He made a decision. The pulpit had to go. It began that Sunday afternoon.
On Friday of the next week, Derek
asked the two custodians to move the
massive old pulpit out. He replaced it
with a new style of pulpit, a small lectern
that was barely noticeable. Now, he
thought, the pulpit will complement
my preaching style. First, there were a series of e-mails.
All of them were negative, though the
tone varied in intensity. One member
of five years kindly suggested,
“You should have given us a bit of
forewarning.” On the other extreme, a
seventy-something member went right
at the pastor: “What you have done is
heretical! You ought to be ashamed of
yourself. I think we need to call a vote
of confidence about you.”
In hindsight, the pastor now realizes he
should have expected the explosion.
And he admits he entered the worship
service that Sunday with a bit of
naiveté. He should have noticed the
tension among some in the room.
H e s h o u l d h ave s e e n t h e q u i e t
conversations taking place before and
after the services.
“I was both blind and blindsided,”
Derek confessed. “I did not notice the
rumblings and the murmurings that
Sunday morning. I guess I had become
overconfident in my leadership style.”
38 • Solutions
The rest of the e-mail was another
eight hundred words, but you get the
point.
It was bad. Real bad.
Derek lost count of the e-mails, the
meetings, and the phone calls that
week. There was not a supportive voice
among them. He stopped looking at
Facebook after he saw several posts
blasting him.