“No Divisions Among You”
January 23, 2005
Karis Hastings
It’s an interesting coincidence that the adult Sunday school class is watching and discussing the Congregation this week and next, because the ideas for this sermon started when I watched the Congregation when it aired late last year. For those of you who haven’t seen the program, it’s a documentary that was filmed over a two-year period in the life of the First United Methodist Church of Germantown, outside Philadelphia. The Washington Post’s TV directory’s described the program as covering the decision of the associate pastor, Reverend Beth Stroud, to tell her congregation that she is a lesbian, and the consequences that follow when the church hierarchy brings her to trial to consider whether to revoke her credentials.
My father, a retired United Methodist minister who has a strong interest in the issue of the church’s openness to gays and lesbians, was visiting when the program aired, and we watched it together. Given the description in the Post, I was surprised to find that the Beth Stroud story was actually just a small part of what the program covered. I had been assuming that the documentary would focus on the struggle within the church to come to terms with Beth Stroud’s sexual identity, but from what I could see, the congregation seemed to be very supportive and accepting. So although Reverend Stroud’s decision ended up having very serious and wrenching consequences with the ultimate revocation of her credentials by the United Methodist Church’s governing body, it didn’t really appear to be a point of controversy within the congregation.
Instead, this congregation was struggling with more typical issues. Their senior pastor of 37 years had retired, and the new senior pastor they had been sent (the United Methodist church assigns pastors to congregations, instead of letting congregations choose their own) had a different leadership style and was more middle-of-the-road theologically than their progressive former pastor. Much of the program covered the church’s struggle with trying to decide if Reverend Day, the senior pastor, was the right fit for their congregation. They also had an old church building to support and were trying to juggle the financial burdens of building upkeep with the other competing demands on the church budget – does that sound familiar to anyone?
Watching another church’s struggles from the outside was revealing for me in a lot of ways and got me started thinking about how difficult it is to maintain a sense of community within a congregation and the burdens and expectations we place on our church leaders.
Then I read the lectionary passages for today, and there was Paul lecturing the early church on exactly the same kinds of issues. Factions had formed within the organization, with various groups aligning with one or another of the church elders. People were arguing, and Paul sounds pretty cranky about the whole situation. “I thank God,” Paul says, “that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name.” He sounds pretty close to wanting to wash his hands of the whole lot. I have to say I found it both depressing and strangely comforting to realize that sniping, quarreling and clique-forming among Christians are as old as the church itself.
Paul tells the church that they should all be in agreement with no divisions among them, all united in the same mind and the same purpose. That’s an awfully tall order. And it seems even taller today. Can we really expect a group of people with diverse backgrounds, experiences, interests, and opinions to agree together on anything? How do we interact with each other and with our pastor in a way that is constructive and helpful, that fosters a sense of community and promotes the achievement of common goals? During this period when we are about to welcome a new interim pastor and preparing to begin the process of calling a non-interim pastor, these seemed like issues worth exploring.
As I thought more about the struggles I’d witnessed watching the Congregation, there was a scene that really stood out for me. There’s a meeting going on where the members are discussing a number of issues, including the criticisms of the Senior Pastor, Rev. Day. Some of the comments were pretty blunt, and as the scene went on I realized that Rev. Day was also in the room. And of course, the fact that I was watching the scene meant there was also a documentary film crew in the room. I found it hard to believe that these congregants were talking so critically about their pastor right in front of him and on camera no less, and equally hard to believe that he was listening without arguing or getting defensive. To the contrary, it seemed that he saw the church’s discussions about whether his style of ministry was the right fit for the church as part of a necessary dialogue, and that he felt one aspect of his job was to try to improve by hearing and working to respond to such criticism.
When I examined my reaction to that scene, it started me thinking about the job of being a pastor in ways I hadn’t before. Why was I so surprised about how this minister handled the situation? After all, most of us in our careers are evaluated by our employers, and are expected to graciously accept constructive criticism and use it to try to do our jobs better. That’s fundamentally what was going on in the scene here.
But for me, and probably most of us, our jobs are not that closely linked to our core beliefs. I’m a lawyer, and I take pride in the skills and abilities that I use in my job. But if someone tells me that they think the approach I’ve taken isn’t the most persuasive way to write an argument in one of my legal pleadings or that I need to research something more thoroughly, although I might not be thrilled at being second-guessed, it wouldn’t be hard for me to handle.
