Congregations and pastors may not argue about where to squeeze the toothpaste tube, but after the honeymoon, they have inevitable conflicts that need to be resolved.
—Doug Scott
My wife and I had been separated by 3,000 miles of ocean for five years before our wedding. Our fragile relationship had been sustained by letters, cassettes, and occasional transatlantic telephone calls. When I finally arrived at her home in England for two weeks of frantic wedding and honeymoon planning, we felt frightened and pressured.
Fragile relationship, frantic planning—that’s not unlike the beginning of a new pastorate. So, like couples, congregations look forward to the honeymoon. After the anxiety and excitement of calling a new pastor, they long to settle into an unhurried time where pastor and congregation can get to know one another.
But then what? After the first year, sometimes the first month, couples have to hammer out a working relationship; they must resolve the myriad of conflicts that arise in the normal course of marriage.
Congregations and pastors may not argue about where to squeeze the toothpaste tube, but after the honeymoon, they too have inevitable conflicts that need to be resolved.
In particular, I have encountered at least five areas that have confronted me and my congregations after the honeymoon.
Caring for Yourself
Some issues in congregational life everyone cares about—the appearance of the sanctuary, the stability of the budget, the Sunday school program. But some issues no one cares about—at least almost no one. People don’t care whether the newsletter is printed on long or short grain paper; they don’t care what kind of floor cleaner is used. And hard as it is to admit, many don’t care whether their pastor works too hard, or whether their pastor has spent time with his or her family.
Like many other clergy, I entered parish ministry assuming that as long as I gave my all to my church, the people would take care of my family and me. I have since learned that such an assumption is not only untrue, it is also unfair to my congregation.
My revelation was not only abrupt, it was also embarrassing. I was in my first senior pastorate, facing a long agenda, and I had few resources. My congregation was pleasant, friendly, and dedicated to a pace that, in my youth and inexperience, I found maddeningly slow. So, in order to compensate for their inaction, I doubled my level of activity, setting an example (I thought) for them to follow.
After a few months, my anxiety increased as they accepted my frenzied level of work but resolutely maintained their own. One evening, I came to a vestry meeting not having spent a night home in weeks, and during the rector’s report, I lost it.
“I am beginning to feel frustrated,” I said as patiently as I could. “I am doing a tremendous amount of work around here with little or no response. I’ve increased the number of programs available to the congregation; I’m visiting and going to meetings; plus I’m preparing sermons and classes. I see our shut-ins every week and go to the hospital every day. I’m not looking for praise (although I probably was), but I feel that my commitment isn’t being matched by the leadership of this parish!” There was a long silence, where I felt people were doing some serious self-examination.
Finally, one wise and patient vestry member, who had seen rectors come and go, quietly said, “I expect you, as my pastor, to take care of yourself. I think that’s a big part, perhaps the biggest part, of your job. A burned-out priest is of no use to me or to my church. Not one person here can take care of you or set reasonable limits for you. We look to you for leadership in the management of your life. I’m no theologian, but from Scripture and from your preaching about the kingdom of God, I’ve learned that it is our responsibility to be stewards of that kingdom, to manage what we have, including our time and work, in a mature and responsible way. That’s what we brought you here to do.”
I have blessed that man a thousand times in my prayers and have tried to implement his charge throughout my ministry. After the honeymoon we’re tempted to begin making the many necessary changes, to plunge into the work of the church now that we’ve built trust. But in the process we’re tempted to abuse ourselves and our families. That’s when we fail our congregations and the Lord who calls us to wholeness. As simple as it sounds, only I am in charge of me. In exercising self-care, I exercise Christ’s ministry.
Beyond Fighting or Dying
A few years ago, I received a call from a prominent member who wanted to talk to me about the direction the church was heading. He said he wanted to bring along a number of my “good friends”—a sure sign of trouble. The meeting time arrived, a cold November afternoon, and for four hours I sat and listened to my “good friends” tell me everything they thought was wrong with me and my ministry: My attitude was wrong; my personality wasn’t what the church needed; I offended and upset people; I was too pushy when it came to the design and implementation of programs; my administrative skills were weak; I lacked warmth and wasn’t approachable.
