8/30/10

Last night in the booth when you forgot to hit the video switch button, I felt really empathetic. I know that's a terrible feeling, and I was glad to just hold you. After the service, though, I started to feel very upset at Thomas Hurst. I still feel a personal hurt over how I perceive I was mistreated by him while I was working for the church. I felt like if that had happened while I was Production Manager, I would have been grilled about it. Why did that happen? Why aren't your volunteers trained? What are you going to do about it to make sure it doesn't happen again? Why wasn't I told about this immediately? I doubt that Jason Skelton heard a word about it from anyone. Because adults tend to treat adults like mistakes happen, but they often treat children like mistakes are either willful neglect or immature foolishness. I always felt treated like a child while working for Thomas; no flexibility, no independence, and bearing the weight of what he felt was his total responsibility. If one of my volunteers made a mistake, then I had failed, and if I had failed, then he had failed, and that was the part that was totally unacceptable to him. Professional caliber work was expected from me, with no competent technical oversight, no training, no support, and no margin for error.
On my first day there, Thomas overheard part of a conversation I had with a volunteer, put it into an imagined context, and simply rendered judgement about me that I was more of a work-in-progress than most. He pulled me into Chris' office, explained to me how I had sinned against my volunteer, and demanded that I personally call them to apologize. That was how our work relationship began, and it never really evolved. Over seven months, we got lunch together exactly once, and we spent more than half of that time driving around looking for restaurants that he thought were open on Sunday.

I know that this post is a lot of complaining about the past, but I was surprised last night by how strongly I still felt hurt by the way I was treated by Mars Hill in general and Thomas specifically. I reminded myself then (and as I'm writing this I do so again) that God is my Justifier. If I was treated unfairly He knows, and He will take care of it. If I was not treated unfairly - which is possible, since I don't have an unbiased view - He knows that too. I hope and trust that He will mature me to the point where I have a better understanding of how to conduct myself in either circumstance.

- J