Randi Meyer
Tuesday 2/24/09
Week 7 – Church Conflict Story

Grant United Methodist Church
Pastor Constance Cherry – Friday 2/13/09

Pastor Connie use to work as a full time minister of music for a church over 1000 people. She handled all choirs and instrumentals for the church. This church had a faithful organist for about 50 years. The organist’s name was Mary. Mary was a godly woman who was not only a very talented organist, but she was selfless and always eager to serve. The time finally came though for Mary to retire as the hired organ player. This left Pastor Connie in charge of searching for a new organist.

The church did have two substitute organ players to cover for Mary when she was not available to play. The substitutes were Sherrill and Sarah. The problem was that neither of them was a very skillful organist and could not play at the level the choir needed. They could deal with their playing every once in a while, but it would be a poor decision on the church’s behalf to hire one of them full time. Both Sherrill and Sarah approached Pastor Connie for the job, but the church decided it would be best to hold auditions. Pastor Connie led the committee for hiring a new organist. It was not just her decision, but the church’s board believed this would be best. Sherrill and Sarah could audition for the job, but neither of them would get it handed to them.

Before this began, Sherrill and Sarah never really liked each other in the first place. They were always very competitive. They also both had families within the church. This caused a big division between the families and other church members too. With all of these problems, this affirmed the decision for the church to hold auditions for the position. Sherrill and Sarah we very offended by this decision though, so they began to befriend each other because they both had the same enemy now, Pastor Connie.

During the audition and hiring process, Pastor Connie received hate mail and telephone threats. At one point, the police had to get involved, because her life might have been in danger. On one particular day, a man from the church even pretended to run her over. He sped up for very quickly with his truck, but slammed on his breaks. It was so close it even brushed her clothing. When the committee got together to vote on the organist a large group of people showed up. One lady followed Pastor Connie all the way to her office screaming at her. At one point in all this mess, the church even had to hire a conflict resolution consultant to come and help figure out the anger in this situation, but it ended up only making it worse. The senior pastor helped Pastor Connie with all the decisions, but provided poor leadership skills. He was afraid to back her up too much and wanted to please everyone.

Finally, they hired a very good organist. He had a doctorate in worship. Many people encouraged Pastor Connie to leave the church, because she did not deserve to put up with all the hostility. Most of the church supported her, but there was still great hatred between her and members. She still stayed another three years though faithfully serving God at this church. She believes that the church learned that handling this situation properly even in riot was the right thing.