Hey, welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
Thanks for joining us as we continue with this
series that we hope is a little tongue-in-cheek stuff that bugs pastors.
And the idea is really
a look at some of the things that aren’t particularly healthy in churches,
some of the things
both in congregations and in leadership.
We are not exempt from this.
That kind of gets in the way of being church.
Really, that’s probably the best way to think about this series.
And today,
we are kind of focusing on some negative aspects.
You know,
faith is important,
and it’s also personal.
And so our relationship with church is always something that is kind of
deeply emotional for many of us.
And as such,
in those moments where we’re unhappy about something,
I think there’s always a temptation not to handle it well.
And so a lot of our conversation today
is going to focus on what happens when there’s disagreement.
What happens when there’s disputes
or conflict?
How do those things get handled?
How do they get resolved?
And what are some of the ways
that we think are not particularly helpful when it happens?
Yeah, so I think that there are many
organizations that rely upon people for help to function.
But the church is certainly an
organization that requires volunteers to function,
but it’s even more than that.
A place where those
people invest not only themselves,
but much of their life,
much of their own meaning,
especially those folks who are born in the church.
They may be baptized in that church.
They grow up.
They’re firm there.
They graduate from there.
There are some people who are married there,
and then they will serve there.
They’ll serve as leaders there,
and then they will be buried there.
And that, in some cases, is generational.
It’s not just one person,
but that was the case for their mother,
and it was the case for their mother.
And in those circumstances,
the church is more
than just a social help or an organization doing some good work that you want to be a part of.
It becomes a part of your identity so that some people will come and say,
“I am a fill in the
blank.” And that is a reflection of a deep-seated sense of personal identity.
The reason that I
start there is just to say that whenever we are so firmly invested in anything,
we will then
desire to contribute in the midst of conversation,
especially when that looks like we need to decide
if we’re going to do something or not do something or something changes,
and maybe we don’t understand why.
We want to say,
“Hey, I’d like to contribute to this conversation.”
Of course, there are many ways to contribute that are positive,
that help, that contribute,
that are humble,
that recognize that my perspective is not the only one.
But then there are also times when we miss that mark,
and there are times when,
from the pastor’s seat,
there is a collection of perspectives.
And at the end of the day,
not every perspective is
going to be satisfied in the midst of either making a decision or charting a course.
And when that happens,
then there can be not just the problem of folks being disappointed,
but in some cases,
different kinds of conflict that come up amidst that disagreement or that
even that we might call it clint descent.
And so what makes this conversation today
really difficult, maybe walking a tightrope a little bit,
is on one hand,
what we’re talking about are things that really matter to people.
And we know that.
They matter to us.
We invest so much of our own time,
effort, energy, and thought into the church and its life and furtherance as well.
So we get what’s at stake.
On the other hand,
we also know how dangerous it can be when
we engage in that process in a way that doesn’t benefit the whole.
And that will be the major
tenor, I think, of the conversation.
Darrell Bock Yeah.
And I would say,
Michael, it’s helpful to remember that this is really the shadow side of a good problem.
This starts
on a positive, that people feel ownership in their church community,
that they feel it’s a place of meaning,
that it’s tied to their identity,
and also that we elevate in the church
trying to do best,
trying – I mean, we use godliness.
We use Jesus Christ as our standard.
And so we consistently talk about,
how do we raise the bar?
How do we reflect what is right?
How do we do what is right?
How do we choose what is best?
And in those moments where there
are disagreements about those things,
they’re fueled.
They’re often emotional.
But – and I would also say they’re natural and they’re inevitable.
However,
how we handle those moments
has a big impact on the life of the community.
I think you and I,
both in the context of other church relationships,
presbytery duties and such,
are aware of situations where we have seen
these kind of behaviors paralyze a church,
or in maybe in the worst case, destroy a church,
just kind of eat away at it.
And when there are people who are consistently and persistently upset,
vocal,
angry, when they lash out,
when that kind of stuff is happening
all the time, it really kind of holds the church captive and makes it impossible for there to be
kind of progress and healing and wholeness in a place.
You know,
I’m not talking about First
Press.
If you’re part of First Press Spirit Lake,
that is – those conversations,
those comments are not directed here.
But I think you and I would both admit that we’ve seen that in other places.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, absolutely.
In fact, I would argue that any church that’s existed for some
period of time has had a season where this has been a struggle.
I don’t think there’s any sort
of a calling out or throwing under the bus.
In fact, I would argue if you’re part of a church
where this is the present experience,
this is just merely a moment to stop and to pause and to begin
to ask some of those higher order questions.
It’s not a judgment or a shame or a guilt process at
all.
I mean, fundamentally, the church is always people seeking to be faithful.
