A long time ago I was voted deacon chairman, which in that church meant people got to call you and complain about the pastor. Which is why they voted for me – they didn’t want to take the calls. One time I got a call from a guy wanting know why he could never get hold of the pastor; “Why isn’t he in his office like we pay him to be?”
Umm, maybe it’s because he’s visiting people at home and in the hospital like you said he should do last time you called!
It’s not hard to make a bad attitude go viral. The trick is to make the bad attitude look like it’s actually good, and to have a group of people willing to go along. It can work in a family, or any organization, or in a church. Ray Ortlund tells how:
How to wreck your church in three weeks:
Week One: Walk into church today and think about how long you’ve been a member, how much you’ve sacrificed, how under-appreciated you are. Take note of every way you’re dissatisfied with your church now. Take note of every person who displeases you.
Meet for coffee this week with another member and “share your heart.” Discuss how your church is changing, how you are being left out. Ask your friend who else in the church has “concerns.” Agree together that you must “pray about it.”
Week Two: Send an email to a few other “concerned” members. Inform them that a groundswell of grievance is surfacing in your church. Problems have gone unaddressed for too long. Ask them to keep the matter to themselves “for the sake of the body.”
As complaints come in, form them into a petition to demand an accounting from the leaders of the church. Circulate the petition quietly. Gathering support will be easy. Even happy members can be used if you appeal to their sense of fairness – that your side deserves a hearing. Be sure to proceed in a way that conforms to your church constitution, so that your petition is procedurally correct.
Week Three: When the growing moral fervor, ill-defined but powerful, reaches critical mass, confront the elders with your demands. Inform them of all the woundedness in the church, which leaves you with no choice but to put your petition forward. Inform them that, for the sake of reconciliation, the concerns of the body must be satisfied.
Whatever happens from this point on, you have won. You have changed the subject in your church from gospel advance to your own grievances. To some degree, you will get your way. Your church will need three or four years for recovery. But at any future time, you can do it all again. It only takes three weeks.
Just one question. Even if you are being wronged, “Why not rather suffer wrong?” (1 Corinthians 6:7).
(Z credits Ray, but as of now it’s not on Ray’s blog).
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