Mistakes are inevitable, even for pastors. Even for excellent pastors. Wisdom and will can go awry, and ministry suffers.
The mistakes can be as benign as arriving late for a meeting, or as harmful as living a lie. Some “mistakes” come as brash surprises: A pastor told LEADERSHIP, “One day I changed the church thermostat-and the church fired me! They told me I was ‘too involved.’ “
Mistakes happen. But dig into any effective pastor’s past, and you uncover mistakes transformed into character. To discover how this is accomplished, LEADERSHIP associate editor Jim Berkley sought the insight of veteran pastors who, combining grit and grace, have grown through their mistakes. He pooled their wisdom into Making the Most of Mistakes, an upcoming volume in THE LEADERSHIP LIBRARY. The following excerpt focuses on minimizing the damage of personal blunders.
Thick containment shields cover the best designed nuclear reactors. Should something go wrong, these shields provide the first line of defense by containing explosions, and thus contamination. If radioactive debris and gases remain within the shield, the extent of the damage stays limited, and mop-up operations are possible.
When clergy error causes a runaway reaction in the parish, containment is again the word. Little mistakes have a way of becoming big, sometimes insurmountable, problems-if they are not contained. Pastors have found, usually the hard way, that when the disaster alert sounds, some actions contain the damage better than others.
A Parish Chain Reaction
On a prominent suburban corner stands a beautiful church complex, newly built and lushly landscaped. The senior pastor (let’s call him Josh) is a gifted preacher, a warm pastor, and a successful leader. Sitting in his finely appointed office, you get the feeling Josh must do a lot of things right.
But he made one mistake that won’t let him go. Several years back, he inadvertently stepped on the most stubborn toes ever bruised.
Those toes belonged to Tony, a man Josh helped rescue from a life of drug abuse. Once converted, Tony became a zealous church member. Initially Josh was pleased with Tony’s drive, but Tony’s unbounded and erratic nature eventually sent caution signals to Josh. Tony had plenty of free time since he was independently wealthy, and he constantly pushed Josh to be his mentor. Josh did his best to stall Tony without discouraging him. He didn’t think weekly one-on-one sessions with Tony would be the best investment of his time. Tony soon realized he was being sidestepped.
Eventually Tony began to disagree with Josh over points of doctrine. Tony challenged Josh’s teaching of the doctrine of the Trinity, accusing him of incipient Unitarianism. Then they clashed over spiritual gifts. Then eschatology. It degenerated into an all-out disagreement over practically everything-Josh trying to defend his theology while Tony circled and strafed whatever he considered a weak point in Josh’s defense.
The confrontations started with a rather uncomfortable conversation in Josh’s office. They escalated to the point that Tony rose at the close of a worship service and attacked Josh’s orthodoxy before the whole congregation. Much to Tony’s surprise and embarrassment, he got nowhere with the congregation. Humiliated, he kicked the dust off his sandals and tramped off to another church across town.
Over the next decade, Tony embraced and discarded at least two other congregations, but all the time he never forgot Josh. With Manson-like charisma, he gathered around him a fiercely loyal band of malcontents, and they began appearing at Josh’s evening services to accost parishioners with inflammatory pamphlets Tony had produced.
Josh was upset with the way they attacked and alienated his sheep, not to mention the relentless assaults on his own leadership and integrity. He met with the group privately, to no avail. The deacons tried to arrange a conference, and were frustrated time and again. Nobody, it seemed, could stop the incessant picking at Josh and troubling of the congregation.
The deacons drafted a letter to the congregation, explaining the disagreement, outlining their attempted resolution, and pleading for forbearance and understanding. Tony persisted in stirring trouble. Finally, the deacons arranged for a restraining order to bar Tony and his followers from church property.
That only infuriated Tony, who stepped up his tactics. He and his crew started picketing the church.
