Challenges in the Church that Obscure Norms

Learning the norms at the church I am interning with was a little bit obscure, both because of the COVID-19 crisis and because I attended this church as a follower as I was growing up. Because of both of these challenges, I was not given a lot of straightforward information on norms. For instance, I had a learning curve with what attire I should be wearing in the office space. Growing up, I wore either formal wear to church or t-shirts to youth group, and most people around the office wear business casual during the week. I had to learn this norm, as it was not told to me directly. Additionally, I had to learn how to fill out forms and programs like reimbursement forms and calendaring programs, without a lot of guidance. Mostly, these things were clear enough to do, but only after I either asked for specific help with very specific questions, or did it incorrectly once and then learned how to do them. Part of this is because a lot of people have a lot of responsibilities and other things to occupy themselves, including normal duties and the change through the COVID-19 crisis.

This also makes sense with the history and current situation of the church. In the past, this church has really flourished. There have been a lot of congregants usually and often this church is on the forefront of social issues like the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s despite the population of the church being largely white and affluent. However, in our recent history, we had a female pastor who was very political from the pulpit, clear about her ideas that leaned more left than right. This is in part because there is no way to separate politics from religion, but there was a group of congregants who would send her cruel letters and criticized her so much that she retired from our church pretty early. In the wake of this, the church is going through a rocky leadership transition, as well as trying to reconcile with the cruelty that some of the congregants lashed out with. This began in about January of this year, just before the COVID-19 crisis, which is another leadership challenge. Due to all of this, both present and past difficulties and challenges for leaders, there is not a lot of space in the minds of the leaders of this church to inform a summer intern on exactly what to do at each moment. Therefore, I tried to be patient, observant, and do the best that I could with each task given to me.