Not a political religion thread, but are there any Church Secretaries, Office Managers, Admins...

[Igel]

20. It's variable.

Even over time, it's variable.

I worked for a small church office for a decade. Rule 1: Everybody involved is human, and it takes an incredible person to say, "My motivations are selfish and it's okay when I'm wrong, I'm not changing."

After that it all flows logically from a few other parameters.

How dogmatic is the church? How much authority does the pastor have? If there's a board that controls most things, then the pastor's less important--the more distributed the power, the more petty the cavil, but in the end the gentler the congregation gets treated. On the other hand, the church tends to be less decisive and more muddled in outlook.

My church was a doctrinal organization. It existed as a breakaway group from a larger denomination because the larger church changed doctrine. It had crappy social activities. It existed to be faithful to the doctrine.

The pastor had strong views, but tempered them very much. When he was judgmental, he reserved discussion to a handful of people: Wife, asst. pastor, maybe church staff. What was said in-house damned well stayed in house. The asst. pastor was more judgmental, but also indifferent. Often his attitude was, "I'll tell them what to do, and if they don't do it, too bad, so sad, just keep me on the payroll." At the same time, he was the nosier of the two because he figured that while he wasn't responsible for what others did, he was responsible for maintaining order in the church. If there's a bad apple that might corrupt it, it had to be expunged with prejudice.

Meanwhile the pastor really cared about people and it upset him when they screwed up. The church alcoholic falls off the wagon, he's there helping out. Some widow needs money for a new fridge or heat or car repairs and the widow's fund doesn't have the $, we'd find out months later that she stopped asking because the money just appeared (from the pastor's personal funds).

Problem was this produced a lot of intense loyalty. Not only did the pastor not ask to be pastor--others asked, since he'd dropped out over the doctrinal changes and was content to be a construction worker--but his attitude garnered him a lot of loyalty.

Fast forward a decade. Two things happened. First, he still cared, and had been hands-off because people were shaken by their treatment as they exited their old church. Second, all the adulation went to his head. He veered towards being the head of a nanny state. This was fed by the asst. pastor's law-and-order mentality. You can figure out that went over badly when the leadership veered from hands-off but very preachy to "tow the line" and very preachy.

The church office was often the center of a lot of gossip. Between the pastor, asst. pastor, and choir director/outreach manager, plus the two office staffers (one of them was me) there were a lot of games played. The asst. pastor didn't like the hands-off attitude, and the two of them went round and round. The choir director constantly screwed up in ways that helped his programs and which required bailing out. They knew the screw ups were intentional. "Oh, I'm $10k over budget. Oops." Even worse, "Oh, that purchase was approved by the asst. pastor." Who'd immediately say, "Yes, because you said the pastor approved it?" "Oh, I did? Sorry, didn't mean to imply that."

When I started there were three staffers. One was young, outspoken, and spread gossip. She was gone not long after I arrived. The other staffer and I are still friends, 30 years after we each quit because the church was becoming too brutal, and both of us kept things confidential. We'd hear gossip from below, and it would often stop with us; we'd hear gossip from above, and it would stop with us. Often we served as mediators--we might hear that something bad is about to happen, and gently nudge a parishioner to clear up a misunderstanding or lay low, until the storm blew over. Or let some additional information drop upward to help inform the pastoral views.

When we got an influx of junior/part-time ministers late in the part of the game I was witness to it was horrible as each had to virtue signal to show their righteousness. Some stomped on parishioners to show that they could enforce doctrine. Others were more of the "visit the sick" type, One, I think, deserved the gig, because we'd hear accidentally that he was doing things like helping folk, often weeks or months after the fact. Whereas others would come in and brag about what they did (getting their reward).

Ultimately, the pastor (or the board, wherever the power is centered) is in charge of the climate in the church, in the office, and often what's happening in the office will percolate downward over time.