Of course, they said, everyone agreed that I was a great preacher, but that alone wasn’t enough. My only recourse, as they saw it, was to leave the church before I did any more damage. It hurt them to say it, but perhaps I really ought to consider leaving the ministry, seeking an occupation that was more in line with my ministry, becoming a trial lawyer, for instance.
Sitting across from my “friends,” my heart in my mouth, my face red, my hands trembling, I knew what Pogo meant when he said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Having listened to other clergy who have faced this kind of aggressive assault, I’ve noticed that we respond to such hostility in one of two ways. We either fight or die.
My first urge is to try to correct misinformation or misperceptions. This is a strong and seductive yearning. “This isn’t true,” “You don’t understand,” or “Let me explain” want to spill out. But combatants usually don’t care about facts. Their anger and frustration are not based on data but on some dark pain that I, their target, cannot touch with facts.
Consequently, if we fight back, trying to convince or persuade, we simply make things worse, convincing our assailants we are entrenched in our stubbornness or self-delusion. “You see,” they say, “we tried to tell him, but he just wouldn’t listen.”
At one point in my conversation with these people, one of the participants said to me, “I wonder if you could list the families in this church who like you?” List them? I could provide a computer printout! But would it convince my angry friend? Not likely.
If we choose not to fight, though, we may elect to die. We may accept the whipping of angry folk, internalize the pain, and carry the burdened agenda of others. All too often we take the pain to another area of our life and hope to have it healed there, by burdening our family with our agony or letting the anger and resentment slip into sermons or withdrawing from our people.
In the end, the stress eats away at our bodies and our souls until one or the other is consumed, or we turn bitter.
I have found, however, that there is a solution beyond fighting or dying, a way that owes much to the work of Rabbi Edwin Friedman and his landmark book. Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue (Guilford Press, 1985). The process involves two steps: gathering information and telling the truth.
One of the first things I did after the encounter with my hostile friends was to look carefully at the history of my parish. I read through vestry minutes, gathered oral history, and wrote down the pattern of clergy-laity conflict in the congregation. I found, much to my surprise and relief, that there was a long history of personal confrontation with the clergy of the church, with significant numbers of people moving in and out of the church because of their conflicts with the rector. It helped to know that this wasn’t something new, and that the other clergy here had faced the same thing at regular intervals.
Second, I took the calculated risk of telling other people in the congregation the truth about what had happened to me. I didn’t try to make the story more palatable. I didn’t try to protect others or myself by concealing information or the identity of the participants. In telling the story, I did not try to convince or coerce but rather tried to get accurate information in response.
Friedman insists that secrets feed corporate illness, allowing the problem to continue. The phrase, “Everybody says …” is destructive because everybody can be somebody or nobody; in either case it can’t be confronted effectively unless brought out in the open.
Thus, when my wife and I would have members of the congregation to dinner, or when I would visit in members’ homes, I would say something like, “You know, a few weeks ago, Bob, Bill, John, and Harry came to see me, and here’s what they said. … Do you think their analysis is accurate? What do you think about their conclusions? I would really like to know how you feel about what they said.”
At the beginning of the process, I was nervous about sharing this incident with members of the church, afraid that my “friends” were close to being right, and even more afraid of admitting my failure to keep peace in the church. But this approach had four positive results.
First, it provided me with concrete data about the topics raised in the conflict. Second, it elicited support and encouragement from members of the congregation. Third, it allowed the people I asked to own the issues themselves; so I honored them and their views in the asking. Fourth, it gave me specifics for use in subsequent discussions with those who confronted me.
I then returned to the critical group and said honestly, “I listened to you carefully and took what you said seriously. Since we met, I have spoken to fifty-some people, sharing with them the things you said to me. I have found that most people here aren’t, in fact, concerned about those things you were worried about. I am sure that must come as a real relief to you.” With that, the attack of this group ended.
I’ll never choose to fight or die again.
Getting Sea Legs
When I was a boy, my father and I were invited to go deep-sea fishing on a friend’s boat. As the boat pitched and rolled through the waves, I was thrown back and forth across the deck until my father stood next to me and showed me how to plant my feet, bend my legs, and shift my weight from side to side so the waves wouldn’t throw me around.