Once Josh arrived at church and counted thirty-four signs denouncing him and the church posted along the sidewalk. Tony took out a half-page advertisement in the local paper. The rambling diatribe stopped only a millimeter short of slander. He peppered new church attenders with letters “warning” them about Josh.
His opposition seemed to have no limits. Once when Josh flew to Seoul, Korea, to speak at a conference, he found Tony distributing leaflets at the hall! For the last five years, Tony and his band have picketed the church every Sunday, rain or shine. He remains Josh’s indefatigable albatross.
Josh lives daily with his seemingly innocuous mistake-slighting Tony-that mushroomed completely out of proportion. Could it somehow have been avoided? Josh will always wonder. But his experience illustrates the two immediate concerns that face anyone who makes a mistake: What should I do? and What should I say?
What Should I Do?
Nuclear technicians don’t run to a contaminated area the minute the alarm sounds. Something dreadful has gone wrong, so now is the time for cool heads and rational problem solving In fact, following the Three Mile Island nuclear mishap, one of the review committee’s recommendations was for at least one reactor operator to be stationed away from beeping indicators and wailing sirens. Flashing lights and indicator needles in the red work against levelheaded thinking. Only an untraumatized mind is able to make rapid but sound decisions. There’s wisdom in this approach for pastors, too.
•Proceed cautiously. Church leaders are equally wise to proceed directly yet cautiously as the warning alarms sound in the parish. A mistake triggers reaction. Things start to happen quickly, and a bigger mistake looms large when decisions are knocked off out of panic. Pastors want to avoid that.
Josh perhaps rushed to a premature decision about Tony. Tony was pushing him for the kind of mentoring Josh wasn’t prepared to give. Josh’s initial solution was to stall and hope Tony would give up. Instead, Tony felt offended, and trouble resulted.
Then, when Tony started causing arguments, Josh jumped in to defend himself, a natural reaction. However, as he looks back, Josh realizes that perhaps working with Tony to uncover the cause of his attacks would have been more fruitful. Josh’s first response was not the best.
One pastor says, “I have to slow down my reactions so I don’t issue final decrees on scant evidence. Often I need to take a deep breath, to draw back and gain perspective. You know, you can’t characterize the whole town by what you see from the subway.”
Mistakes can make a leader myopic. The world narrows to a few frames of blurred action. That’s why a brief hiatus from making decisions can be so valuable. It’s not a vacation from responsibility, but rather an opportunity to assess the wider picture.
It also allows the sorting of feelings. Josh felt upset with Tony, and justifiably so. But understanding Tony was another matter. Josh might have stopped to consider better what Tony was feeling. From that he could have charted his possible responses.
How many ministries have been brought to an inglorious end by hasty reactions rather than reasoned decisions? A cool-headed observer may see today’s accident as tomorrow’s opportunity. As one Baptist pastor advises, “I need to wait on the Lord. Sometimes the biggest mistake I can make is to panic and act prematurely.”
Thinking through a situation adds quality to one’s response. South Carolina pastor Bill Solomon cautions against overreaction: “I’m the kind of guy who goes on a ten-day fast if the doctor mentions I’m a little overweight. So when it comes to mistakes in ministry, I have to be careful not to react in inappropriate ways. Taking time to think through the situation helps. Maybe this ‘disaster’ is only a temporary setback, and all I need to do is hitch up my britches and keep going.”
But restraint cannot mean vacillation. Eventually the time comes to act, and eventually usually comes sooner rather than later. A pause provides perspective; a prolonged pause leads to inaction and often breeds complications.
So when do you proceed? When you have a fair grasp of the situation and have your own emotions reasonably in check. In some cases that means counting to ten, in others, waiting ten months. Whatever the case, it means thinking first and doing second. But the time does come to act.
•Proceed decisively. Josh can point to his mistake with Tony: “I didn’t handle the problem properly at the beginning. I should have been more decisive. I never could have discipled Tony-that’s not the point-but I should have allowed him more dignity when he first felt hurt. I could have explained my dilemma over so many people needing my attention. I could have set him up with another person in the congregation. Then he could have denounced me privately and gotten it off his chest. But now he can’t stop. He’s invested too much to quit and lose face.
