By Filings on
Church & Ministry
Church Finance
Pastoral Leadership

“When Welch canceled FBC’s longtime Christmas pageant, an event that drew thousands of attendees annually, local press began covering the internal drama. Church member Deanna Weilhouwer, who sold pageant tickets for 24 years, told the Sun Sentinel those sales funded about one-third of FBC’s annual budget.” - C. Leaders

Discussion

Tue, 05/11/21

First, why would you have a Christmas Pageant during COVID anyway? It’s not like you’d get the usual attendance, if you could even do it legally, and what message would you be sending to the community?

But, assuming the claim is true, why is 1/3 of a church’s funding coming from a show they put on for non-members? They never should have gotten to that point in the first place.

That said, I’ve seen quite a few churches fall into turmoil and split (or close to it) because a new pastor wasn’t patient and tried to make major withdrawals from the “congregational trust” account before he’d made enough deposits.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Tue, 05/11/21

…..the church forgot why they were there. We (including me) can tend to put an inordinate emphasis on programs and forget the need to preach the Gospel. I was thinking that older churches can be especially bad this way, but I’m not sure.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

Wed, 05/12/21

First, a church should have in its bylaws how to call and remove a pastor. That was mistake number one. If the advocacy group was less than half of the church, then should have tried to work it out first and if that didn’t work, leave the church. Trying to be a discontent minority in the church is never healthy for either side.

Sat, 05/15/21

There’s definitely a serious omission in most church constitution/bylaws, though, if the sampling I’ve seen is any indication.

Most of them don’t have a section on what to do if you think the pastor needs removing. That should be there. If you have a protocol, the church can at least do it in an orderly fashion, and if the protocol is a good one, the process can be fair and potentially amicable as well. Many a split could be avoided, in my opinion, if discontented subgroups didn’t feel like they had to sneak around drumming up supporters for their cause, circulating petitions, etc.. It should be in the open and in good order by an agreed upon process.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.