DISCLAIMER
If you’re not a church staff member, there’s a chance this post will piss you off. Some a little, others a lot. But I’m not trying to stir people up or drive more traffic to this blog. In fact I’m posting it here because this site has pretty much been dormant for the last several months. If there was a way I could get this information out to everyone that’s asked for it without using my personal blog I would, because I don’t really need the hassle of the email traffic this will generate.
Please don’t take this post personally because I really think what I’m going to write will be helpful and positive in the long run. Remember this as you read, I love the local church and want to see every one of them healthy and moving forward. BUT too many local churches are jacked up and I believe this is one of the reasons why. So read on at your own risk.
I could never understand why some church people would get so pissed when I was a part of changing something in a church. I don’t mean they were just a little upset; they came at others and me so vehemently and with so much passion that it was scary at times. I mean they wanted to know who was responsible for the change and when that person or persons was going to be shown the door.
When I would try to explain why were doing whatever it was we were doing, they wouldn’t listen to a logical explanation. Even after the change was made and it proved to positive, they were still mad about the change. No matter what I said nothing mattered. They wanted their thing to stay the way it had always been.
The problem was I’ve generally always enjoyed a good fight and have a short temper. I’m also pretty hard to talk out of something once I’ve made up mind. Not exactly the greatest combination in the world.
But I’m not kidding, I would sit for hours and try to figure out why this person or group of people where being so irrational. I’ll have to admit that a lot of times I decided they were just spiritually or emotionally immature and therefore I had the right to just bulldoze my way past them and their objections. Now, this WAS true is some cases, but last night I had an epiphany that explained the behavior of some of the people who didn’t fit in this category.
As were discussing something in our men’s life group, one of the guys started talking about addicts and he said, “addicts are avoiding reality”. The light bulb went off, bells starting clanging, and it finally dawned on me that some church people are addicted to church. And like any addict they were using church to escape their reality. They want to be there every time the door is open because it’s how they get a “fix”. If you’re a church staff member, how many times have you heard someone say “I just love coming to church because I can escape for an hour” or “I feel so safe when I come to church”? THAT’S why some people reacted so passionately when I did something that made them worry about having access to come get their “fix”. I was messing with their addiction and that’s a dangerous situation to be in.
Obviously this kind of thinking is jacked up on multiple levels, but that’s not what struck me. What struck me was I was dealing with these folks the wrong way. I was trying to explain the logic of the change, when I should have been coming at the issue from the other end by helping them break their addiction. Helping them learn to connect with God outside of a geographical location or emotional experience. I should have been helping them see their addiction for what it was. It only made matters worse when I bulldozed them. That only made it seem that is was going to be harder for them to get their “fix”, which in turn frightened them even more and that made them even more determined.
I’m sure this is not an earth shattering revelation to some, but it sure rocked my world.