We all face waves in parish ministry, especially once the novelty of our new pastorate wears off or the congregation’s tolerance of our newness or insufficiency lessens. The waves may be seasonal like the high pitch of Christmas or the low basin of summer worship. They may be political as a board faces financial crisis or months of ordinary inactivity. A series of pastoral crises drain us of energy or periods of counseling calm may threaten to take the edge off our skills.
“I can’t stand Christmas,” an ordained friend once complained. “Every year I go nonstop from Thanksgiving through Christmas, and by the time Christmas Eve services arrive, I feel drained and have nothing to say.”
“I haven’t spoken to my wife in a month,” another complained. “We’ve been planning for our capital campaign, and the details have been overwhelming. When I do get home, which isn’t often enough, I can’t begin to explain it all, so I don’t say anything. I turn on the television set just to give me an excuse not to talk.”
I was hit by a particularly large wave myself not long ago: our Parish House, the education wing of our church, burned down. In the weeks and months that followed, I was overwhelmed by the details that were necessary to settle insurance, assess damage, reschedule space and programs, plan a new building, and hire a contractor. Consequently, I ignored my family and my own needs for recreation and growth—knocked over again.
The development of spiritual sea legs that enable us to ride out the waves of ministry depend on a few things.
First, we must recognize that waves are part of the seascape. “When are the problems going to end?” an ordained friend recently complained to me. “I never seem to get to the place where the church is stable or quiet. It’s just one problem after another. I’ve got money problems at church and at home. I don’t have enough time for my children or my wife, let alone myself. I’ve been hanging on, waiting for a break, but I don’t think one is coming.”
My friend viewed problems as an extraordinary part of the scenario. My own experience is that parish ministry is a daily exercise of problem solving on a number of different levels, from the absurd to the vital. In fact, recently in re-reading the Gospel of Mark, I noticed that Jesus is in trouble throughout the account. An accurate view of what we do helps us see that waves will just keep coming, so we better adapt.
Developing sea legs, however, also means having our feet planted in at least two different spots. The individual planted in only one place is bound to lose balance in even the calmest water.
I suspect that many of us find that we are planted in the place where we work and the place where we live. While there is always some crossover of interest in a clergy home, our health will depend largely on our ability to keep those two places separate from one another, so that home and office are distinct. If office and home is each oriented toward work, one cannot provide respite when the other throws us off balance.
But we can increase our balance by putting down other legs as well—by continuing our education, or meeting with a group of colleagues, or practicing an avocation. One friend, an active volunteer in an AIDS center, finds his balance in a trout stream in the Catskill Mountains. I find my balance through the lens of a camera.
But sea legs don’t help unless I know when to shift my weight. For instance, I’ve learned to shift my weight to my family before Easter season, investing my time in my wife and children, seeking the presence of the risen Lord in my home. Then, when the demands of the Easter season come, I am prepared to give myself to the church.
Managing Malaise
A few years ago, I was caught in discouragement. I felt I was getting nowhere with my congregation. We had hit a slump together, and I didn’t see hope for much progress. Worse, I began to feel my skills were underused and that my job had become lifeless.
A telephone call from the search committee of a large congregation in northern California sparked my interest. The parish self-study arrived in the mail, and it seemed at last that a congregation that wanted my kind of ministry had come knocking at my door. My wife and I threw ourselves into prayer and study about the possibility of this call. When I was asked to come to California for a week of interviews and orientation, we were galvanized with excitement. We had our eyes firmly fixed on the prize ahead and arranged to take some vacation time to accept the interview.
Unfortunately, I ignored the congregation where I had been called to serve. By the time the search committee voted for their choice, we had invested three months of anticipation and excitement into the new job. We were convinced our future was in this new congregation. The congregation wasn’t. The committee, in a close vote, called someone else. Our excitement and hopes were dashed, our spirits as low as they could be, and we had so emotionally disengaged from our home that returning was a bitter disappointment.
