…started badly and deteriorated rapidly.
[Me and Mrs, Vicar and assistant]
We were both very nervous as we went in. We both felt that we would know within the first few minutes how it would turn out.
The first thing that happened was that we were shown an A0 size print of the proposed church structure – which of course still had the name of the offending Sunday School superintendent. And the Vicar was proud of it, and apparently clueless that he was rubbing salt into the wound.
The second thing was that he turned to my wife and said “The children’s work is not the important thing here….” Now to be fair to him, he merely meant that that the fact of us leaving was more important to him. But if he was more switched on he would have known that to my wife the children’s work IS the important thing – it is her whole raison d’être.
That set my wife off. She had previously asked me to do the talking, but she had been triggered into a full account of her time at the church listing some of the times she had been slapped down. I chipped in with bits of support. We were able to communicate that it was not just the recent incident but the whole history, not just the new man but the two people in front of us as well.
Then there was a silence – each party waiting for the other to speak.
Then they asked us what we proposed; what olive branch we could offer.
That set me off. We were the aggrieved party – it was their job to be offering the olive branch, not us. It was for them to come up with proposals to win us back, not for us to set terms for return.
The best offer was for Mrs to run just her mid-week groups and to have a pastoral role. The mid-week groups were coming to the end of their natural life anyway, as
Various parents had started work or children grown up and gone to nursery. And in any case, both they and the pastoral role had been offshoots of her work as crèche leader – you take away the hub and the whole wheel falls apart.
Our return proposal was that they should commission us for the play church idea, (since it lies within their parish). We would still be part of their church structure, which would be best for appearances all round, but would not have to rub shoulders every week. The assistant minister liked this idea and said we should definitely go for it, but the Vicar just laughed it off.
We the asked why Mrs. had been sacked, what had she done wrong etc.
The Vicar wanted a ‘more collaborative approach’. He clearly does not realise that Mrs was already running it on a team basis, with regular consultations with the mothers, taking on board their ideas where possible, and using their skills and taking into account the various other pressures on their lives. He seems to think that she was domineering. But being the best person for the job, in terms of qualification, experience and availability, does not make one domineering.
He felt that she ‘henpecks’ me. My philosophy of marriage is that ‘husbands should love their wives as Christ loves the church and gave his life for her’. I sacrifice what I want for her. In any decision I consult her to find out how she feels and how my decision will affect her. Apparently my deliberate godly submissiveness makes her a domineering henpecker!!!
“There is other even more hurtful stuff”
What it all amounts to is that, as my wife has long suspected, he through ignorance and misjudgement has held things against her, and for that reason has never allowed her to progress.
He continues to blame us. He thinks that it is all her perception, based on her ‘unloved childhood’.
But let us imagine that all the above was true and correct. It was still wrong to sack her without notice. It was still wrong to appoint a less qualified and experienced person in her place. It was till wrong that if she was running the group so badly that they didn’t talk to her and train her to do it their way.
In the end, my wife had had enough. She put her coat on and walked out, with me following.
But the vicar came round to the house in the evening. “We left an open wound….” So he proceeded to rub salt in it, still blaming us, still refusing to apologise in any meaningful way. And he wonders why we don’t want to go back?
Towards the end, he was saying ‘Simon, even now I still love and respect you’ [which of course taken out of the context sounds good], but I had to close the door on him saying sadly ‘But you don’t love and respect my wife’.
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