Oh The Hypocrisy of It All....

Sometimes even when you go where you don't really want to be, for whatever reasons, it is good to be there to experience things for yourself. On Sunday, June 10, 2007, I attended the Children's Day service at Mt. Hope A.M.E. Zion Church and it was a very inspirational service. The children conducted the entire worship service and they were very good and showed a lot of enthusiam and spirit. They enjoyed doing and the congregation enjoyed what the children did.
Everything was going along fine until I was reminded of something that Pastor Maddox had said over two years ago: "we will not allow any financial presentations to be made by anyone during the worship service - it distracts from the service and the Pastor will know what is given and we don't need to do any of that anymore". Well to my amazement (I don't know why I should be amazed any longer) there was a call for Pastor Maddox to come forward. He came forward and the names of two organizations or groups were called to make presentations for proceeds received from two functions that were held during the past two months. The presentations were made and all parties involved made their remarks. Everything was fine except this was no longer permitted to take place during the worship service - how could this be? Maybe there was a change in church policy or maybe this was just another example of the hypocrisy of this pastor who allows certain things depending on who is involved. It is never about principles or standards; it is simply about him doing what he feels like doing! How does the members tolerate this kind of thoughtless action and always changing discretionary behavior on his part? Do we have no rights or input in these matters. See I know this first hand since it was Pastor Maddox himself that said no when I wanted to make a presentation to the Christian Education department for some proceeds from a fundraiser that was held during the 4th of July celebration in 2005. When I asked the pastor's permission to do the presentation, he told me no and that he was making an announcement to the congregation that this would no longer be permitted. He then made the announcement during that morning's service. Fine, I said we would all live with that and then the discretionary permissions started and Sunday was the big punch to the gut. This is just great, thanks Pastor Maddox for being soo fair and consistent(yea sure). We desparately need a new broom to make a clean sweep!!!!