Managing pages in wp-multiflex

I am a novice with CSS and PHP; I’ve set up a trial new website for my church using wp-multiflex-3. I’m trying to modify it to either:

1) Eliminate pages entirely in the left sidebar and create a dropdown in the header or…
2) Eliminate certain pages from the left sidebar.

I’ve tried (2) first, using the “exclude pages” template tag. But whenever I seem to put the tag in the right place to eliminate the page, my site drops the word “pages” into the navigation….I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong or if this theme just won’t let me use the template tag for some reason.

I’d be grateful for any help with this.

Additionally, if anyone knows how to easily convert this theme to use dropdowns for the pages in my header, I’d be doubly grateful.