“I also should have recognized the meanness in human nature. Jesus dealt decisively with people, not sentimentally. When it comes to some people, I’ve sadly realized that if you believe all things, you will have all things to endure. I wanted to keep pleasing people-which is selfish at the core-when I should have been tougher.”
After thinking through the initial course of action, steps can follow purposefully. Encouraging them to be clear and direct, Paul wrote the Corinthians: “If the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle?” (1 Cor. 14:8). Likewise, if stumbling pastors do not regain firm footing and proceed with obvious intent, who will be able to stand behind them?
One pastor of an Episcopal church allowed a difference of opinion to nearly split the congregation. Most members were staid and very conservative, and this pastor shrugged off the stir a liturgical renewal element was bringing. Even when tempers flared, accusations were hurled, and a denominational investigation was launched, the pastor remained passive, almost indifferent to the situation.
This pastor didn’t react impulsively; he hardly reacted at all, and that was his greater mistake. The people needed direction, a sure trumpet. Somebody had to raise a banner. At least then people could decide whether to rally around it or consider leaving. As it was, a vacillating, inactive approach nearly doomed the church to dissolution. It wasn’t until another pastor assumed command that the church began to regain some direction.
The original pastor resigned and slipped away. With clear hindsight, the present pastor told me, “I think if he would have taken a stand-practically any stand-he would still be the pastor today. The people couldn’t support him because they didn’t know where he stood.”
Another pastor inherited a staff and ran into a problem with the man in charge of children’s ministries. “He had an attitude problem,” the pastor said. “Everywhere he went, he sowed dissension. We were building a new building, and he was telling the building committee one story about what he wanted in the children’s center and the rest of the staff another. At the same time he was telling the teachers how he never gets anything he wants. Everybody ended up upset with everybody else because of this man.
“I kept hoping he would cooperate, but finally he sent out a letter opposing me, and our leaders and I concluded he simply could not work under my leadership. Then I made the mistake of giving him a year to find a new position. A whole year! That gave him time to continue sabotaging my ministry, like timing the announcement of his leaving to do as much damage as possible to our building fund kickoff.
“I wasn’t decisive enough. By the unsure signals I kept giving out, I added to the original mistake of letting him linger. I’ve since decided: Make a firing quick and clean. Now I’m not saying be unfair or dictatorial. I just mean that when an original mistake in hiring becomes a major difficulty, the best move is to be decisive. Take into account their dignity, be fair, be just, but do what you have to do-let them go.”
When a mistake occasions that first frantic What do I do? respond as the experienced do: think first and then act. Do nothing out of panic or haste, but when you do respond (and you have to eventually), act responsibly and unequivocally. As one pastor says, “You can’t pussyfoot around and expect people to respect you.”
What Should I Say?
There were times as a pastor when I envied the President. In his Oval Office, protected by several strata of associates and secretaries (not to mention the unsmiling guys in dark suits), he can orchestrate his response to whatever mistakes he makes. To top it off, who goes before the questioning press? Many times it’s not the President. He’s got a press secretary to smooth his gaffes and blunders.
For pastors, when it comes to saying the right thing following a mistake, they are on their own-no press secretaries, no high-level advisers. Along with, perhaps, a few lay leaders, they formulate their own response.
The immediate concern is How much do I divulge? Do I go public, or should I sit on it? The ability to own up to a mistake and call it our own is important. If it is sin, it must be confessed; if error, we need to take responsibility. Only then can we begin to fix what’s “broke.” But do we need to tell everybody about our mistake? And how much of it needs to be told?
The answers to these questions depend on at least three factors:
•What kind of mistake is it? Mistakes differ by nature and magnitude. Misplacing a pencil occasions a different response than leaving the pencil imbedded in another person’s chest. After the one you say, “Oops!” Following the other, you beg forgiveness.