And as we come into conversation,
we’re going to have times where we engage with one another on topics that are challenging.
And sometimes, if we are honest and reflective,
we have not done that process of
engagement in a wholehearted,
authentic and honest way.
And one way that that happens, Clint,
is when we come into the church and we say,
this is the way it should be or else the attachment of a kind
of ultimatum is not unique to the church,
obviously, but it happens.
It’ll happen that someone will
come in and say,
this is the outcome that I think needs to happen.
And if this doesn’t happen,
then this will happen.
Sometimes that looks like,
in maybe the most extreme example,
we need to either
do this or I’m going to leave.
We either need to do this or I’ll no longer contribute financially to the church.
We either need to do this or I will remove membership.
There’s lots of different forms that that might take at the extreme.
But this happens in smaller ways,
too, and far less,
you know,
at the edge,
you’ll have someone come in and say, you know,
if we don’t do this,
then people are going to leave sort of an imaginary,
not imaginary, a hypothetical sort of situation.
And so the threat is what could happen in either case.
It’s someone making a case that this is what we should do.
And here’s a little bit of extra push
in case that’s needed.
And the threat in that case can be anywhere in the range from, you know,
somewhat destructive to a break of relationship or to a break of actual participation,
all the way down to, you know, something maybe more superficial,
but still a threat nonetheless.
Yeah, I think to some extent,
Michael, maybe everything we talk about today could be
put under a general heading of maturity.
And so in those moments where we get angry,
and we follow that anger to make threats to kind of get,
try and get our way,
you know, almost by definition, that’s a non-mature way to handle things.
And so a lot of,
I think, our response in those moments,
both in church and outside of the church,
when we’re upset by something,
is how do we contain it?
How do we address it?
How do we go have a real conversation
that voices our frustration without bringing this kind of threat language or if/then language?
And one of the ways I think this plays itself out,
and one of the problems of it in the church,
is that, you know, the pastor is sitting in his or her office,
they’re just getting through their
day, but the person who is upset,
they’ve been stewing about this since whenever it happened,
maybe in some cases days, weeks, longer,
and they finally get themselves worked up to the point
where they feel like it has to be confronted,
it has to be dealt with.
And so they march into
the office on, you know, about eight and a half to nine or ten,
and the pastor sitting there at
one or two on the scale having no idea they were going to have this conversation,
having no idea of the kind of where is this emotion coming from.
And it’s really just a,
it’s a kind of disconnect
that doesn’t lend itself very well to having an adult conversation.
I want to encourage you
that if you find yourself upset by something in the church,
A, in general, sooner is rather than
later.
I mean, don’t wait till you’re so mad you can’t see straight.
But I also want to encourage you,
think in terms of talking, not yelling.
Think in terms of asking, not telling.
I just think
much more progress is made in calm,
rational conversation than in coming in hot with,
“If this doesn’t happen,
I’m out of here.
You’ll never get my money.
You’ll,” you know.
And again,
I mean, I’ve been on,
that happens.
I know what happens.
It’s not a judgment when it happens.
Some of us are just prone to kind of lash out,
but it’s not helpful.
And I’ve never,
I’ve received no small number of those conversations couched in threats.
And I’ve just never seen any of them be helpful.
It’s just not a profitable way to move forward.
So philosophically, I think we all know this,
but it’s worth being reminded of this,
that the core problem with the threat is that it’s based upon the idea that I have identified
the good and that it is worth causing harm to make that happen.
And there are very few circumstances,
certainly not circumstances in the daily operation of the church,
whether that be, you know, what happened in worship on Sunday or what’s about to happen in fellowship time or whatever,
the miscommunications and the people getting crossways.
Those are almost never
actually a justifiable reason for lashing out,
for losing our temper on a person.
Not that we would do that on purpose,
but the point I want to make here is that it requires a certain kind of
humility to step back and to recognize maybe my perspective on this is missing other parts of the equation.
You know,
maybe I played a part in a miscommunication or maybe what I see as being
critically important is only a small part of a larger whole.
If we can give enough time to
get that worked out before we get angry,
but also have enough time to process it before we walk
right into it so that we have a little bit of an awareness of what am I actually upset over it.
Maybe I’m not actually upset about the flavor of the coffee.
Maybe I’m upset about a feeling of
not being connected in church.
I don’t know what it might be.
Every circumstance is different, but
the threat making feels like it’s going to accomplish something and it just simply doesn’t
because it can’t because you’re essentially saying I’m willing to sacrifice this for the
sake of this other thing.
Ultimately,
in church,
the core of the Gospels,
we’re seeking to find reconciliation,
redemption.
