When Christians Refuse to Follow Christ

"...if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and while there you remember that your brother has something [such as a grievance or legitimate complaint] against you, leave your offering there at the altar and go. First make peace with your brother, and then come and present your offering." - Jesus Christ

While this seems to be a fairly unambiguous instruction - which comes straight from the lips of the One christians profess to follow - I find it mind-boggling how often the exact opposite happens in christian circles. I'm particularly appalled by how many 'leaders' there are who refuse to engage with their brothers and sisters; who seem to have no interest in even listening to their 'siblings', let alone  making peace with them; and who continue to silence and shun those who voice their legitimate grievances.

I know there must be leaders out there who do deal with disagreement and discord - I have heard stories that they exist - but like unicorns and faeries, I have yet to encounter any of them myself. In fact, in the aftermath of the bullying and abuse I experienced at my ex-church, I asked a variety of people to sit down and talk things through, and yet none of the men who saw themselves as 'leaders' would do so.

And the couple at the centre of the power play consistently declined to meet with me unless it was with their pet "counsellor". (And as he had already told me that the church would collapse if this couple left it, I had my suspicions regarding his impartiality.) Three years later, when this couple attempted to take me to court, I offered professional mediation as an alternative way of dealing with things, but still they refused.

For some time, I thought that this behaviour was an aberration - that most christians took seriously Jesus' call to "leave your gift in front of the altar" and "go and be reconciled" with your brother or sister. Maybe there was just something in the water of this little church that led to such craven behaviour.

But then it happened in my "christian" workplace, too. As the office manager, I was dealing with a case of bullying amongst the staff when my boss suddenly stepped in and sidelined me, protecting the bully. Despite the testimony of several witnesses, this man decided to believe the lies of the bully and made several accusations against me based upon them. When I showed him proof that they were not true, he simply refused to acknowledge the evidence, and then ignored my repeated requests for a hearing on the matter.

Surely that was an unlucky co-incidence? Lightning might have struck twice in the same place, but...

...then, at the end of last year, it happened again! An incident at my son's 'christian' school exposed a situation which seriously disturbed both my husband and I. It led us to contact the principal whose behaviour and attitude we had found highly inappropriate. After it became clear that our email communication was not going to be fruitful, I offered to meet face-to-face in order to attempt some resolution of the matter. Apparently he appreciated the offer... but he was quite certain he understood us and therefore had no interest in pursuing my offer. (Of course, knowing what someone thinks and understanding why they do so, are worlds apart. But that's another story.) Once again it was a case of thanks, but no thanks.

Now, never let it be said that I don't profit by my experience! And I had reached the point where I'd actually come to expect this reaction, so I wasn't in the least bit surprised by it. And as experience has also taught me there's no point in pushing the issue, I didn't waste my breath any further. (I'm a great believer in letting people make their own choices in life.)

But that doesn't mean I think it's ok, or that I can respect it. And it sure doesn't mean I can reconcile it with those words of Jesus, who we each say we are following.

More importantly, what it does mean is that each time it happens, the credibility of christianity takes another blow, and it's most often from those who speak the loudest about their religion - and who lament the longest about how 'the world' won't take them seriously. But when people see us refuse to work through our disagreements, or deal with our discord, then I'd say they are wise to dismiss us. Until we can demonstrate we are not afraid to work through disputes, or contend for peace in the midst of conflict, we actually have nothing to offer. And I think it's about time we were honest with ourselves about that fact.

Insanity In The Church

My ex-husband's way of dealing with relationship breakdown was just to walk away and pretend it had never happened.

Despite the many times I asked him to meet with me and deal with the reality of what had happened between us, he refused. He wanted to walk away and get on with the fun he was having (i.e. an affair) If he didn't have to face reality, he could convince himself that he'd done nothing wrong and so there was nothing to deal with. If I was hurt, that was my problem.

In my book, that was the behaviour of a coward.

The reality is that people who don't deal with their own crap when relationships fail, simply carry that stuff straight into their next relationship and do further damage there. They may convince themselves that they just need to leave it all behind and move on, but when it's not owned and dealt with, more people end up being hurt.