Is it a mistake of orientation, of interpersonal relations, or of judgment? Say I come into ministry with the mistaken notion that it will be a forty-hour-a-week job, and before long I’m complaining to the board about the “unfair expectations” of the congregation. That’s a mistake of orientation, and one of the best strategies is to admit my rookie notions to the board. I don’t need to solemnly apologize to the whole congregation about my “grave failing.” I’m learning and growing. They practically expect such mistakes, and probably take pride in “training me right.” I can consider it a mistake of orientation, reorient myself, and be on my way.
But not if I lash out at a distraught widow who calls me at 3 A.M. on my day off. Then I have injured someone and probably poisoned the interpersonal well in that congregation. I need to say more in that case-a lot more.
Within each type of mistake, magnitude also determines my response. I may order church stationery with an error in the address, and in so doing, waste two hundred dollars. Or I may hire a close friend as youth director who later embezzles thousands of dollars. Both blunders were judgment mistakes, but their vastly different magnitude suggests far different responses. While I may want to mention the wasted stationery to the trustees, I may need to offer to step down from the pastorate in the wake of my embezzling friend.
What exactly should I say? It still depends. Did I know my friend was a crook and lie about it to the board when he was hired? Then I have committed not only a major mistake but a moral one, which demands asking for forgiveness. Until I understand if my error is minor, major, or moral, I don’t know how much I should say.
Playground basketball games sometimes operate under the rule: No harm, no foul. If no one is hurt, no foul is called. Likewise, if no one has been truly hurt in a church situation, pastors need not blow the whistle on themselves.
Some mistakes hardly merit disclosure. Must I bring to the board every undiplomatic word I let slip, every phone call I forget to return, every errant thought about that attractive gal in the supermarket? Must I confess from the pulpit those two hours I wasted in my study reading Life magazine, or the time I snarled at the C.E. director who forgot to give me the attendance figures for the third week in a row? Of course not. Common sense tells us to measure the exposure of the mistake by its nature and magnitude. Big sins demand more said than minor slips.
In a way this runs contrary to our inclinations. It’s the major failings I’d just as soon bandage over and forget. But it’s exactly the mistakes that hurt the most that have to be exposed for healing. The little scratches will take care of themselves, but the deep wounds need open attention.
All the same, one pastor says, “I try to admit my mistakes in a way that is not heavy on guilt. If I’ve done wrong, I say so, but I don’t try to make myself look like a no-good rat. I’ll talk to the person my mistake affects and apologize for the action-sincerely. But I don’t need to apologize for what or who I am. That can overwhelm even the one I’m talking to.”
•Who is involved? Recognizing three possibilities helps us sort out this question.
Sometimes I’m the only one fumbling the ball. Maybe I don’t study enough for my sermons or I’m always late for work. Perhaps I short my prayer life. These are personal in nature; I’m acting in collusion with no one.
Whatever I say about this kind of mistake, I am the only person exposed. In considering the wisdom of confessing my sin or admitting my error, I have no co-conspirators to think about.
Some of these mistakes can be corrected with a little resolve, and I need to decide the advisability of involving others at all. Why expose my lack of devotional time to the congregation? Wouldn’t it be better to tell one or two persons whom I could ask to hold me accountable? Then, while I work to mend the error under their supervision, I haven’t undermined my position or unnecessarily burdened parishioners with my shortcoming that they may well use as an excuse for theirs-“After all, if the pastor has trouble . . .”
Those errors in which only I am involved are sometimes best left in a small, chosen circle.
Other mistakes pit me against personalities: stubbornly contradicting a founding member or demanding Gaither anthems from a popular choir director whose tastes run toward Bach. Such interpersonal mistakes become more complex, because now I’m dealing with the rights and emotions of others. I need to judge what to say not only by how it affects me but by how it affects others.
