Power grab
Sorry for a longish post. However, I’m trying to gage a situation. I have been a worship leader in my church for 8 years. About 3 years ago our senior pastor decided to retire and ushered in a new pastor. He is wonderful and has been making great strides in our local community. When he took over it brought new worshippers into our church and many joined the team. That was a wonderful move of God because for many months I was leading alone during the pastoral shift.
During this time we welcomed a few people who have been kind of problematic within the worship team. Let me say they have hearts for worship, however they are not at all observant of boundaries. They are from the Philippines and are fairly hard to work with. They are people who do task without asking and ask forgiveness later. While that initiative is welcomed in many things it has caused a significant overstep on many occasions even outside of worship.
This year it has slowly came to a head. Enough for me to step away for an undetermined amount of time. As I started to plan out the year in planning setlists I got quite a bit of backlash concerning new songs being added to the set 35ish songs we use throughout the year. Their reasonings were they didn’t like them and it’s too many new songs( 5 max btw). I caved and revamped the song list to accommodate their want for more older songs and familiar ones to them. I’m pretty staunch on spirit led worship and that every song can change based on what the spirit is doing in the room. The worship culture I’ve poured into reflects that. However, it had been a fight. If I was in the opposition then they threatened to leave. They had done this in the past year because “sloppy wet kiss.” Was in a song for an intimate worship night. Instead of compromise they are quick to threaten leaving.
I prayed into it for months asking for guidance from my pastor and we settled on taking time off. An undetermined amount of time. It’s was more of my pastor and I giving them an opportunity to lead because my pastor said it seems like they want to do it. After many meetings with them included so it wasn’t a surprise. Honestly I was just tired of fighting it so I agreed. However, not it’s just impossible for me. Since I’ve been out they have completely been as hypocritical as can been. They have introduced a new song each week, done songs that very few people know. And as most of you know your congregation will sing with songs they know. I’m going to church every week more to get fed but it’s tough. It’s irritating to see the congregation not singing along because they are so disconnected to worship. They’ve added people to lead songs that are not strong( on pitch) singers, adding new songs every week, just kind of doing it Willy nilly. It’s jarring and is grieving me terribly.
I guess what I’m saying is that I felt a little forced out so I left. This is a tough post because it’s an “I” post and I hate that my feelings are dead smack in the middle and I sound selfish. Anyway the skinny is do I go back? I’m wondering if the reason why I feel so grieved is because This isn’t Gods will for me to step away from my calling because I’m hurt. My husband has said this already and I’ve been stubborn on it. Thoughts?