My church is going through a crisis after the removal of the senior pastor. The way it was done, the reaction, the potential faction groups that develop, the soft voices in the halls - all of it is deeply troubling to me as a future pastor. Where does the Holy Spirit go in such situations? I don’t have an answer yet.
All this is leading to a church meeting in a week where we will vote (we are a “free”, associated church) on the situation - a confidence vote on the Council, basically. Somehow, during all this, I have managed to ingratiate myself in the lower levels of this conflict. I have talked to people who affirm the decision to remove the pastor, which came as a shock to most everyone in the congregation; people on the Council, all of whom have a tight story and believe they acted in good faith; people in the group who are opposing the Council, who feel the same and some believe they are rescuing the church. I also met with the former senior pastor, who feels his life as a pastor is probably over now.
Having culled all the so-called facts - it is really questionable at this point what constitutes ‘fact’ or ‘truth’ in a situation like this - I have concluded that we have acted wrongly toward our former pastor, which is not necessarily a vote against the Council. One of the comments to my previous story, Church Train Wreck, said that “many people today really do not understand what it REALLY means to be a Christian, and church is often little more than a social club.” I couldn’t agree more. It begs a question, though, and that is “What is the Christian thing to do in a situation like this?”
I don’t know what it is now as we gear up for a church fight the week before Christmas, but I have an idea of what we should have done before we ever got to this point. My church is pretty darn big - about 2000 members - and they have a sort of corporate mentality when dealing with the outside world. A clear, polished front is presented and any internal conflict is well concealed by staff and committee alike. I think this is where the train left the tracks in the first place.
What would have happened if we had followed a Matthew 18 model (person-to-person; person and mediator to person; person, mediator, person to leadership; and finally to the church), or a 2 Corinthians 5 model (ministry of reconciliation)? What if, rather than trying to hide the internal conflicts (there was no impropriety on the part of the senior pastor), we brought them into the light (1 John 1)? What if the entire ministry staff and committee members got up in front of the church, repented of their inability and failure to get along, and asked for help? What if our concern at all levels were for a ministry of grace? What if someone asked the Jesus question rather than the corporate question? Maybe they did, but from out here, it doesn’t look like it.
I don’t have illusions that all conflict would have been avoided, but hidden conflict would have been avoided. The failures, concerns and gifts of the congregation could have been shared by all. A visitor walking into something like that would be at once terrified and intrigued because it would be wholly authentic and unusual. I wonder if such an attitude on my part is the result of mere fantasy and academia as I enter my last semester of seminary in a couple months or if it is founded on a potential reality that could exist outside the second coming.
Peace to all.
Seth
Dear Seth,
I’m a pastor of 20 years. 18 of them in one place. I want to suggest that this situation brings up another important question. Can any organization of 2000 deal with a crisis in the Biblical ways you describe? Those methods assume real community, meaning everyone in the community knows each other. Once you get too big for that, there are no New Testament models for conflict that are easily applicable.
And even if there were, there are so many people in a church that size. If 5% of them refuse to follow a Biblical model (assuming you could even agree on it), then they can cause a train wreck, so to speak. And the truth is, in reality, only 5% of a church that size even know what a Biblical model is.
gordon123
December 17th, 2007
Hi Gordon,
Thank you. I couldn’t agree with you more, which is why, as I get closer to the end of seminary, the small church or house church seems so much more likely to engender true community, God willing. In the early days of Congregationalism (I am one of those), when a church got too big for the pastor to know everyone in the church - a decision based completely on the capability of the pastor - the church split. I think the Baptists did a similar thing, but you would know more about that than I. To that end, I wonder if we are way too big to be congregational in our polity. So to answer your question, no I don’t think we can deal with it in Biblical ways for exactly the reasons you say. The problem of course is that everyone believes they can and are, but it just keeps getting worse. Does it work at your church in Texas, which I know is a nice size for communal sensibilities in the Christian sense?
Peace!
Seth
sdjones
December 17th, 2007