The recent news that parish administrator Amy Medrick is leaving Grace Church is sad, for in many ways she typified the dysfunction in the church.
From her emailed comments that she was not comfortable with Mike Smith having her personal email address (horrors!), to her on-the-fly and inaccurate expositions of canon law (for example, her statement that it had been many months since Mike and I had been active members of the parish, despite the contrary provisions of the national church), to her flipping me the middle finger while I was out protesting the church’s efforts to drag my dying mother into court, Amy personified the problems in the church. Paranoia, arrogance, marginal competence, lack of compassion and thoroughly un-Christian behavior all rolled into one to form a profoundly ugly package. Even her experience with property management and development made little difference—as I posted earlier, even a casual glance at the church reveals multiple facially obvious problems that are being ignored.
To be fair, Amy did finally get rid of the utterly dysfunctional deployment of ACS, the church management software package previously used. While ACS is best in the business, it is pricey, long-in-the-tooth, and the initial deployment and subsequent maintenance at Grace was a total Charlie Foxtrot. In short, exactly what you would expect under perjuring priest Bob Malm’s reign of dysfunction. Indeed, discussions about how to fix that sordid mess were under way in 2011, yet it was not until shortly before perjuring priest Bob Malm’s departure in 2019 that the new Breeze software was deployed — a telling indicator of just how inept things were under Bob Malm.
Fair winds and following seas, Amy. And even when you’re gone, don’t hesitate to flip me off in public. Nothing like truth in advertising when it comes to The Episcopal Church.