The truth of this assertion has been amply demonstrated by my ex-husband. The relationship he left me for didn't last - and he is currently married to yet another woman. I don't know how many affairs and other liaisons he's had in that time, but I do know that being unattached was never his style - he always went from one relationship to another, apparently without even a moment of self-awareness, much less self-refletion.

He's not yet turned 50 and he's been through at least 3 'marriage' relationships - with children involved in at least two of them.

Think about that for a moment - think of the devastation and heartbreak behind those simple statistics.

Now think about this. My ex-church behaved in exactly the same way.

The refusal to meet together and work through our issues. The attitude that any hurt I felt was my problem, not theirs. The determination to move on and pretend nothing really happened.

Nothing was ever dealt with. No admission of any misconduct, no ownership of any wrongdoing, no willingness to face the reality. Just bury the bodies and move on.

And, to my absolute disbelief, they've just 'called' a new pastor. Despite having had 3 major leadership crises in less than 20 years of existence, this church is simply moving on to the next leader without ever dealing with the crap that has wrought such devastation in the past. (That's 3 different leadership teams and 3 disasters - a 100% failure record!) Apparently, this time it will somehow be different... apparently... but for no obviously discernible reason...

I am deeply disturbed when I think of what this new 'pastor' and his young family might have to go through. But those who run the church refuse to see or hear.

They wouldn't give credence to anything I might say - any more than they listened to warnings given the last time round! (Even though the guy who spoke up last time was proved right, that reality is completely ignored!)

So all I can do is express my horror and disbelief at their wilful 'insanity' here. And pray to God that something changes... somehow...

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BTW, there is one thing that was different between my ex-husband's behaviour and my ex-church's. He'd turned his back on God and was simply intent on his own selfish desires. The church behaved this way and justified it in the name of God!

Father Forgive Them...

I was angry last night!

The big, green, Incredible Hulk type of anger.

This morning it's the quietly sickened and disgusted type.

Why?

Because friends of mine are hurting badly - torn to pieces by religion.

Because they are just one more statistic - victims of an abusive institution erroneously called 'church'.

Because religious leaders seem to think it's actually ok to throw their brothers and sisters under the bus.

Because they don't seem to care about the damage they inflict as long as they stay in power.

Because they use their position to denounce family members, in an attempt to control the narrative.

Because they can't seem to understand that the words of judgement they preach from their pulpits apply equally to themselves.

Because they ignore the words of Jesus and lord it over their brothers and sisters.

Because members of 'the body' seem to think this is normal and so they don't stand up and shout, "NO! STOP! ENOUGH!"

iz quotes

And because it's Just. Plain. Wrong!

Seeing the Elephant

The first time I read The Lord of The Rings I must have been about 12 years old. I adored it! Absolutely fell in love with it!

Since then, I've kept coming back to re-read it every few years. And each time I do something new leaps out at me and captures my imagination. Each time I approach this well-loved piece of literature, I find something new to delight my soul.

It's not that the story has changed, but that I have. I've changed. I've grown. And my experience of life has increased with the passing years.

The things which spoke most deeply to me as a young teenager were different from the things that moved me as a newly-wed. What caught my attention when I was a first-time mum was different from what engaged me after my husband walked out. My most recent excursion into its wonder, happily married and with 3 fantastic sons, was different again.

Over the years I came to realise an important truth: what we get out of a book depends greatly upon what we have to bring to it.

But this truth has far greater implications than our enjoyment of a good (or even great!) book. It stays true in all aspects of our life. What we take away from an experience depends greatly on what we have brought to it.

This reality came to mind recently when I was involved in an online 'discussion' over a particular post. As is often the case, there'd been a fair few comments posted of the "I'm right, you're wrong" variety.

I was getting a bit riled by one chap in particular, so I stopped to get some perspective and re-assess my motives for engaging.

And it occurred to me that we were all behaving like the blind men with the elephant. Each of us was reading the author's work according to our own particular bias and understanding. We had each approached the article bearing our own life experience - holding tightly to the things that were important to us.

We'd all read the same words... and yet what we read differed greatly depending on what we'd brought to them. We were feeling different parts of the elephant and declaring our own piece to be the only correct view.