In the meantime, someone from our church got wind we were interviewing elsewhere, despite our earnest attempts to keep it quiet. News of our planned departure spread through the congregation like wildfire, and within a matter of days, we were faced by an angry parish. People had no difficulty telling us how they felt, and one person in particular bluntly stated the feelings of many: “You’ve spent all this time telling us how we were a family in Christ, and then you do something like this behind our backs. It’s like having one of your parents file for divorce without telling you they were unhappy.”
When I tried to explain the emotional state that led me to accept the interview, he said, “We all felt like we were in a rut, but you didn’t see any of us running off to a different church. We expected that you would stick it out with us.”
Naturally, there are plenty of times when we can legitimately look for another church. The question here is not how we manage our careers, but rather how we manage our malaise. In looking back on that time, I see that I might have found a way to share my feelings about our common life. I could have looked to the congregation for energy, engaging them to help instead of going outside my own community of faith. I’ve also discovered that talking about a contemplated move with church leadership is not always suicidal.
My predecessor in one church talked openly about his uncertainty about staying before he finally moved a year later. While the members of the church found his struggle unsettling and painful, they also valued his openness and his willingness to expose himself to criticism. His honesty made the decision, when it finally came, a conclusion to a congregational time of waiting and prayer, whether or not that decision was welcomed.
When my own vision is clouded, I’ve learned to seek clarity from the people I serve, and to present myself to them for their ministration instead of drawing apart. This is a difficult way to respond to malaise, for both congregation and pastor, and it must be handled with great tact. But it can also be a valuable service to all.
Waiting Together
Inevitably, pastors face personal crises—our marriage becomes strained, finances burden us, our children’s behavior or poor health trouble us. When that happens, how do we respond? In particular, how much do we tell the congregation?
On the one hand, we are called to be authentic with our people. We don’t want to put on an act, as if the Christian life for us is victory unto victory. On the other hand, pastoral crises, when they become known, can occupy the life and mind of a congregation to an extraordinary degree, detracting people from the work of the church and devotion to our Lord.
Over the years I have asked ordained friends how they handle such moments. “I put on my smiling face as I go out the door,” said one, “and take it off again when I come home. What happens in my house is none of their business.”
Another friend said, “How can I involve them in my problems? As soon as I step out of my role, it’s very difficult to get back in it again. I may share some information with them, but I can’t disrupt the basic nature of our relationship.”
Still another found it difficult to handle the response of individuals with whom he shared such crises. “I remember trying to impress on one man the difficulty I was having living within the restrictions of my salary. He pulled out a checkbook and wrote me a check for one hundred dollars. I felt cheap and small. I beat myself all the way home for trying to share a problem with him.”
I became acutely aware of this tension when my third daughter was born seven weeks premature. At the time, her doctors were not sure about her chances for complete health. It was the greatest crisis my wife and I had faced.
In the few days between her birth and Sunday services, we struggled with how to present our situation to the congregation. We needed to have their prayers and would welcome their care, but we also needed some space and were afraid my wife would be bombarded with visitors and the refrigerator stuffed with unwanted tuna casseroles. We knew they would be anxious to help, but we were afraid the help would be more than we could stand. We shared the problem with the hospital chaplain, who happened to be a good friend.
“Tell them what has happened,” he said. “Then tell them what you need. Tell them how to help, and tell them what to do. But most of all, tell them to wait with you.”
Dutch theologian Henri Nouwen has written beautifully about the process of waiting, drawing our attention to the story of Elizabeth and Mary. As soon as Mary knew that she and Elizabeth had both conceived, she went to her cousin to wait for God’s story to unfold.
That Sunday, I asked our friends to wait with us. In the weeks ahead, I shared our daughter’s progress with them, not as news to which they were entitled, but as events that we waited for together in patience and prayer. Thankfully, the day arrived when I could assure them that our wait was at an end and that Joy, our daughter, had regained full health. Our ordeal had become not a distraction, but a part of their journey in faith.
If the honeymoon is a time when pastor and congregation get to know one another, after the honeymoon is a time when pastor and congregation figure out how to live together. That means learning to handle—with honesty, patience, and understanding—the many and inevitable ups and downs of parish life.
Copyright © 1991 by Christianity Today
