Reston VA

Remember this is my personal diary and place to vent....

Reston, VA
April 28, 2009
7:00pm
God is on the Job

Something is not right n this church and it showed up at the lecture prep and lecture. This group was very clingy all the way along, not able to find information when instructions were given, getting the information wrong, innumerable emails which frankly resulted in simply emails and no action.

When I arrived for the lecture prep, they had only 1 white board, no easel (it was propped up on a desk, what were they thinking was going to hold the white board the next day at the lecture) and children’s markers in bright colors with a line so fine it couldn’t be seen 15 feet away. They had also purchased 2 1x2 white boards thinking that 2 of them would make one larger board. What did they think would hold up 2 tiny boards? Then I hear that the venue for the lecture holds a max of 40 people! This was never mentioned in the deluge of emails coming from this committee.

I was really taken aback, since this group had communicated with me at least twice a week for months. There was underlying resistance to lecture and to the Manual provided activities. They had just had a Bible conference in their church the weekend before and had clearly expected more people there and had put more effort into that than the lecture. In fact I’d received an email basically saying I was being too demanding since they were already so busy with plans for this Bible seminar in their church.

They did manage to get an easel set up 5 minutes before the lecture started. Threw together a literature table at my recommendation outside the door of the venue. The introducer showed up, he hadn’t come to the prep, and actually started the introduction without looking at me and without my being in the room.

The room was so small that when visitors came by and would normally have come in, they stopped at the door and listened for a few minutes, but there were no seats and no room to stand even at the door. There was no ventilation and the room was very hot. The library said they couldn’t do anything about it. So we’d set up a fan pointing outward to create air circulation but no one could stand in the tiny doorway with this fan blowing at them. So the visitors would take some literature and leave. In four years of lecturing I’ve never seen anything like this.

Their last lecture had 75 people. What made them think a venue for 40 was suitable? One person wanted the venue in their specific town and so the lecture chair listened to the one person complaining. She said their lectures never got newcomers, and was surprised to learn that 3 newcomers came to this lecture. Actually more came but couldn’t get in.

The lecture itself went very well. A new student of Christian Science said this helped him understand how to pray, which he hadn’t understood from his reading the Bible Lesson. He asked if it was ok to pray for oneself or was that selfish. This is a question that comes from new students sometimes, and I was happy to encourage him. A newcomer bought Science and Health and said he never prayed but was very interesting in learning more about prayer. An Indian man, newcomer, left midway through the lecture when I started talking about Christ. My cousin came, which was a big surprise to me. None of my cousins have shown an interest in Christian Science since their dad was such a poor representative of it. But Ben drove from the farm where he is staying and took extensive notes. We went out to dinner afterward, his first Indian food, and then talked until midnight. It was a wonderful visit.