It's probably a good thing to keep in mind. We all have the tendency to think that our own experience or understanding is universal. Many times it's simply out of ignorance - I don't know what I don't know.

But when we fail to stop and consider the possibility that someone else just might be seeing something we can't, we not only invalidate the other person's reality, but we rob ourselves of the opportunity to enlarge our own awareness.

"Church Leadership can be Brutal"

Source

A short time after I'd been hounded from the 'church', someone apologised to me because they felt they had not been supportive enough of me while I was in leadership. This person explained that they had had experience of being in leadership in that context and said to me, "I know that church leadership can be brutal."

At the time, I accepted the apology at face value and moved on.

But in recent months, those words have been haunting me.

And in light of the latest revelations regarding a certain business franchise church where the tally of leaders who have been "thrown under the bus" is rapidly mounting, I've become increasingly perturbed by those words.

The person who uttered them to me meant well. They were trying, in their own way, to offer comfort and at the time I received the words in that vein. But I've been thinking about what those words really mean.

That the people of God, to whom Christ gave the commandment to love one another, and who should be identified by that love (John 13:34-35) are, instead, known for their brutality toward one another.

And we see this as normal… inevitable… acceptable.

What, in the name of God, is wrong with us!?

Silence Is Not Golden - It's My Time To Speak

By A Former Leader

I will no longer be silent!

I feel this today as clearly as I felt that we were to leave our CLB.

For the past year (except for a letter to two friends the first week we left) we have not initiated any relationships other than the ones who sought us out and those whom had already left the church.. We have worked hard sometimes to keep those – especially in the beginning – but we have not gone to our former friends to see if they wanted to have any sort of relationship with us.

But somewhere in the past few weeks I have decided something. I’M NOT WRONG!!

Now, I may not be entirely right. In fact I can say quite emphatically that I am certain that I am not entirely right on how I see facts from our past or our present situation. Really, that does not bother me anymore. I don’t haveto be completely right. What a freedom that is!!

Husband has always said that when I finally decide that I have done nothing wrong, I will be dangerous. He was right because what has kept me quiet all this time is that I felt that somehow, I was missing something. Somehow, I was reading the situation at our CLB wrong. Somehow, I would find out that really they were not as deceived as I thought they were. Somehow, I deserved to have relationships cut off. Somehow, I had done something really wrong. Somehow, what I had done necessitated my not being able to have relationships with these people.

I felt like I needed to just disappear from their lives so that they could go on unhindered in the church life that they have. If I saw them, I needed to just tell them that I loved them and “be nice to them.” I felt that I should not be the one to address the proverbial elephant that was standing in the corner of our conversation.

Then Daughter taught me a lesson the other day. She ran into some of our leaders unexpectedly. They waved and smiled. She approached them and without a lot of anger told them that it was not appropriate with what they have done to simply smile and wave at her. She stood her ground. She pointed out the elephant between them and her. She told them that she was not going to play the games and then turned and left.

Know what? In addressing the real issue that is between her and them, she felt free for the first time since she left. Fear rolled off her. She is a new person today. She is no longer slinking around. She is no longer afraid. She found freedom! I was so proud of her. To our knowledge, no one has had the guts to do what she did. Keep reading here.

Magic Words Syndrome

I recently re-read a couple of the emails (or nasty-grams, as I call them) I received from one of the board members of my old church. It was quite interesting to engage with them now, without the incredible pain of betrayal and judgement I felt at the time they were first sent. It feels like they are full of justification on his part and judgement against me. None of the issues I have raised were ever addressed, I just received a continual barrage of words telling me how much I was the one in the wrong.

Apparently I was living in the past, causing division, gossiping to others, slandering the leadership, using cruel words and accusations, refusing to walk in the power of reconciliation and anyway, I "gave as good as I got". The ones who'd abused me were walking in their freedom and I was still (by my own choice) walking in bondage.

The very last email correspondence was from last year, when I had tried a last-ditch effort to find a way of bringing about reconciliation between us. The letter started by telling me how little it had cost me to meet with 'D' (even though he had nominated a time exactly when he knew I needed to be collecting my children from school), but how much incredible trouble he had gone to.

