I am friends with a group of people that includes several members
of the staff of a large local church.
One recently was fired for being too outspoken about church policies he
disagreed with. One was even more
recently promoted because her boss recommended her for the position after the
woman retired. The senior pastor of that
church resigned a few weeks ago, the hiring committee asked the music minister
to resign. Drama, of course, ensued.
The response from the church members I know has been strong
to say the least. One side trusts the
hiring committee explicitly because “they know things about the situation
better than the rest of us do.” The
other side wants to raise hell because they were not involved in the decision making
process, ostensibly implying that they would have kept the people happy and
found a way to work through things. I
regret to say that this is pretty typical of churches I have known. The story line is always the same: do one thing, someone else doesn’t like it,
drama ensues.
I know a lot of folks in conservative churches listen to
talk radio – you know the kind I mean - where the radio host is intolerant of
any liberal views, cuts people off mid-sentence, and is generally disrespectful
of anyone who is even a shade of gray away from his own views. I can’t stand that stuff, even though I agree
with 99.9% of what is said. I can’t
stand it because of how the hosts treat the callers. My Mamma taught me that that behavior was
rude and any lady worth her salt doesn’t treat people that way.
The sad part is that this is how disagreements are treated
in the Christian circles I have been a part of.
Dissent is never treated as an opportunity for exploring a
topic. It’s treated like leprosy. Only the leper colony is now bigger than the “pure”
folks inside the walls of the city. This
is doubly bad for those who ask hard questions because the defensiveness that
comes from being a minority compounds the need to draw hard and fast lines
about which all members must make a public decision. It’s Travis’s line in the sand – and I fear
that those who stay inside will die a painful death like the rest of the Texan patriots
at the Alamo.
For this church to survive, and many like it, there has to
be an intentional process of drawing out the conflict very carefully, skillfully
moving toward reconciliation – or at least enough forgiveness that those who
choose to stay can move forward together as a church body. This might be a wonderful opportunity to
learn the skill of debate – recognizing the merits and weaknesses of someone
else’s argument and presenting your own before both sides come to a new
understanding of the issue. All of this
is very Hegelian, and sadly most Christian folks know very little about this
nor do they care to learn anything about how to practice it. But it is likely the most important skill that
the pure church insiders need to gain if they are to reach the lepers they have
ostracized by their staunch foothold on their version of the truth.
I’m not advocating for a looser definition of truth
here. I am advocating for listening, for
respect, for openness to others’ ideas & perspectives, for laying down your
own pride and considering others as more important than yourself. All of this is Biblical, yet these phrases do
not characterize the way that this church has been treating its staff. And the lepers become less and less
interested in getting back into communities that treat people like they’re enemy
guests on an afternoon radio show. That’s
why I think I’ll stay a leper and hang out with the other lepers for a while
longer at Starbuck’s on Sunday mornings. The coffee's better there, anyway.
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