all. And the church's prayers saw me through six months of unemployment, filing bankruptcy, going without medical insurance, and a crippling depression that was almost the end of me.
Thanks very much for the prayers, but no thanks.
I believe in the power of prayer, karma, good universal vibrations, whatever you'd like to call it, when offered sincerely and in a spirit of love and hope. But when used as a method to make yourself feel better for acting unfairly, for acting judgmentally, for acting against the basic precepts of your religion.....no.
Screw those prayers.
It all worked out for me in the end. I gained great skills at another job, found my passion and my family of choice, and am happy. The church, however, is now on their 5th music director in the last seven years. All of them have been fired.
And I'm sure they prayed for all of them, too.