We’re trying to find a way forward together even when it appears like
in moments where it seems like there’s only one option,
we’re trying to be open to where might
God lead us in the midst of it.
That idea of discernment,
I think, is fundamentally undercut or taken away, Clint, by this idea of the threat.
Yeah, and I want to be crystal clear,
Michael.
We are not saying that people can’t and shouldn’t disagree with their pastors or that they have
to accept everything that’s done in the church.
There will inevitably be times where we disagree
on what the best way forward is,
and we need those times.
Iron sharpens iron.
We need those conversations.
We need to be challenged by people who maybe have seen things that we didn’t think
of.
I think we as pastors even recognize that there may be moments where you feel strongly
enough that you say,
“Well, pastor, if this is where the church is going,
then I don’t feel like
it fits me.” It may be a moment for you.
It really may be a kind of line that you say,
“I can’t go there with the church,
and I may need to go somewhere else.” And here’s the thing that I think
is surprising.
At our best, and we’re certainly not always at our best,
but at our best,
your pastors don’t love you because you do this or you do this,
and they don’t love you or care about you
less because you’re here or there.
And if you go into the pastor’s office and you say,
“Pastor, this thing has happened.
I’m so uncomfortable with it.
I think I may need to explore whether
this is the right church for me or whether I can be supportive,” et cetera, et cetera,
your pastor owes it to you not to blow up.
Your pastor can’t threaten you with,
“Well, if you leave, you’ll regret…” We have the same standards.
Peritioners and pastors are both accountable
to bring their best and their faithful self to those conversations even when they’re difficult.
And we may understand where you’re coming from,
and I think it’s helpful not to assume that that
won’t be the case.
But the difference is one is trying to get your way when we threaten someone,
we’re essentially trying to leverage our own opinion,
versus we’re having a real conversation
about a genuine piece of disquiet in our soul,
something that is troubling us,
and we want to have a sort of reconciliation and a resolution of it.
And they’re very, very different conversations.
And at our best, again,
pastors are prone to fail just like everyone
else, but at our best,
we want to have those conversations and we’ll do everything we can
to try and help.
Well, just to add, I think, another sort of subcategory to that,
because I think that’s really helpful,
Clint. The conversation that we’re characterizing as
threat is the one where you come in and you say,
“This is the outcome I expect or else.”
There’s another conversation that you just named,
I think very helpfully,
that conversation that says, “This is where I’m troubled and I don’t know where it’s going to lead me,
and I need to help process with you where I’m at and where the church is at.” That’s a different conversation.
There’s, I think, another conversation that can also be incredibly helpful that we don’t
mean as a threat.
I think it can be helpful when a person comes in and says,
“I don’t know if you
know this, but fill in the blank.” And I’m not talking about gossip,
I’m not talking about,
you’ll never believe what so-and-so did.
I mean,
did you know that the teachers in Sunday school
don’t have enough time to get through their curriculum?
I’m just making a thing up here.
Or were you aware that so-and-so has been going through a really rocky time?
They’re a friend of
mine and they’ve had a hard time reaching out and asking for it.
There are some kinds of
conversations that, because pastors are human,
they simply don’t know.
They just literally don’t
have all of the information.
They don’t have this perspective that you did.
So there is a helpful
conversation if it’s not couched in,
“Hey,
here’s a thing you might not know that you need to fix.”
If it’s rather,
“Hey, I just wanted to let you know this thing because I know you’re not everywhere
all the time,” that can also be incredibly helpful.
And once again, that’s rooted in motivation.
It’s different only in that it’s not lending towards an outcome.
It’s trying to bring a spirit
of transparency and I would even say grace to a conversation.
Yeah. I once had a person upset because they were in the hospital and I didn’t get over to visit them.
The struggle was that I didn’t know they were in the hospital.
Nobody let us know that.
The hospital didn’t alert us for whatever reason.
There are some wrinkles to that process occasionally.
Most often a person doesn’t tell them to.
But whatever it is,
I called them and
they were very upset that I hadn’t made the visit.
And I said, “Well,
I apologize.
We didn’t know you
were in the hospital.” And the response was,
“You should have known.” And I don’t know what to do with that.
I mean,
when we are accountable,
we will definitely try to live up to that and
confess that we got it wrong.
But there are some things people get upset about that
maybe aren’t entirely reasonable.
And again, it happens on both sides of the
pastor-peritioner line.
I think that leads us to our next conversation here.
We’re talking about blow-ups.
Yeah.
So again,
in moments where people are upset,
some of us are prone to lash out.
Some of us are
prone to let that anger spill out.
And fortunately, it doesn’t happen very often,
but once in a while in the church,
it boils over publicly and a person kind of throws a fit.
