River or Lake?
Written by Larry Clooney
I’ve sent several project proposals to pastors whose churches realize good attendance, a decent number of small groups, functioning elders, and consistent youth and children’s ministry. Still, something is off, they’ll tell me. Often, the pastor has asked me how to get visitors to stay, more volunteers to serve, leaders to lead, and not spend so much time putting out fires that start cranky members.
Three interactions shaped my career and contributed to my consulting churches and non-profits. My love for them compels me to try and help them achieve their visions by assisting them to identify barriers that hinder growth and cause pain, then giving them the tools to overcome them.
The first interaction was with Angry Al. That’s not his real name, but the description is. I’ll call him AA; he looked stiff and tense, with little or no genuine laughter or easy smile. He and his wife joined our church plant when we were preparing to build after nearly eight years in a rented bingo hall.
He was one of several challenging personalities with whom I was contending during these years, and undoubtedly, a lot of that contention was due to my stress, weariness, and insecurities. His demeanor was off-putting to me; I felt like he was often, if not always, ready to instruct me on something or another.
His wife volunteered in the office, and she seemed emotionally beat down. In hindsight, it was almost as if she was afraid I’d bring up her husband’s lousy attitude to her. I suspected, and she hinted as much, that something was wrong in that home. I felt a need to address it, despite my council members telling me to overlook it, but ignoring that kind of issue is not in my wiring. “They’re in my ranch now; I’ll either raise them or move them on,” was my thought then.
In those days, I lacked tact, grace, and confrontation skill, so when I confronted AA about his demeanor, gruffness, and his wife’s sadness, he blasted me. It was a blast concealed behind Christian niceness because, in his world view, I’m sure Christians never lost their temper. With ice-chilling words, he shredded my soul and left me wondering why I had decided to become a pastor. That conversation wasn’t the first like it; each was like another brick on a cheap measuring scale in my heart, horribly weighing down the emotional negativity within me.
AA and his wife left. Months later, I received a note from her saying in an ambiguous way that I had done the right thing by confronting her husband. Even the unsettled language she used indicated stress. I’ll never know under how much stress she lived, but I was glad he and his anger had moved on, though he left a trail of insults and half-truths behind him, and several of my members didn’t overlook them. It was a painful experience.
I told myself, “Never again!” I would do whatever it took to change the way we were doing church so I’d minimize, at least, the number of people coming and hurting me. When I began my ministry journey at least ten years prior, I couldn’t have imagined that I’d experience the hurt and trauma I did. I was new to the church scene, so I didn’t have the perspective my peers who grew up in a pastor’s home, for example, would have had.
Daniel Brown’s The Other Side of Pastoral Ministry was a tremendous help to me; its tagline is “Using Process Leadership to Transform Your Church.” In it, Brown uses an analogy of a river for the church. If we lead so there is movement forward, from one growth to the next, from one insight to the next, from one healing to the next, someone like AA could jump in and move with the rest of us.
He was probably used to a church being more like a lake – lovely, but not moving forward – and in that stasis, adopted his snarly, critical attitude. There was no river flowing that he could move out of emotional distress to grace and peace. He often reminded me that I, as his pastor, needed to “just teach the Word.” He wanted his church to be a place to come like livestock and graze on good feed. All that feeding, I guess, caused some spiritual indigestion in him, and I got his vomit.
I regret that I couldn’t help AA; he went on to the next church with his wife, holding onto secrets, and I promised myself to put some movement in my church. I’d have a river moving so the next person who came along with the fouled-up lake mentality could choose to either jump in and move ahead or jump in a lake somewhere.
Next: A Friendly Rejection
Look for one of Leading in Joy’s free online Effective Process courses, or call to set a time to visit you and your staff.
Three interactions shaped my career and contributed to my consulting churches and non-profits. My love for them compels me to try and help them achieve their visions by assisting them to identify barriers that hinder growth and cause pain, then giving them the tools to overcome them.
The first interaction was with Angry Al. That’s not his real name, but the description is. I’ll call him AA; he looked stiff and tense, with little or no genuine laughter or easy smile. He and his wife joined our church plant when we were preparing to build after nearly eight years in a rented bingo hall.
He was one of several challenging personalities with whom I was contending during these years, and undoubtedly, a lot of that contention was due to my stress, weariness, and insecurities. His demeanor was off-putting to me; I felt like he was often, if not always, ready to instruct me on something or another.
His wife volunteered in the office, and she seemed emotionally beat down. In hindsight, it was almost as if she was afraid I’d bring up her husband’s lousy attitude to her. I suspected, and she hinted as much, that something was wrong in that home. I felt a need to address it, despite my council members telling me to overlook it, but ignoring that kind of issue is not in my wiring. “They’re in my ranch now; I’ll either raise them or move them on,” was my thought then.
In those days, I lacked tact, grace, and confrontation skill, so when I confronted AA about his demeanor, gruffness, and his wife’s sadness, he blasted me. It was a blast concealed behind Christian niceness because, in his world view, I’m sure Christians never lost their temper. With ice-chilling words, he shredded my soul and left me wondering why I had decided to become a pastor. That conversation wasn’t the first like it; each was like another brick on a cheap measuring scale in my heart, horribly weighing down the emotional negativity within me.
AA and his wife left. Months later, I received a note from her saying in an ambiguous way that I had done the right thing by confronting her husband. Even the unsettled language she used indicated stress. I’ll never know under how much stress she lived, but I was glad he and his anger had moved on, though he left a trail of insults and half-truths behind him, and several of my members didn’t overlook them. It was a painful experience.
I told myself, “Never again!” I would do whatever it took to change the way we were doing church so I’d minimize, at least, the number of people coming and hurting me. When I began my ministry journey at least ten years prior, I couldn’t have imagined that I’d experience the hurt and trauma I did. I was new to the church scene, so I didn’t have the perspective my peers who grew up in a pastor’s home, for example, would have had.
Daniel Brown’s The Other Side of Pastoral Ministry was a tremendous help to me; its tagline is “Using Process Leadership to Transform Your Church.” In it, Brown uses an analogy of a river for the church. If we lead so there is movement forward, from one growth to the next, from one insight to the next, from one healing to the next, someone like AA could jump in and move with the rest of us.
He was probably used to a church being more like a lake – lovely, but not moving forward – and in that stasis, adopted his snarly, critical attitude. There was no river flowing that he could move out of emotional distress to grace and peace. He often reminded me that I, as his pastor, needed to “just teach the Word.” He wanted his church to be a place to come like livestock and graze on good feed. All that feeding, I guess, caused some spiritual indigestion in him, and I got his vomit.
I regret that I couldn’t help AA; he went on to the next church with his wife, holding onto secrets, and I promised myself to put some movement in my church. I’d have a river moving so the next person who came along with the fouled-up lake mentality could choose to either jump in and move ahead or jump in a lake somewhere.
Next: A Friendly Rejection
Look for one of Leading in Joy’s free online Effective Process courses, or call to set a time to visit you and your staff.
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