The Church of the highly Motivated

The Church of the highly Motivated

fiction
edward w pritchard

When Matty Watson received her Doctor of Divinity she was driven to succeed and make the new Church the largest in South Eastern Ohio. A tall order for the area was in severe decline, for over fifty years,  and the Church had only fifteen full time members.

The Parish were able to pay Dr. Watson only half the normal Minister's salary for now in part because several members objected to a Woman Pastor for this was a conservative area. Original bible belt really, but the fervor of  religion often took a back seat to economic concerns in the good neighbors of the County twenty miles off the Ohio River.


Matty Watson had definite ideas of how to transform the new Church and after a few months most everything was left in her hands of how to grow and prosper the Congregation. Her methods were unorthodox but this Church had no national affiliations and except for adhering to the Nicene Creed  there was little guidance on how the Church should be governed.

The elders were four. The school teachers wife, busy with her two children, Mr and Mrs. Lawson both over 80, and the pharmacist  at the Wal Mart forty miles away over at East Liverpool on the river. Only the Pharmacist objected to the Pastor's philosophies and methods and in time he decided to keep his hands off the day to day running of the Church and allow the new Woman Pastor a chance to sink or swim for a year or so before he spoke out for or against her. He had worked with four Pastors before her in the sixteen years he had been an elder here at this Church, since coming from Fremont Baptist when it closed, and he imagined she would move on quickly because of the meager salary they were able to pay her.


Dr Matty Watson had other ideas and she planned and forged sixteen hours per day to attract new members to the Church. Her brilliant idea was that no member would be recruited to the Church who was not highly motivated to pursue their personal salvation and that of their family members and in time their friends and acquaintances in the community. They must have a strong personal commitment to the Church and they must recruit and proselytize daily to grow the congregation. Church services were held Sunday twice, Monday and Wednesday night at seven PM, and a supper was held, Pot Luck dinner style and was very informal Friday at six. All were expected to attend and recruit aggressively others at work and at the kid's ballgames to come along.

Within a year Dr. Watson's church was the fastest growing congregation in the eleven State area of the Mid-Western United States. Revenues were up, membership was booming and the Church was being added onto for the second time in one year. The pharmacist now works full time for the Church as Youth Minister and the School Teacher's wife is full time membership secretary.

Asked her secret to how to grow a struggling congregation, Dr. Watson told Crane's Pittsburgh business news: "we offer the profound message of Jesus Christ, if someone is not highly motivated to accept and act on what they hear, we do not make call backs."
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