West Cocoa Chat

This past Sunday at Central we held a "Family Talk." This is the feel good name we give to our version of a Church Business Meeting. The overall tone of our Family Talk was positive as far as the congregation was concerned. The biggest complaint we had concerned our new way we were observing the Lord’s Supper. We just recently changed the look of the front of our auditorium. Because our Lord’s Table is over 40 years old and in need of some touch up, we had decided to move it to the rear of the auditorium until we could give it the loving care it deserved. There were a few people that were bothered by it’s absence from the front of the auditorium. However, they voiced their concerns in a loving way and we found ourselves coming to the end of a positive "Family Talk."
That is until a lady in our church who has been unhappy with many different facets of her life decided to sabotage the spirit of our Family Talk. She launched into a long discourse outlining all of the things that hacked her off about our church and she named people that left our church 3,4, and 5 years ago that she missed.
On a side note, I had spent 2 hours (starting at 4pm) with her, her daughter, and our Youth Minister that same day, in an attempt to re-engage her daughter who can be one of the leaders of our youth group. It took us a while to get her daughter to see that her despondence was due to the fact that she felt like she didn’t have any input into the direction of the youth group. Our youth minister brought up the idea of an Advisory Council and she immediately began to re-engage. And then to my horror her mother decides to bring up a dislike about our church just as we’re all smiles and about to close with a prayer. The classic thing was her own daughter told her mother that her timing was terrible. I thought to myself who is the adult in this relationship.
So, about 2 hours later her mother is exhibiting the same "terrorist" like behavior in our Family Talk. And at the end of her tirade she says, "I know there are other people (about 70 were in attendance) that feel like me. Let’s let the elders know how we feel about the direction of the church."
It was at that moment that I wished I had one of those sound effects machines. I would have pressed the button that makes the "cricket sounds" because not one person spoke up to join her. In fact, one of our newer members mentions how the attendance for the last 2 Sundays has been over 300. Enough said, let the crickets begin. Could the Lord have some great things in store for our church? Perhaps we took a big step this past Sunday night.