And this happens from pastors.
I’ve seen pastors stomp out of meetings mad.
I’ve heard pastors yell at people, literally almost corner them.
I’ve seen parishioners do the same thing to pastors,
to each other.
It’s just,
it’s a very unfortunate moment when on a Sunday morning in the midst of
trying to get ready for worship,
you have a pastor and a person or two pastors or whoever it is,
yelling at each other in a very public way.
It doesn’t say to everyone else,
“Oh, things are going really well.
This is a great morning around here.” And again,
part of this, Michael, fits under that heading,
I think, of maturity.
And yes, it is tempting to have the short fuse
and to just let it blow,
but it’s not helpful.
Yeah, it’s not helpful.
It strikes me at this point in the conversation,
because if you’ve not joined us for a lot of podcasts,
if this is new for you,
you might think, “Wow,
these guys are kind of airing the church’s dirty laundry a little bit.” But it shouldn’t be a
surprise to anyone who’s spent any time in the church that a church which is populated full of
people will have the problems that all of us as people have.
And there are times our patience is short.
Those situations never come about because someone just had a random thing happen to them
that day, and that’s the end of the story.
There’s always something deeper,
generally longer, that fire’s been simmering,
and then it started getting a little hotter and a little hotter,
and then finally there was a thing that set it off.
The thing that makes that difficult,
I think, Clint, is that blowups have a way of not only being very public,
and therefore it does have a
kind of image thing attached to it.
In other words, other people see us at not our best, and
that’s not good or bad.
The reality is the church is a place for sinners.
The problem is it has the
real capacity to do damage to relationships,
to the church’s ability to do ministry.
When that happens among leadership,
specifically if that’s coming from pastoral staff and that’s directed
out of parishioner, or if that’s between the leaders of the congregation,
maybe even say the
elders or the deacons,
there’s by definition a lack of trust that’s going to need to be rebuilt.
There’s now a moment in which folks are going to have to navigate the breach of relationship
that’s happened because there’s been a breach in what should be an acceptable level,
an expectation of conduct in the church.
Not that we won’t get angry,
not that we won’t severely disagree,
but that we will at all times treat one another as children of God,
and when we fail to hold that level,
then what it does is it creates a circumstance in which now we need to navigate
the messy, difficult, complicated reconciliation process, which is necessary and good,
but it’s thorny and it’s messy and it’s suddenly a new stage that we have to enter into.
Yeah,
I’ll just speak personally,
Michael.
I’m no stranger to anger and have a long
trek record of trying to keep it in check and sometimes failing.
When that happens,
when it
sort of breaks out of the dam,
it does some damage that then has to be undone before the
thing that caused the anger can even be addressed,
and so you compound the problems and you end up
making things not better at all,
but making them worse.
Think of it like this.
If you can imagine
a family in which everybody sort of walks on eggshells around one person,
generally the dad, but not always,
and that family’s goal is sort of don’t make that person angry.
That creates a very unhealthy environment for a family,
and the same is true in churches.
I’m aware,
as is Michael, of unhealthy churches who sort of revolve around this person being mad.
Don’t cross so and so.
They blow up.
He gets angry.
She will let you know it, and it is,
I won’t say impossible,
but it is nearly impossible for a church to be healthy and communal
and mutually encouraging and all of the joyful and all of the things that the church needs to
be, to grow and be the right kind of place,
when everybody is afraid,
don’t cross so and so,
because then we all got to see that go off again,
and it doesn’t work,
and we can’t live like that
as individual disciples, and we certainly can’t live like that within a community.
It’s just not very effective.
Yeah, it’s not effective.
It also represents,
Clint, I think a moment,
I think it’s fair to say,
of not great personal spiritual health.
I mean, we never come to that
point at a moment of strength or a moment of particular an experience of peace.
You know, we come to that place because of pent-up anxiety or fear or anger or these things that we know
are not good for our soul,
and so what is so sad about it,
I think, is that it not only does harm
to the community, who now has to address this situation as opposed to the reason for which the situation is had,
but even beyond that,
it represents a person who is struggling.
It is having a difficult time communicating what is valuable and the perspective that they have,
and so as we try to navigate this,
I think this part of the conversation,
it’s important to say that this isn’t about shame,
though I think we often do,
on the other side of
blowups, feel a certain kind of embarrassment.
I think when our senses come back and a few days later,
I think sometimes we maybe push those feelings down,
but there is a sense of,
“Ooh, I wish that hadn’t happened,” because it often happens in the moment,
but it’s not about that.
It’s about saying that as a church,
we know that there’s going to be bumpy roads, and in fact,
we would be naive to think that blowups will not happen in church.
