Write About Now

Well, I will say this for Two Rivers Baptist Church–they successfully shifted the focus from motherhood this past weekend.

The church achieved this by voting out 71 members who had questioned senior minister Jerry Sutton about the church’s spending and sued for financial records. The first vote on the issue, held May 4 at the request of Sutton and other church leaders, included the 71 and therefore barely missed the 2/3 majority required by the church’s by-laws.

The Tennessean reports that on Sunday “David Mills, a former church trustee and deacon chairman, challenged the legitimacy of counting the votes of the dissident members.” Members in the service then voted by a show of hands to remove those 71 votes from the count and the 71 people from church membership.

One of the 71, Dennis Shipp, taught a Sunday school lesson earlier that morning on the story of Joseph returning to relationship with his brothers and said the plaintiffs were “ready to reconcile.” The paper reports “Shipp learned of his ouster upon entering the sanctuary after the vote had been taken.”

When I suggested a less mother-centric approach to Sunday’s worship, I was thinking of something like my own church’s lovely services in which every hymn, chorus, reading and piece of visual art was written or painted by a woman. Maybe Two Rivers could try that next year.