I'm so unbelievably sad and disappointed....

My husband is a pastor and we've been at the church we're at for a little over a year. We were so excited when we first got here and really felt that the place was a good fit. Fast forward to today. We have been working on fine-tuning the nursery and much of the ministry and making it much more effective. Last weekend my husband suggested to the senior pastor that we should mention something in church about World Breastfeeding Week and that we support NIP. The senior pastor went into this long story about how he wasn't sure and that the church will not support anything by LLL b/c of this conflict that was had in the past between a couple of "GKGW" small groups and a LLL small group. (Which, dh and I are a little bit confused about b/c I wasn't aware that one could do a small group at church based upon LLL for families - plus LLL is a worldwide group not based on anything faith related, right?). Anyways apparently it was this huge deal, he said that he had researched both sides of the issue and in the end it was decided that to be fair the church couldn't support anything from either side. Dh was about to get him to understand that World Breastfeeding Week wasn't a LLL thing and in our area it was also being sponsored by the county public health nurses and a local hospital bf support group.

Fastforward only about a week or so and dh and the sp are talking about a recent family ministry event which didn't goes as well as we had hopped - families weren't really interested in going to a family event, they really just wanted to drop their kids off and head off to do their own thing. He mentioned that we wanted to put up a bulletin board by the nursery with a lot of different things, but specifically including a list of the local parenting support groups, including LLL (to be fair we were also going to be listing the hospital support group). The sp shares with dh that apparently the whole GKGW/LLL (again, I'm thinking he really means AP, but he keeps using LLL instead - can someone enlighten me?) has reared it's head again and there was a board meeting to be held about it this week. Can't put the bulletin board up until then. Dh lets the sp know that we fall on the AP lines, not on the GKGW lines and would never personally recommend it to anyone.

Anyway...dh gets an email today stating that any information posted on the bulletin board will have to be cleared through the sp, especially anything related to LLL. No mention of GKGW!!! They go through all of this talk of being neutral, but in reality it's looking a lot more like they're all for the GKGW stuff! How is this being fair and unbiased? (We're not doing the bulletin board any more, btw. Which is sad because literally all we were going to do is list the parenting support groups out there-LLL, M.O.M, MOPS, ICAN, etc-with when and where they met with some sort of disclaimer about the groups themselves not being endorsed by us, but just that they were available in the community thing. BUT, the fact that it needs to be approved means it's probably not going to end up being what we had hoped it would be)

I'm so disappointed and so very saddened by this. To be honest, I've never felt quite so alone before. The fact that GKGW continues to proliferate and divide churches is so incredibly sad to me...I just didn't think it'd be an issue in our church.

[Learnin'2B]

What's GKGW? just out of curiosity.....

Also, prayer can move those mountains we can't!
Church beaurocracy frustrates me to no end! But still, those being led by the Holy Spirit will respond to it. So put your trust in Jesus to work out those communication issues.

GKGW- Growing Kids God's Way- Ezzo stuff.

Sorry for your trouble. It feels kind of lonely now doesn't it? You have friends here. Keep up the good work.

Linda

[DogwoodMama]

Oh goodness, I am so sorry to hear this. I would be really upset too.

[greenemama]

that's pretty outrageous. is your dh going to confront him about it? i'm so sorry.

[erinee]

I'm sorry. That is such a difficult position to be in. Maybe God has you there to make a change for the better in this church. for you.

I'm so sorry you are going through this! It sounds like the SP doesn't really even understand the players in this. LLL is a non-sectarian organization. I don't know what that would have to do with your church unless they meet at your church. Our local LLL group meets at a church mainly cause they'll let us and it's free but we have nothing to do with the church. You might look around www.ezzo.info and see if there's anything there that might clarify what the issues are for your pastor. Or just sendhim to the site and let him take it all in. "Hey I found this website the other day that clarified a lot of things about the GKGW stuff..." Have you thought about facilitating a parenting class with your dh that has a more AP bent to it? I've done a couple different ones that were pretty good.
I'm a pastor's wife too and things like that can make this job very lonely.

Magan

[WI Mama05]

That sounds like a very frustrating situation.

[klpmommy]

It really sounds like your SP is confused about the LLL vs AP, but then again, so is Mr. Ezzo. LLL does not endorse a parenting style or any religion, but it was founded by a group of Christian women who wanted to help other moms with bfing. Maybe if you found some good info on the LLL website that clarified what LLL endorses and doesn't endorse? www.lalecheleague.org

Thank you so much for all of your responses - I an't tell you how comforting it was to actually find GCM and know that we weren't alone, especially now.

Dh is planning on talking to the SP about it - to get him to clarify what he means. He's been talking - a bit until he's blue in the face about the fact that it's not the LLL and that LLL is exactly as a pp put it - non-sectarian. He also met with the elder that supervises his area of ministry yesterday and asked the elder about it. The elder was also very confused and kept referring to it as LLL. Dh stopped him pretty quickly and let him know that wasn't even the real conflict and that it's really AP vs GKGW.

The problem is that the SP has a very negative view of AP b/c he has in mind this one particular person that was involved in the old conflict. She had lots of other differences of opinion with the SP and I think that clouds his understanding a little bit.

Good idea about looking up the LLL and forwarding the ezzo.info site. I will ask dh what he thinks about that. I had sent him a bunch of Ezzo links before so he'd have some on hand since I had done more specific research than he had. I certainly appreciate your prayers because I think this is truly going to be an uphill battle!

[Learnin'2B]

Originally Posted by erinee

I'm sorry. That is such a difficult position to be in. Maybe God has you there to make a change for the better in this church. for you.

ITA with this!

[TulipMama]

that wasn't even the real conflict and that it's really AP vs GKGW.

They are probabably thinking "AP vs GKGW" but even THAT really isn't the conflict. Gary Ezzo presents it as such--either parents the way of secular humanist/mystics (AP) or parent his way. Reality is, many if not most parents are neither Ezzo or AP. And most if not all of the AP parents look nothing like how Ezzo portrays them. Soooo. . .

Personally, I'd want to leave LLL/AP out of it (though, it does sound like that is your Sr. Pastor's hang up) and focus primarily or the character concerns, church discipline issues, and questionable use of the Bible. . .

This sounds like a really frustrating situation! Just from what you've told us here, the SP seems to be stuck in the previous conflict. Sometimes it's hard to separate the personalities from the facts. Even if you have new facts to present, the personality clash from the previous conflict might taint those new facts.

Maybe you and your dh could try a back door approach. A proactive, rather than reactive, approach. I don't know the kind of solutions that would fit your church, but here are some ideas:

Slings to keep in the nursery for the nursery workers to use
Parenting classes or seminars from a GBD point of view
GBD books for the church library