We understand that sometimes
things align in such a way that that happens, but that said,
as Christian disciples,
it is, I think, incumbent upon us to recognize that by correct what I mean is not legalistically
correct.
I think what is the most helpful way forward is always to address these matters with
one another before the blowup is necessary,
a practice of constantly letting go,
of getting to the office sooner,
or talking to that person sooner,
of seeking to find a reconciliation kind
of moment, because that is what we’re called to do as people of faith,
and when we fail to do that,
and then we find ourselves in a circumstance where we or someone else loses control,
we have to walk a delicate balance from that point,
seeking to find a way forward in that situation
without further causing harm,
but also recognizing that we can’t allow folks in the church to use
an emotional outburst or maybe a personal temperament to bully others into their own
perspective, because when that happens,
the church does fail to hear the voices of those
who are not speaking,
and so it’s a challenge that needs navigated from many advantages.
Yeah, and again,
from the pastoral advantages,
pastors can’t do that either.
I know churches that the congregation has to sort of constantly coddle the pastor,
because if he or she gets
angry, then they have to deal with that,
so we don’t get to act like that either,
nor are we suggesting that the alternative is that you just be silent when you’re upset.
That’s not it at all.
Again,
those just need to be conversations,
not conflicts.
It is perfectly acceptable
to come in and say, “Hey, Michael, Clint,
I’m upset.
I’m not happy about this thing.
This thing happened, and I’m trying to process it,
and it’s made me angry.” That’s a perfectly
healthy and probably helpful kind of conversation,
and it may not be resolved.
We may end up just
disagreeing on the thing,
but that’s okay, because the relationship is maintained,
and ultimately, that’s what’s important, so I think those are just tough moments.
And, you know,
Michael, we should probably say that there are times our culture or our moment in time doesn’t help us.
I would suggest we are living in a moment where it feels like everyone has a pretty light trigger,
that we see it all the time,
that the path to upset and, you know,
explosion seems shorter than it has been at times in the past,
and everyone is a little bit more primed to go off,
I think, than even just a few years ago.
At least, maybe that’s not fair,
maybe it’s not accurate, but it feels that way.
I have experienced more people expressing deeper anger over
what seemed like less important things in the last few years,
and we’ve been through a tumultuous
time, and I just think it has had an impact,
and so I think that’s a good challenge for us
in this moment to realize there are some things that maybe don’t help us,
and we need to be aware
of them and conscious of them,
so that we don’t make things harder in the church and we can
concentrate on doing the things that need done.
Yeah, I do have a thought on that.
I’m going to put a footnote on it and come back to it as we conclude here,
because we have one more thing
that we want to jump into.
I think that this is very helpful.
This has happened in my time,
certainly.
Someone will come and say,
“Here’s a thing that needs addressed,” and in the course
of that conversation, they say,
“And I’ve talked to lots of other people who agree,” or sometimes
that happens in a more adversarial sort of setting,
where someone comes in and says,
“Well, I think that this is the best, but they,
this other group, they think that this thing is best,
and suddenly there’s a trench, and it becomes a form of trench warfare.” “They” is an incredibly powerful word,
and I think, honestly, a tempting word, because it enables us to make it sound like we have a large
cohort behind us.
Now,
in truth, anyone who’s been around church long enough to be a person of faith
for a few years knows that sometimes “they” is a substantial number.
I mean, anyone who’s lived through a church split or someone who has been in a season where church has been deeply divided,
“they” can become unbelievably destructive,
because we flatten real people into positions or ideas
that are inevitably the enemy of our own,
and then we attack that position or that wrong-headed idea,
and it becomes an attack on the people,
and as we do that,
we actually start causing damage to,
in some cases, people’s own psyches.
The church can be a brutal place,
and we know that.
“They” doesn’t need to be that extreme, but “they”
is often a tool used in the midst of sort of trying to gain leverage,
almost a form of a threat towards an end,
and, you know, I find it most often unhelpful.
Yeah,
they’re probably…
That’s interesting, Michael.
There are probably moments
where it has the potential of being helpful only in the sense that maybe it could alert you to
something you weren’t aware of, as if,
no, there really are a group of people who are upset about
this thing, and you realize, “Oh, we should have a conversation with them,” but in my experience,
that is the vast exception to the rule.
More often, in my experience, the kind of anonymous “they”
or the “people are talking” is a way of saying,
“I’m upset, and lots of people agree with me,”
and my take on that is that,
generally, if you follow up by saying,
“Well, let’s call them.
Let’s call them.” Which is fine if it’s accurate,
but maybe that group is smaller than it’s being
portrayed to be, and, again, it’s just not…
If you have an opinion,
we welcome it.
