lament

I remember back when I was in high school our church merged with another church that was having some problems. The ended up driving the their preacher away because of power struggles in the consistory and other "prominent members?" My father was the lucky man who became the pastor of the new merged church. It took about a year to realise that the power struggles were still there and my dad being the strong willed man he was sure to have conflict. This led to many miserable Sunday dinners where at some point my Mom would end up crying and my Dad would just look blankly at his plate. This created quite an impression on me as you could imagine. As soon as I went to College I barely set foot in a church for more than years. I would go once in awhile just to make my mother happy. Flash forward 30 years and I'm sitting on the Consistory of my present Church. After attending this Church for 8 years I have learned who the power brokers are and who on the current Consistory are among them. This week their were some decisions made that I really disagreed with. I voiced my opinion and was thanked by our Pastor for my concern. It was one of the areas where I really wanted to unload but I decided to keep it civil due to the nature of my concern. Getting into a character issue about a person just didn't seem to be of "good character". Who am I to judge anyone after all? The rest of this week I have been thinking about the situation. Am I a concerned member of the Consistory or am I one of the disgruntled power seekers . Are my actions making somebody else cry in their mash potatoes?.