What it articulated to me was how important he was with all his important ministry and everything, and how unimportant I was because I'm just a trouble maker, and how grateful I should be that he bothered to actually meet with me at all. He assured me that he was willing to pay such an immense cost because he thought 'reconciliation' would be the outcome. The trouble was that by reconciliation, I can only assume he meant I'd finally shut up and stop making trouble for him.

It seems I was in grave error right from the start because my "welcome [of him] was icy cold" and my husband's was "only slightly warmer". Seriously! What did he expect? I felt completely unsafe with this man and it was only my desperate belief that there had to be a better way than we'd found so far that propelled me into meeting with him at all. I'd felt sick to the pit of my stomach at the thought of that meeting because of all I'd suffered at his hands. He'd already made it quite clear that elder J was his golden boy, and that the only part I had to play was in submitting to J's "godly leadership" (although I would have described it more in terms of abusive usurper-ship, but then I'm the evil one of the piece). When I'd objected to the abuse I'd experienced, he'd made it crystal clear by his nasty-grams that the blame was mine alone.

This was also the man who had preached for 3 weeks in a row(!) warning the church against me and whose judgement against me had caused my brother and his family to sever all contact with me. I did explain this to him, but he rejected any responsibility in this matter.

In revisiting his written words, two things became painfully clear.

The first one was the evidence of what I've come to call 'magic words syndrome'. The way it works is that in dealing with an issue, you listen to the one you are 'counselling', agree that they believe in what they say they are struggling with, get them to say some magic words, and hey presto, everything's all ok.

The trouble with this approach is that it doesn't actually deal with any of the very real, existing problems. It doesn't deal with the emotional damage that has been inflicted, neither does it address the relational issues that have caused so much devastation. You repeat some formula words as if they have some sort of magic power, say forgiveness has happened and then equate that forgiveness with actual reconciliation.

This leaves those who have devastated you by their behaviour completely free to continue their ill treatment of you, because everything's been dealt with, and it places the onus on you to smile and just keep accepting the abuse. And woe betide you if you find yourself still wanting to deal with things, because that just proves that you are bitter and unforgiving; unable to move on (like everyone else has!) and rejecting the reconciliation that's been decreed to have happened - as if reconciliation can ever be a unilateral event imposed on another!!!

The second point, I will address in my next post, Silencing is Abuse.

A Former Leader's Journey: The Story of a Flock - A Parable

Click here to read the original post: The Story of a Flock - A Parable

I first read this blog post about a year ago and I remember feeling like someone actually understood and had put so much of my experience into words. I hope it brings you the encouragement it brought me.

My Story - Part 4 - I Submit & 'Resign'

In the weeks following that meeting with the board, there were many communications (mostly via email) which just deepened the wounding. As dramatic as it might sound, I felt like I was fighting for my very life. I begged for someone to listen to me, to hear what had been going on and help me find a way out of my pain. By this time, elder M had given up hope and resigned his membership. I desperately wanted to believe there was a better way to go, that people who claimed to follow Christ should be able to work this out together, that we didn’t have to stay trapped in an endless repetition of history!

I really tried to do what I was told – to just “forgive and move on”. I put my trust in these people and tried to accept that it was somehow my fault, that there was something wrong with me. But it was tearing me apart. I was screaming out that I had been bullied and abused by J and yet I was being told that I should submit to his “godly authority”. And I just couldn’t do it! So I endured one last bullying session where board member L delivered the unanimous ‘advice’ of the board to either submit or “consider my position”. That night I resigned.

But, of course, that didn’t actually deal with any of the problems. Apparently, I was supposed to just smile and pretend nothing was wrong but I couldn’t ignore the elephant in the room (especially when it was emitting such a foul stench!). Eventually, I wrote to the elders to express my distress at being told, effectively, to sit down and shut up. Their response was to “relieve” me from the preaching roster and from my position as prophetic ministry lead. I really don’t think they could see the irony in that – I objected to being silenced, and they responded by silencing me further!

