My church is dying and no-one's able to admit it.
Our pastor was caught sleeping with another woman, so he got removed, and we got a new pastor. Problem is, he's from Bumfuck, PA, and is a hippy-dippy liberal preaching to a fairly conservative congregation in a fairly large city. On top of that, in a misguided attempt to completely purge our old pastor's influence, pretty much every program our old pastor implemented has been scrubbed, which is pretty much every program aimed at the kids and teenagers. Our service is now a "combined" tradition and contemporary service where we sing a bunch of traditional hymns, and our guitarist gets up there and strums along to a "contemporary" song with the tempo slowed down enough the old folks can sing along.
I'm in my 30s and the only congregation member younger than me is the pastor's 20-year-old son. My concerns about our congregation dying out without young members are brushed aside as doomsaying. Our current pastor has no experience with big-city-living and think the bums are honest when they say they want money for food and brush off the staff's concerns about safety. The only reason I stick around is because I'm one of two people that can run the tech booth and they refuse to train another. A lot of the current congregation members are also friends of my parents, so I'd get an earful from them about leaving the congregation high and dry if I just ghosted.
It's all so vexing.
