Monday, October 02, 2006

A Tree Grows in Seattle

Yesterday was an odd day at church. During the morning service, Sarah and I were called forward and presented with a nice, little pine tree for becoming members of the church. That's very nice and all but it was a complete shock to us. We weren't quite ready to put our membership in that church. Here's the story.
We've been visiting that church on and off for a while now. We really like it and a few weeks ago we decided not to visit anymore churches and just hang our hat at this one. We signed up for and attended a membership class which was very informative and fun. We were given a questionnaire of sorts to fill out at our leisure. In it, one of the questions was something like, "Are you interested in becoming a member of this church?" The choices were odd and there was nowhere to check our answer which would have been, "Yes, but not now." So, we checked "Yes" and then wrote in the comments that we would like to just hang out for a bit and get to know the church and it's people. We also wrote that when we were ready to become members, we'd let them know.
Flashforward to yesterday. We get called forward as new members of the church. It was odd. We both felt embarrassed, irritated and perplexed. Our guess is that they didn't read our comments. Now, here's the kicker. We really do like this church alot and have gotten involved in the arts ministry and the Christmas play. Do we say something about this or just leave it alone? I'm fairly certain we would have become members eventually. Part of me wants to just let it go. The other part of me wants to quietly let someone know about it so that it won't happen again. Perhaps they could reword the questionnaire for future classes. I don't know. It's tough. I just know that Sarah and I both would have rather been informed about the presentation for multiple reasons. I think they should let folks know ahead of time. What if we'd not been at church that day? The biggest reason would have been that we could have headed this off at the pass. We both feel a bit cheated. Instead of standing before the church feeling proud of our decision, we were standing there smiling thru gritted teeth going, "What the hell is going on here?"
The last thing in the world we want to do is hurt anybody's feelings or go on a warpath. Like I said before, we really like the church. If we do inform anyone, it will be extremely discreet. What would you do?

2 comments:

Sarah Burch Gordon said...

I think you put this all very eloquently, honey. GOOD JOB!!!

Anonymous said...

i agree, i'd go with discreet. find a leader in the church and start up a conversation about the membership class/process. tell them that you all were a little caught off guard by the announcement, etc.

it is kinda irritating that they didn't seem to have read your comments and that they didn't even follow up in person with you to make sure of your decision. seems a little sloppy.

jp