Formerly fundie church job

[emilymea]

One of my friends just took over the pastorship of a church. This church used to be of the fundie/family integrated/dominionist church type. They are making the slow change from family integrated to age appropriate religious activities.

Well, long story short, I was asked to take over the children's pastor job. Well, not take over exactly, more like create from scratch and see where it goes. Me take over an entire church department? This is crazy! I'm female, educated (not that this post shows it), and anything but fundie.

I'm wondering if this a good thing or not.

Any opinions about what I should do?

Sorry if this belongs in chatter, I didn't know where to put it.

[Austin]

Does this church represent your beliefs?

[Joykins]

Do you have any experience in children's ministry? I would say our children's ministry person obtains curriculum (we do Hands On Bible), browbeats anyone that looks susceptible into teaching, and generally is busy at all times year round.

Make sure you have an effective "safe sanctuary" policy/training/reference check for your children's classes. Enforce the policy. In our state, Sunday School teachers are also mandatory reporters of suspected child abuse--learn the laws for your state.

[snozzberry]

Hmmm...my husband is a former Pastor of Children and Family Ministries at an evangelical church. I don't know that we've ever been involved in something more soul-crushing than being on staff at a church. Add to the fact that the church you're talking about is former hardcore fundie and I suspect the problems will only be amplified.

There's a reason why 30-40% of pastors leave ministry altogether. It will chew you up, spit you out, and disappoint you in ways that you never thought possible. Of the people that we still keep in touch with from the Bible college that my husband and I met at, not a single one is in ministry (including ourselves). Towards the end it got to the point that my husband would have taken any job, doing anything, just as long as it wasn't at a church. If we had to do it all over again, we would have absolutely stayed as far away from ministry as possible. It is by far our biggest regret in life.

Four years later and it's still a challenge to get my husband to go to our mainline fairly liberal church.

You don't say whether or not the position is full-time or part-time or only as a volunteer. Maybe it's different if you're not full-time. I was going to say that I'm not trying to discourage you from taking the job, but then I suppose that wouldn't be entirely true. I guess mostly, I'd plead with you to be sure this is *really* what you want to do. Once you take that job, there will be no going back to who you were before. For better or worse, it will fundamentally change the way you understand God and the church.