We may not agree with it, and if we don’t agree with it,
it probably won’t matter how many people agree with you.
I mean, it just may be a thing that that group of people and this group of people don’t
see things the same.
And in the Presbyterian system,
one of our strengths and weaknesses
is that we don’t run by consensus.
We don’t run by majority.
We’re governed by the elders,
and that means sometimes there are significant groups of people who may not be happy with a decision.
And, again,
how do we find reconciliation?
How do we find unity?
How do we find togetherness in those seasons?
And it usually isn’t with,
“Hey, just so you know,
a bunch of people are unhappy
and will probably cause trouble if we don’t get this resolved.” I’ve seen that…
Man, I’ve seen that really do some damage in churches,
and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it be helpful.
And just for that alone,
I’m a little cautious.
I’m a little suspicious.
Let’s say that you’re right and that the ends that you see and that you’re advocating for
are absolutely the best path for the life of the church.
At what price are we willing to engage?
At what cost are we willing to incur to achieve that end?
And if we’re willing to
break relationship, if we’re willing to drive over one another in conversation,
if we’re willing to speak but not listen,
to achieve that, if we’re willing to threaten,
or if we find ourselves
blowing up and that becoming threatening,
if we find ourselves calling upon a group large or small
to back us up on a thing,
and that does substantial harm to the body of Christ,
have we, even in pursuing the right end,
have we done so in a Christ-like manner?
The struggle that we have
as Christians is our gospel texts tell us the gut-wrenching story of Jesus Christ,
God incarnate, who in the face of pursuing salvation for the world,
the ultimate good that can be imagined, the ultimate ends.
He sacrifices himself,
he gives of himself so that there might be reconciliation.
And in the middle of dissent and disagreement,
once again, I’m not suggesting Clint here that that means that we never stand up for a thing that needs stood up for.
I’m not saying that.
There are some times and moments in which Christians need to speak with clarity and wisdom.
And when that time comes,
I believe that we have a sense for when it is.
But there are so many moments in the life of churches,
and I’ve seen that in some of the
churches where I’ve served,
both in our presbytery context as well as in seminary moments in those churches,
where you look at it and realize that while a person was pursuing action that they
believed was the right action for their church family,
they were causing such damage to the
church family that it would take years to heal from.
And if one can step back enough to realize that,
it becomes very sobering very quickly.
How we’ve achieved this outcome has actually caused
deep wounds that will now cause even more damage than the thing I was seeking to address.
And so I think we need to be humble enough and wise enough to discern that.
Yeah, I think any time we divide up teams,
and this will be a conversation we have in another
session, but any time we divide up teams or give the impression that we have divided up teams,
we’ve created a barrier for the church to do its work and to be community together.
And it’s difficult in those moments.
But by all means,
if there’s a group of people who have an opinion, share an opinion,
make an appointment, let’s have a conversation,
let’s talk about it.
That I think is a healthy way forward.
And again,
you should be able to expect from your pastor that he or she
will engage you in that,
that they will listen,
that they will explain the other position.
You they may not convince you,
that’s okay, a way forward will have to be found in spite of that.
But you should be able to trust your pastor to receive a hearing of the thing that you’re upset about.
And if there are other people,
by all means, include them, if there aren’t,
you don’t need them.
That’s okay.
And while we’re there,
Michael, I want to add just a little asterisk on this.
This may be a personal thing.
I don’t know if I go so far as to say stuff that bugs pastors.
This certainly bugs this pastor.
Don’t write an anonymous letter.
Put your name on the letter.
Again,
your pastor,
it’s okay.
We would rather engage you in conversation.
We would rather know how you’re feeling.
I keep a file folder in one of my drawers in the desk that’s just,
you know,
I don’t know, a small stack of anonymous letters.
And we don’t know what to do with them.
They don’t help.
If there’s something you want to say to us or to your pastor,
please understand you have the permission to let us know that we’re not going to do anything.
You’re not going to get kicked out of church.
We would much rather know
who you are than get a letter full of complaints or accusations or whatever it might be and not
have a name on it.
I don’t want to beat that one to the ground.
It doesn’t happen that often.
It’s really frustrating.
Just talk to us.
So that leads me to the thought I wanted to share earlier,
Clint.
And that is that one of the very difficult parts of this conversation is how camouflaged
this disagreement often is.
We often come into a moment and whether that results in a threat or
a blow up or we start using they or whatever the case might be,
we often find ourselves there
without having asked the deeper question of why.
Why do I feel so very upset about this?
Or why do I feel that this is so essentially important?
And even if we have,
we’ve often asked that question
as it relates to our experience.
So I’m upset because I have a child who was in the Sunday
school class and they got made fun of.