Will I make others look bad if I go public? Will it cause them to feel they have to reciprocate? Would the problem best be settled in private with the other party?
Most of us have heard the “confession” that is really a thinly veiled attack: “I’m so sorry I punched Deacon Tidwell at the last deacons’ meeting. After he had been so tightfisted when discussing my salary, and when he viciously tried to take away my car allowance, I guess I just cracked.” It is tempting to wallop someone again under the guise of admitting a mistake.
Still other mistakes involve co-conspirators. When somebody else has joined me in the mistake, that party is bound to be implicated by any statement I make. I may be ready to go public, but is he or she?
When Josh and Tony scrapped over doctrine, Josh was probably making a mistake by allowing it to degenerate into personal attacks. But so was Tony. Thus anything Josh had to say about the problem to the deacons or congregation involved Tony as much as himself. Josh could own up to the mistake or confess the sin for himself, but not at Tony’s expense. Whatever Josh said about Tony had to be fair and truthful, not just another way to spar with him. In situations like this, restraint and diplomacy are the key words; not cover-up, but tact.
•Who needs to know? The key word here is needs. All kinds of people may want to hear about a mistake, but not everybody has a stake in my revelation. Running out on the street and pouring out my shortcomings to the first passerby hardly suffices as a confession. Yet, in some cases, mounting the pulpit to spew a confession to the congregation may be just as inappropriate. In general, mistakes should be broadcast no farther than the narrowest necessary circle.
So who belongs in that circle? Any person involved in my mistake. We need to come clean with those affected. Since they were victims of the mistake, they deserve a full explanation, if not more.
In nearly any instance when the organization suffers from my mistake, key church leaders need to be brought into the circle of confidence. After all, they share responsibility for the welfare of the congregation. In a support staff position, this would include the senior pastor. In other churches, the moderator, the chairman of the board, the executive committee of the elders, or other such individuals might be the first people to contact. They can help decide how much wider the spotlight of revelation has to shine.
If key leaders are able to receive the disclosure of misconduct and deal with it effectively, perhaps that’s as wide an exposure as is necessary. The purpose is health and repair. Hidden sin is usually growing sin. Unacknowledged error is often repeated error. Airing the mistake before those who need to know, taking steps to rectify the wrong and forestall repetition, and then getting on with business-that’s the order of the day. If a small but responsible group can accomplish that purpose, most pastors are ahead to let it remain there.
Sometimes, however, due to the nature or magnitude of a mistake, the exposure needs to be greater-the entire leadership of the congregation, or perhaps the entire congregation. In Colorado an assistant pastor was caught embezzling checks from the offering. Eventually not only the leadership but the congregation and finally the community played a role in rectifying this mistake. His church board was forced by state law to report his theft of corporate funds to the State attorney. Even though they wanted word of the regrettable occurrence to go no further, it became public record by necessity.
Josh used this narrowest-circle method. First he tried to pacify Tony. When that didn’t work, he talked with key church leaders. They decided the deacons as a whole needed to be briefed. Only when even the deacons couldn’t contain the difficulty did Josh and the leaders attempt to communicate the problem to the entire congregation.
As chaplain for a small-town police force, I was occasionally subpoenaed to testify in court concerning incidents I had witnessed while riding with officers. On the way to my first courtroom appearance, a friend in the department offered some sound advice: “Never volunteer information. Answer the questions, but don’t say anything you don’t have to say. It can keep you out of a lot of trouble.” He wasn’t telling me to lie or to duck questions; he only advised restraint. Why buy trouble with unnecessary jabber?
Pastors can learn from that officer’s advice. Following a mistake, something needs to be said-even volunteered-something truthful and upright. Conscience, good faith, and Christian maturity demand it. But the amount said and the audience told are best limited by the scope of the mistake: Say no more than is necessary to no greater audience than the mistake merits.
Jim Berkley is associate editor of LEADERSHIP.
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