But for a pastor, your job is an expression of your deeply held beliefs and convictions. It’s got to be really hard to hear someone say that they think you’re going about that job in the wrong way. I tried to think of something that would be an analogous situation for me. I tried to imagine sitting in a room full of people engaged in a discussion evaluating the way I parent my children, talking about whether my style of discipline was a good fit for my children’s personalities, suggesting I should work on my listening skills or do a better job at feeding my kids nutritious meals. I can’t picture myself calmly accepting that kind of discussion without yelling, weeping, or walking out. For a pastor, I would think that being told that the congregation doesn’t like the way you lead a worship service has to be just as sensitive a subject.
And of course, it’s not just the pastor who is sensitive about it. Each individual member of the congregation has his or her own expectations and views, and can feel just as strongly about church issues as does the pastor. Any conversation about worship, or music, or mission priorities, can be a minefield.
Yet these are issues we have to feel comfortable talking about among ourselves and with our church leadership. The challenge is to be able to do that without causing an explosion.
While I have no formal training in this area and can’t claim to have all the answers, I figure that having grown up as a preacher’s kid gives me some valuable experience here that might be worth sharing. I’m going to focus mostly on the relationship between the congregation and the pastor, but I think the lessons can be applied to interactions among members of the congregation as well.
My primary piece of advice is to try to put yourself in the pastor’s shoes and see things from his or her perspective. Let me illustrate this suggestion by talking about a situation where it didn’t happen. I call this one “When is a driveway not just a driveway?”
It happened in the church where my father was assigned from the time I was in seventh grade through my senior year in high school. In many ways, it was a great church, and I formed friendships there that continue to this day. But the folks there could also be completely clueless about certain things.
The shiny new parsonage they built while we were there was a case in point. Don’t get me wrong, this church definitely needed a new parsonage. My parents have four children, and when we arrived, the kids ranged in age from 7 to 13. The original parsonage we moved into had only one bathroom, so that clearly wasn’t going to work.
The church owned some land adjacent to the church building, and decided to build a new parsonage there. The church was on a corner, facing a fairly busy street, with a parking lot behind it that had a driveway leading out to the side street. They decided to put the new parsonage next to the driveway, so the parsonage would be facing the side street. The house’s garage was closest to the church parking lot, and they decided to have the driveway from the garage just connect up with the driveway leading out of the church parking lot instead of going directly out to the street.
I’m sure for them it was a small thing. After all, what difference did it make where our driveway went? It’s not like it added significantly to our travel time that when we pulled out of our garage we had to take our driveway to the church’s driveway and the church’s driveway out to the street. But for us the message couldn’t have been clearer that they viewed the parsonage as a sort of church annex. Anyone coming or going from our house had to do so via the church’s property. I have to say it really bugged us.
So my suggestion, before our new interim pastor shows up, is that we do some thinking about what the situation she will be facing will look like from her perspective. For those of us with “regular” jobs, I think it’s worth considering how a pastor’s job is different from what we do. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that being the solo pastor of Takoma Park Presbyterian Church isn’t a job, it’s a black hole. I personally need structure and deadlines in my work or else I’d be unlikely to accomplish anything. I have a list of what needs to get done by when, so I can prioritize my time. But for a pastor the only real deadline is the requirement to put together a worship service every week, while the list of other things that “need” to get done could be almost endless. How do you decide how much time to spend going to committee meetings, visiting shut-ins, reviewing financial information, engaging in personal reflection and study? A pastor that doesn’t set boundaries is inevitably going to get burned out. But of course setting boundaries means deciding for yourself what is and isn’t going to get done in a given week, and that means you’re likely to be disappointing at least some segment of your constituency. We as a congregation need to be sensitive of the demands and expectations we are placing on our leadership and realistic about what is possible.
That brings me to my only other piece of advice, which is that we all make an effort to, well, lighten up for God’s sake.
It’s very easy to fall into a pattern of taking everything so seriously that our church work begins to feel like homework – a big chore that we HAVE to do. I have to guard against this trap myself all the time. I have to remind myself that I’m a volunteer, that every task I undertake for the church is something that I have chosen to do because this community is important to me and I want to be an active part of it. If I don’t want to do something, I can always just say no. If I say yes, it should be because I’m prepared to do it with a willing spirit and a positive attitude. If instead I do it begrudgingly and with a feeling of obligation, I’m the only person who really suffers as a result.
So let’s have a New Year’s Resolution of remembering that we are the joyful people of God. That we are people to whom much has been given for which we are grateful. That we have the ability to accomplish great things by working together in God’s name. Let’s try to ignore petty irritations and avoid disagreements about issues that aren’t important. Where we disagree on important issues, let’s commit to dealing with each other sensitively and with good humor.
OK, so it still sounds like a tall order. But I for one think this church is up to the challenge.
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