Weeds Part 3

My last post may have made it seem as though the students getting the youth pastor removed and the weeds leaving were closely tied events - they were not. The immediate aftermath of his termination left me as the responsible adult with a handful of students, a significant portion of whom were the children of the fundamentalists and were staunchly opposed to women leading males over the age of 12. The scion of one these "fundies" felt that he could be openly disdainful because he was informed by his parents that I was an illegitimate leader as a female.

Suddenly, I had some men in the church seeking to become leaders in the youth ministry because they were afraid that I could not "properly lead male students." While I normally welcome volunteer offers, these "helpers" had no prior experience in youth ministry nor did they have any real interest in teaching and discipling students; instead, they only wanted to be in the group so that the main leader would be a man. I politely declined the offers and found other volunteers elsewhere, mainly by beefing up the responsibilities of the committed Senior Class and bringing in Young Adults who were open to trying new things in their ministry lives. I kept these young leaders in roles where they could succeed, under an ever watchful eye. I knew that the situation was only temporary and within nine months, we hired a very good, young youth pastor.

Hiring this new guy did not make the fundies happy at all. He was (and is) the absolute opposite of what they consider acceptable. Worse, in their estimation, I had introduced him to our senior pastor and helped get him hired, despite the fact that he did not look or act like what a fundamentalist would expect from a youth pastor. They made one final concerted effort to get rid of youth pastor and me, but when the senior pastor would not accede to their termination demands, they left the church.

Had these folks merely left quietly, our church would be a lot better off today. Unfortunately, they did not leave quietly, they influenced others to leave and poisoned a small group who decided to stay on, continuing the fight underground. The underground force bided its time for over two years. What happened next came about when these weeds emerged from the bitter soil...