kinda unhappy

Last week Rachel and I had the pleasure of being over the house of an older couple in our church- they were in ministry for a number of years and he is only now retired thanks to a medical condition. Anyway- they've been an extremely supportive couple for Rachel and I since we've been here. They have been great to us and we enjoy being able to spend time with them.

Anyway- we were over there a week or a week and a half ago talking with them and Dick (the husband). He mentioned something to us that could have been very exciting, but ultimately made me kinda unhappy. hence, my title.

Let me begin with this. there are a few frustrations that I deal with in my current youth ministry setting that are things I'd prefer not to deal with. Here they are:

1. Time. Our church building gets heavy usage during the week from groups that are not part of our church. Monday nights an AA group is there, Tuesday nights & Saturdays (all day) a 7th Day Adventist church uses our building, and Friday night another AA group uses it. During the mornings on tuesdays and thursdays (as well as thursday afternoons) the fellowship hall is used by a real estate group.

That leave us with wednesday, thursday and sunday nights that we can use for anything youth ministry at the church. Thursdays are currently our worship practice nights. wednesday nights, some of our kids have other ministries they go to (that they went to before we got here) AND the church has a "family night" but that leaves us to either use only the youth room or to need to leave the church. This leads me to point 2...

2. Space- we have a small youth room. It's cozy, but it's not large. We cannot grow more in the small space that we have. It's furnished with a couple comfortable sofas and we have a foosball table, too. But there's not much space for that stuff. I love having a foosball table, but it always gets put up against the wall. We just don't have much space to grow and for the number of kids we've been getting on sunday mornings, we're filling up. More space would help us a LOT! The senior pastor has mentioned that he'd like us to be able to spill out of the youth room into the fellowship hall. But a common area like that is hardly something that we as the youth ministry can feel an ownership in. Other groups use the fellowship hall, and both times that we have youth stuff, either the fellowship hall is being used or we shouldn't be using it. It's not something that would be easy to do...

3. People. While our church is growing, there seem to be a large number of older people at the church. Not many of whom serve in children's/youth ministries. A plea was given that someone take over the wednesday night program for 3 months this summer so that the people who have been doing it continually since starting could have a break. no dice. no one volunteered. Just in general, I don't think people get the idea to volunteer. And I think that it comes form a mentality passed down by the pastor/leadership that ministry is for the pastors to do (as seen by having 4 pastors at the church- two of them volunteer- and those two because the pastor wanted to give some "authority" to the leaders of ministries). I think that leads to people thinking that pastors are ministers... which is not what it should be. pastors teach the word and equip people to minister to their circle.

Anyway- those are, for the most part, my concerns. I probably wouldn't be worried about these things except that a solution to those problems came across the senior pastor's desk months before rachel and I came. A Christian businessman in the area owns a building a couple blocks down from the church. the upstairs portion of this building was empty at the time (with probably more square footage of our whole church building) and Dick was working with this businessman on something. Dick had volunteered to take the youth ministry on at that time, but he wanted to move it out of the church. He worked with the businessman and had worked out a deal for COMPLETE usage of the upstairs of this place. Could do anything they wanted to it, basically- repaint, refloor, whatever.

This man met with Dick and the senior pastor about the space and before the man could get anything out, senior pastor said to him "we will pay no more than $250 per month". Which may have been what the church could afford at the time, but... it's excessively low for anywhere. another church rents our building, smaller space, for an extremely low rate of $500/month for only saturdays. But the businessman just was so apalled at the attitude that our senior pastor gave him that he walked out and told Dick he refused to work with him. He later confessed that for $1000 a month, we could have had complete usage of this space, all the time. While that may have been more than the church could afford, they have made steps of faith for money issues in the past.

Anyway- so i'm just a little upset after hearing that because my concerns that I have, at least 2 or 3, and maybe all 3 (having something like that for a youth center could get people interested in helping) could have been taken care of with this building. But no, the attitude of the senior pastor made this man not desire to work with us on it. And now- the place is being opened in a couple days as a coffee-house.... we could have done something like that and more...

oh well... que sera...