Being willing to vote our convictions

(I am copying this post from ????. That way those of you can read the original post and the follow-up in one post. who didn’t read it can read it with the follow-up immediately. You can decide for  yourself whether or not you think I followed my convictions. I will never present myself as anything but real. When I mess up, I will ‘fess up. I don’t think I did but you can decide for yourself. Here’s the first post.)

Willing to vote my convictions

Our church has been without a pastor for eighteen months. We had a candidate come this past Sunday. My husband and I were excited. We’re ready to start this new phase in our church. We listened attentively and with anticipation. After all, the search committee had been working hard, right? They decided on this man as the first choice to lead our church. We should just go along, right?

Wrong.

As I said, we really wanted to like this candidate. We wanted to give him a resounding “thumbs up”. It was a good sermon. He did a good job. He was personable. But we’re voting “nay”. We just don’t feel he’s the best choice. We wanted someone more challenging. We don’t need it but we wanted it. We could go ahead and vote “yes” so we could be with the majority, but isn’t that what gets people, nations, and churches in trouble?

How do I know the majority will vote for him? Because I know my church. They want this search process to be over. They want a leader.  They’re tired of being without a pastor. They are going to go along with what the search committee recommends. We know we’re supposed to assume they were under the direction of the Holy Spirit. But we feel we are, too. So we’ve reached an impasse.  What does one do in a situation like this?

My first choice was to abstain or to avoid the vote altogether. Cowardly, I know. But we’ve decided to vote our convictions. We will give this man a goodly amount of time before we make any decisions. We will honestly want him to succeed and will never do anything to sabotage his success in any way. But we will also be comfortable with our choice.

Integrity is important. Compromise is also important. We musn’t be so stubborn that we can’t change. But sometimes maybe it’s the order of things. We can vote our convictions and then we can compromise by giving this man a fair chance. While we respect those in the ministry, we have long since quit relying on any one person to spur us on spiritually anyway. We do our own reading and research of the Bible. We are also veracious readers. We engage in critical thinking and conversation.

We would like to wake up on Sunday mornings really excited to go to church. But if that can’t happen, we will do one of two things. We will either find another church after several months, or we will learn to glean what we can from the sermons.

It’s not easy to be in the minority. It’s not easy buck the system. It can make us feel that surely we must be wrong if everyone else thinks otherwise. And yet isn’t that what Christ did? Could there ever be anyone that was as much in the minority as He? So if you’re in a quandary yourself about something, maintain your integrity by doing what you think is right, making sure, of course, that you have given it unbiased thought and deliberation. And then be willing to accommodate and compromise when appropriate. The world would be a better place if everyone lived more honestly.

The Follow-Up

Well, I was one hundred percent correct. The congregation overwhelmingly voted in the candidate as our new pastor. It was cut and dried from the first moment the chairperson opened their mouth. The whole meeting was geared to a positive vote.

No, my hubby and I said nothing. It was apparent that we were the ONLY two people who felt less than enthusiastic about this candidate.