Not saying that’s not important,
but it is to say
like we have a very thin sliver of experience and we extrapolate that to everyone.
I think any conversation that we have in church has to at some point engage with a deeper question of,
should we be this angry about the flavor of coffee or the color of carpet?
Is that the thing really on the table or are we actually expressing a concern about a feeling of
connection or about a feeling of the way that the church is moving in terms of its
preaching or its worshiping?
Some of the popular controversies over the years of the church,
by this I mean over hundreds of years,
is musical instruments.
How many fights have there been in church over,
you know, should we put an organ in and then it came to,
you know, should we get, should we let a guitar and a drum set in the sanctuary or all of these kinds of debates.
There are some congregations, by the way,
who cannot imagine singing a hymn.
They only sing the Psalms.
That may strike us as strange,
but it would cause massive conflict in that congregation
to suggest that you should sing Amazing Grace.
The reality is that we have to have a conversation
about what is the deeper thing at stake in this conversation.
We’re not going to have that
conversation when we’re threatening one another.
We’re not going to have it in the midst of an emotional explosion.
That’s part of the problem with ending there is that we didn’t get to have
the process in the middle,
because there are sometimes situations in which when we really
hear each other and we actually hear,
I hear you and I understand why that matters,
but this also really matters right now for our church family.
This is the reason why right now
this what is probably a small thing,
really, right?
I mean, if there is a guitar on Sunday or not,
is not going to make or break the church,
but the reason why you feel upset is maybe connected to
this other thing that’s also really good and that you might even be okay with.
If we can have some
of those difficult conversations without ramping up the conversation so quickly,
that’s where constructive work happens.
And I think thinking of this from a pastor’s perspective,
stuff that pastors, pastors,
I don’t think it’s conflict per se that gets the church.
I think it’s when we
allow that conflict to not generate any motion.
It’s like when, when an engine is,
you know, exploding the gasoline, right?
It turns it into motion.
Like you’re able to use that heat for a
real purpose.
But if you’re just always exploding out into nothing and there’s no cylinders moving
and there’s nothing to contain it,
then it’s that conflict and that dissent and that disagreement,
it leads nowhere.
It makes no one better.
And I think that is from a leadership perspective,
you know, why engaging in these processes wholeheartedly and transparently,
why it matters because it actually does provide an opportunity for forward growth.
Yeah, probably takes it from something that is natural to something that is unhealthy.
And
the church has enough unhealthy to deal with without adding to it.
You know, one of the beautiful things about a place like First Presbyterian,
and there are others,
but this is the one I know the best,
is that we have this diversity,
we have this variety within our
fellowship.
We have people who like things that are different than other people.
We have people who would call themselves conservative,
other people who would call themselves less conservative.
You know, we just,
we have a diversity of thought and experience and opinion within the church.
And for the most part,
that’s a really good thing.
But it makes it difficult to be community at
times.
And it very much increases the likelihood that there are going to be moments we don’t
agree, we don’t like the same music,
we don’t want to do things the same way,
we don’t think this is the best answer to that issue or that problem.
And in those moments,
we find ourselves challenged to navigate those well.
You know,
the great thing about, you know,
our congregation and others like it is we don’t have to agree on everything.
And one of the things that has helped
me, a little piece of language that I think I’ve tried to hold on to is to ask myself when I’m
upset by something, is this a kingdom thing?
Is this a God thing?
Or is this a me thing?
Is this something that I feel like that my faith in Jesus Christ really compels me in a certain direction,
or I just like it this way better?
And if it’s a kingdom thing,
I may well need to pursue it.
I may need to seek resolution to that.
And I don’t know where that would take me.
If it’s a me thing,
that’s okay.
We all have preferences.
But if I treat those things as though they’re equal,
I’m likely to struggle.
And I really think,
at least in my own experience,
it’s been helpful for me to try and see the difference of what I think has to do with getting things right in
the sense of faith and discipleship and personal preferences.
And again, there’s nothing wrong with
preferences.
But when I treat them as objectively right and wrong simply because I like them better,
I increase the chance that there’s going to be conflict and that I’m going to be unhappy.
And some things we just need to say,
“I don’t know that that should matter that much to me.”
So we left a little looseness in the title of this series.
And I just want to point out here,
stuff that bugs pastors.
Not all things that bug pastors are things that should bug them.
And some pastors are bugged by conflict.
And I’m not going to say some,
that’s not the right word.
Again, some seasons in particular,
some pastors are particularly reactive to conflict in a way
that is on its own,
not helpful.
I mean, if you receive that conflict as a self-attack,
when someone is actually saying,
“No, pastor, I just thought that I would contribute this,”
and the leadership receives that as a kind of personal affront,
that’s not a helpful
thing that bugs them,
right?
