“I’d like to call this meeting to order,” Pastor Connelly said as he stood up, and Roland slid into the closest seat, which happened to be right beside Nelly.
Normally, he would have chosen the seat furthest away from her, but the pastor only had six chairs set up, and there was one empty chair clear over on the other side, but for him to walk the whole way down the row of five chairs and plop into that one would be rather obvious that he was trying to avoid her. And considering that they were supposed to be doing this together, he felt like that was probably not the wise course of action for him to take.
When no one said anything right away, Roland figured he could start. “Pastor, I feel like we need to spend some money on new costumes. Costumes make or break the program, and the ones that we have are just so old. We don’t even have to spend a whole lot of money on them—we could sew them ourselves.”
“We don’t have enough time to sew them before the program,” Mrs. Tucker interrupted.
“And why would we spend money on new costumes when what we really need are new people? That means spending money on marketing. That’s where the money should go. We should definitely allocate way more for marketing and advertising avenues that we haven’t done before.” That was just common sense. Although now he wished he would have sat down at the end of the row, as Nelly shot him a look of pure venom.
“No one who listens to the radio is going to come to a church program just because we put a commercial on. But the people who are here watching it would like to be entertained with something that is beautiful and lovely, and we can’t do beautiful and lovely with costumes that are thirty years old!” She might have been a little heated, but that matched his current state of mind.
“It doesn’t matter how old the costumes are. If we’re doing the same tired old thing with Mary and Joseph, then those costumes will work just fine—in fact, tired old costumes for the same tired oldthing.”
“You think the Christmas story is tired and old? Maybe you’re not the right person for this job,” Nelly said.
He didn’t mean it the way she took it.
“I didn’t mean that the Christmas story was tired and old. I meant that doing the same thing every year, year after year, is tired and old.”
“That’s what Christmas is! The same thing every year!” Nelly lifted a hand in frustration and then looked at Pastor Connelly, pleading with him to help her. “I’m not sure I can do this.”
It was quiet after she stopped speaking. Obviously the other committee members were very uncomfortable with their outburst. Roland felt a little bit bad, especially because he really didn’t want to make everyone else feel awkward or uncomfortable, but at the same time, he was absolutely right.
Nelly was probably just arguing with him for the sake of arguing, and now she was trying to make him look bad, which he definitely didn’t need in front of Mrs. Tucker who already thought he was stealing money out of the collection box.
“It’s fine. We can buy new outfits, I don’t care. It’s just not a wise use of the money. That’s all. But we can waste it if you want to.”
That was definitely not the best wording that he’d ever used in his life, and in fact, he thought he probably should have been a little more careful with his words, because if Nelly looked annoyed before, there was practically steam coming out of her ears now.
“I’m not even sure we’re going to have any money to buy anything. Donations have been down this year,” Pastor Connelly interrupted their conversation, and all eyes went to him.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Nelly said after a moment of silence from everyone else.
“Yeah, me either,” he said, thinking to himself that it was quite possible that someone had stolen money out of the box, the way it was sitting there, but he didn’t want to say that, since Mrs. Tucker had seen him looking at it, and he didn’t want her to be thinking any more about someone stealing money. Plus, he had absolutely noevidence that anyone might have been doing that. It was just conjecture on his part, and in his experience, throwing out accusations that weren’t based in fact that one hadn’t checked to be sure about was wildly inappropriate and reckless.
“Does anyone have any suggestions on fundraising that we could do with immediate benefits? We should not have left this until the last minute, and again, I have to take the blame for it, since my wife was ill, and I didn’t get on this the way I should have.”
“Well, Nelly always spearheads it. She could have said something.” Mrs. Brown spoke for the first time.
Roland grunted in approval, which earned him a withering glance from Nelly.
He was totally immune to her looks, and he looked at her coolly and then looked back at Pastor Connelly, letting her know how unaffected he was by her withering stares.
In reality, she did look kind of fearsome, and he felt a little bit bad for her. She had plenty of things on her plate with teaching school and all the things she was doing there. His nephew couldn’t say enough good things about her, and his family gushed over her as well. So as annoyed as he was with her, and as much as he wished that he was working with someone who was easy to work with, like the Secret Saint, he supposed he ought to try to adjust his attitude. Especially when Mrs. Brown started knocking her.
“I’m really not sure. Usually, we put a box out, and we get more money than we could possibly use. In fact, we often end up sending the extra money to overseas missions. I don’t know why it would be different this year,” Nelly said, sounding truly confused.
Roland didn’t feel like he had won the argument, and even though he knew it was not wise to open his mouth again, he couldn’t help but say, “But if we do have anything extra, my vote definitely goes toward using it for marketing.”
Nelly rolled her eyes, crossed her arms over her chest, and began a conversation with Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Tucker about what they could do to earn money.
“I think we could probably just keep the box where it is and make sure that you announce it from the pulpit on Sunday. If we haven’t had trouble getting donations before, maybe people were just a little blindsided because we are doing it in a shorter period of time, and it’s closer to Christmas.”
He could see Mrs. Tucker narrowing her eyes and looking suspiciously at him.
He wanted to roll his eyes, but he didn’t. That wouldn’t have been very kind.
They spoke for another thirty minutes before the meeting finally broke up. He knew he should stay and politely make small talk and then hold the door for the ladies as they left, but he wanted to go home and relieve his mother of her duties. This time of year, their busiest hours were in the evening just before dark as people got home from work, ate supper, and then bundled the kids up to go get a tree.
