The weeds, mainly the ones with the plans to take over leadership and remake our fellowship into their image, began to campaign quietly for the removal of certain staff. At the same time, there were a number of parents of young adolescents who had become disappointed that a popular young staffer had not been promoted to a full-time permanent position. A story was spread that this young person had been sabotaged in his position by others who were jealous of the young one's popularity. Their wrath was particularly focused on his immediate supervisor - the steady, albeit uninspiring leader of the youth group:, however, there was much more to the story that remained hidden behind the scenes. The weeds used the anger with the supervisor as the means to have him removed and replaced with their guy. Every week, the weeds' ringleaders worked side by side in ministry with the man they sought to replace and regularly reminded their temporary allies that he was the cause for their favorite leaving our church. And so the weeds turned the natural frustration of others into a reason for removing this leader, whom they saw as an obstacle to their takeover plans and lobbied to have their own candidate installed as a replacement.
I wish I could say then that I knew what was happening around me, but I didn't. I knew that the guy they wanted out lacked support from a certain crowd, but I never knew why; these people didn't prefer the young leader to the more experienced one. I was completely unaware, as were the majority of their allies, that the weeds plotted a mini coup to remove our pastoral staff and replace all of them with those aligned with their fundamentalist theology. Had members of their alliance known what the real intent, it would have fizzled immediately.
There were agendas and motives that seemed to compete against one another. I was aware that the young leader had additional, more powerful foes that helped to engineer his exit, this had nothing to do with how these foes regarded the young man's immediate superior. This small group of church members had their own bad reasons for seeking leadership change and certainly weren't interested in bringing in someone who would be obliged to rival faction. They pushed their own candidate as a replacement instead.
Having parental support can be very important, but support is no substitute for skill and qualification. I learned very quickly that the one under the weeds' patronage was in way over his head - without education, experience, or skill to manage a group without an extreme mount of help. When that promised help dissolved overnight leaving me alone with him to lead the ministry, I knew it would be an even greater challenge. As soon as their chosen replacement had his first stumble, his patrons backed away from their endorsement and remarked, "That's what happens when you pick unqualified people for a job." The ones who had been duped by the weeds into supporting the change soon discovered that their teens didn't like this new leader any better than the one they got rid of; these kids had already checked out of our church, never to return.
The weeds were fine with the others leaving because he removed most of the public school students. Even if the weeds' own children weren't happy with their leader, they were certain that it would be a strict environment regardless. Until it wasn't, that is. One family from the weeds left to find a more constrained youth group for their child and forbade his interactions with his former friends at church. The result was a disaster; their son rebelled and left Christianity altogether. Within six months the remaining weed leaders realized that their man was not as easily controlled as they desired and even though most of the volunteer staff had quit, still one remained (me) who didn't fit their ideal. They began to complain more openly about the church as a whole and specifically about the awfulness of the youth group. When the remaining students themselves refused to attend, the church had no other choice but to again seek a more satisfactory replacement.
The last of the ringleader weeds eventually left our church when their final demands were not resolved to their liking by church leadership; they led others out, but left a small cadre of like-minded friends behind. Sadly, the ones left behind turned out to be more powerful and destructive to the church as a whole. More on that in my next post...
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