And so, we limped to church for a few more months, desperately clinging to the hope that someone, somehow would be able to ‘do something’ about the whole sorry mess. During that time, I was treated like a pariah. My own brother disowned me, his wife screamed at me in the school car park when I tried to talk to her, Board member D felt ‘led by God’ to preach for 3 weeks running about ‘Jezebels and False Prophets’, my personal conversations at church were monitored and I had all sorts of false accusations flung at me (apparently I was “murmuring against God’s anointed”). During this time, there were two new elders appointed who both just happened to be close friends with elder R, but the final straw for us was when the elders released a document re-writing history and dismissing any concerns that we had tried to raise. It was a bureaucratic masterpiece, but a relationship killer.

And so we left.

My Story - Part 2 - Alarm Bells Start to Ring

As we engaged in the journey forward, there was a strong acknowledgement of our own brokenness and our total reliance on God - which was why we obeyed when we believed God was telling us not to call another pastor (“do not to ask for a king!”).

To ensure we had ‘back-up’ in case of any future unresolvable conflict in the church, we established a board of reference. This consisted of four men from various places around the country with whom we would cultivate relationship and to whom both the leadership and the body could turn for advice and ‘oversight’. One of these men had been an associate pastor at our old church (board member D).

For the most part over the next few years things seemed to go well, and we felt God was blessing our efforts to hear him and be obedient. There was a spirit of goodwill amongst the leadership, and even one difficult situation, which resulted in one of the elders being replaced, seemed to have been negotiated reasonably enough. (In hindsight, I see that we had put ‘principle’ before relationship in that incident, but at the time, we thought we were doing really rather well.)

Late in 2011 there was an incident where elder J found himself in fairly sharp disagreement with the rest of us over one particular issue. This was seemingly resolved with what appeared to be a clear directive from God. Unfortunately, what we didn’t know was that elder J had been deeply wounded by the incident and he carried his hurt silently for several weeks. Elder J and his wife were close friends with my husband and I, so it soon became apparent to me that things were not as ok.

In January, I raised the issue with elder J and urged him to share his hurt with his fellow elders. There was great resistance to my suggestion and I was informed that board member M had cautioned him to be careful with both what he shared, as well the timing of that sharing.

This set off alarm bells for me… but I trusted these people and believed they only wanted the best for us, so I tried to bury the sense of rejection and pain that was growing inside me. (Dissonance, anyone?)

In my saner moments, I could see an increasing tendency for J (and his wife who was at every elders meeting) to treat me as an inferior. We were a team of equals, yet if I made a decision on my own, I had to have a meeting to explain and justify myself to him. If he thought we should make a particular decision, it wouldn’t matter what arguments I put forward - I would be beaten into submission with the ongoing repetitious comeback of, “I strongly believe…” In the midst of this, my physical and emotional health was deteriorating rapidly.

My Story - Part 1 - A New Hope!

In late 2005, after many years attendance, my husband and I left the church where we had met and been married. We left with sadness because, although we had received from this church much which was good and life-giving, we had come to realise there was no longer a place for us there. (The senior pastor, himself, had declared this to be the case during one of his Sunday morning sermons!)  We knew we were not alone - there had been a steady exodus from this church for some time. The ‘my way or the highway’ approach to church leadership does tend to create casualties.

After some months of searching for a new ‘home’, we started attending a small, family-oriented, independent church, which had originally been established by people from our previous congregation. About six months later, another family from our old church joined us after asking us where we were attending. The friendship between us deepened and the two families became close, spending much of our time together. Things were looking up!

Some years prior to our arrival, this church had experienced an unpleasant episode of conflict involving the pastor, elders and congregants, which had resulted in the pastor and some of the members leaving under rather bitter circumstances. Undaunted by this discovery, we decided to stay and commit to this church. Incredibly, some few months later, tensions arose between the leadership team and the congregation, which resulted in the entire leadership team (pastor and elders) leaving the church!

Can you begin to imagine our distress!?

However we decided to remain, determined to be a blessing to the church. A few months later I accepted a place on the eldership team. Our good friend from our old church also became a part of this team (let’s call him elder J). We were a team of four, three more recent members and one (elder R) who had been a part of the church since its inception.