That’s not constructive either.
And I think there is a
kind of confession in that.
I’ve not been in the seat or the role as long as you have Clint,
but I’ve discerned in my time.
There are some seasons of my own sort of work and life where
I am more reactive to that kind of disagreement than I are,
than I am at other times.
And
maybe it was just the wrong day that that person came in to share a thing.
But a thing that may be substantial,
I missed because of the 14 other things that I had to address that day.
Maybe they weren’t conflict.
Maybe they were just small things that need done.
But there are seasons where
you hear a few things back to back that are all somewhat negative.
And then you hear another and
you think, “Oh, there’s another one of those things on the list.” I think pastors and church leaders are people too.
And if they find themselves in a season where it’s difficult to hear the why behind
whatever maybe the critique or the suggestion or the information might be,
there’s a request for grace in that too,
a request for understanding.
Now that doesn’t mean that you back off and never
say anything ever again.
But I think just an awareness that we’re all trying to navigate
this dance together well.
And none of us know the burdens that the other is carrying.
That applies as pastors seek to serve,
as elders seek to serve,
as ladies seeks to serve.
We’re all trying to be
the body of Christ and recognize that there will be times when maybe you raise a thing
and it doesn’t get the response that it deserves.
And that’s often, I’d say most cases, that’s not intentional.
There may be a deeper story behind it.
Pete I think the general heading as I would see it,
Michael, is that disagreement
is very tempting but doesn’t have to be divisive.
We don’t have to agree on everything to be the
church.
In fact, we probably won’t.
But we don’t have to draw lines.
We don’t have to have negative
experiences.
We don’t have to harm relationships and carry grudges and have conflict because we
see things differently.
There are ways to navigate that.
And we’ve been given some of those tools
by our faith in Jesus Christ.
And if we can keep our focus on those Kingdom things,
if we can have hard conversations but have them in the spirit of loving one another
as brothers and sisters in the faith,
then I think,
you know,
again, as we sort of started,
iron can sharpen iron.
We can be better off for having those conversations if we have them
in the right way at the right time.
You know,
you and I both remember a time where
a person kind of came into the office fairly hot and said we had to fix some things about our church service.
And this was,
and I’m not exaggerating,
this was the person’s first time
they had ever set foot at first person.
Never been to church before,
this church before.
And came in with some rather outspoken demands about what needed to be done here.
Very specific demands.
And you and I both kind of said,
“Who are you?”
My name is Michael.
It’s my pleasure to meet you.
So, again,
how we navigate those things has a great bearing on their outcome.
And that’s true on this side of the chair.
It’s true on that side.
Pastors, parishioners, we all bear responsibility to try to navigate those seasons in the love and spirit of Jesus
Christ because that’s what it means to be church.
There may be some who are joining this conversation who think to yourself,
“Yeah, I know that church is full of conflict because maybe sometimes you’re aware of it or
you know someone who’s a little hot or sometimes you find that for yourself.” You say,
“Yeah, I know all about that in church.” There may be some who are here for this conversation,
Clint, who are like,
“Whoa,
are you serious?
I didn’t know that there was that much sort of,
sometimes people coming in with very hot opinions or people who were very upset.
I didn’t know that blow-ups happened at church.” And if maybe you count yourself and that number
is a little surprise,
I think I just want to say we are saying this as people who are grateful to
be where we are.
In fact, I think we consider this congregation very healthy and strong,
and it is a great and good gift to be in a place where we recognize with transparency
that we will have conflict as church, right?
That’s not something to be ashamed of.
It’s rather a part of being the body of Christ that we might love and serve one another and
that we work through it together,
that we actually are in the midst of our disagreements
and our diversities and are trying to figure it out.
That gives us an opportunity for spiritual growth.
And so this conversation,
my point is couched in an actual love of the place and the people and awareness,
a gratitude for where we are.
I don’t think first presidents like somehow
has more or less conflict than other congregations,
not my experience.
It’s just that’s part of being church.
And any church that’s not honest about that,
I don’t think is being entirely transparent.
Yeah, I don’t think they’ll be avoided,
but I think how they are
handled will ultimately have a great deal of say in how that church functions and whether that
church is healthy or not.
I absolutely think that will be foundational for how that church lives as church,
how disagreements are handled by pastors and parishioners.
So here’s the question.
Do you disagree?
We’re glad that you’ve joined us for this conversation.
If you do, we’d love to hear from you in the comments as long as it’s constructive disagreement.
And we hope that maybe there’s been something engaging and interesting in
the conversation, maybe even inspiring as we seek to live in community together.
Be blessed.
We look forward to seeing you as we continue this series next week.
Until then.