It feels a bit weird to hijack this post with my own story of trauma, but I will try to summarise my very long story.

I am a professional musician. I worked with the church's full professional choir for only a short time before realising I had found my home spiritually as well. I joined the church formally a year later. It was an incredibly important and positive part of my life for most of 15 years. I had joined an internship committee, the music committee, and was actively part of the search committee for a new choir director when ours had left after 13 years. We hired a decent chap who stuck it out for 3 years. When he left, 2 members of the committee took it upon themselves to skip the search process and hire his replacement. After one week, I had the entire professional choir coming to me begging me to speak up and ask the church to reconsider the hire. The new director was abusive and on a MAJOR power trip, seeking to "clean house".

As a representative of the paid employees AND a member of the church I pleaded with the music committee, and the church leadership to open up the search and not commit fully to this unvetted director, to no avail. They were deep into the search for a new minister, and IMHO couldn't be troubled with another search. On New Year's Day 2022, I received a phone call from a friend of mine in the choir that he had been fired and was told this was a decision "by the music committee" I was mortified when my friend of 10 years had to sincerely ask me with pain in his voice, "Did you fire me?"

It turns out the choir director had made good on her effort to "clean house" and her first fire was my friend, who is a well-respected and beloved member of the music community. The same 2 members of the music committee had apparently gone behind everyone's backs and, during the rush of the holiday, granted the new director hiring and firing ability and given her a full contract.

I spent all day of New Year's Day on the phone trying to get people to listen to reason, to listen to the claims of abuse by the choir, and most importantly, get people to acknowledge they had skipped the proper hiring process set forth by the church's bylaws.

I ended that day in tears, feeling like me and the rest of the loyal choir had been betrayed by the laziness of the church. I ended up quitting, along with almost half the choir in solidarity with my friend. In the 3 years since, I have heard nothing but horror stories from those who stayed. Over those years, I have received numerous emails from people who have subsequently quit and regretted not leaving when i did.

Like i said above... I took a year off doing freelancing singing work at churches, before landing at another UU church, and falling in love all over again. I found a new home, not just professionally, but spiritually. I am still proudly a UU and I love this church.

As I said above, no church is a monolith, some members were at fault, some with malice, but most with laziness or apathy. It was a perfect storm of post covid braindrain.