A Tale of Two Leaders

Every church has a Dave. In the church my friend Shane pastors, Dave was in his early 60s, was a member of the church for decades and thought he knew everything about everything. Dave was overly involved in any church business. Hearing the need for more consistent stewardship, Dave took it upon himself to corner new members, providing a little muscle to begin or increase their giving. Confidently sure he could fix the broken entryway door, he only made it worse, locking everyone out of church on a Sunday morning. The problem wasn't that Dave thought he was always right and always needed. The problem was that Dave told everyone so, explaining to parents of small children why they were parenting their kids wrong, or announcing all the reasons why the car you bought was stupid, or asserting why worship needed to happen in a certain way. Dave was exhausting. As my friend Shane explained, when you saw Dave, you walked in the other direction.

On the other end of the continuum was Jodi; every church has or wishes for a Jodi. Jodi was in her early thirties, a petite redhead, bubbly and constantly upbeat. She had come to the church right out of college by happenstance. She had just taken a new ("first real," as she said) job. The church was in her neighborhood, and feeling lonely one Sunday, and being a real people-person, she showed up. Since then Jodi had been a fixture. In no overstatement, the church simply couldn't function without her; her energy was infectious, giving new life to this aging congregation. In generosity she made sure things happened, making all the arrangements for the annual outdoor service at the beach and single-handedly hosting a jazz cocktail party to fund the confirmation retreat.

If Dave was the great know-it-all annoyance of the church, Jodi was its young saint, quietly and competently leading. Jodi literally kept the church going as they went through the 14-month transition from the previous pastor to my friend Shane. Everyone loved Jodi for her kind, upbeat, and selfless leadership.

It was then no surprise to anyone that both Dave and Jodi were elected to the church council. Though in two radically different ways, they were both leaders. Even though most people couldn't stand Dave, truth be told, it didn't matter. The church needs people willing to do things, and Dave was more than willing to do so.

Coming face-to-face

As the council met for its annual retreat, Shane decided to start with an exercise that was radical in its simplicity. He knew that in his church, issues so easily became more important than people, so he began by setting chairs facing each other no more than three feet apart. He then passed out notepads and pencils. As the room got heavy with confusion Shane invited the council members to sit facing another person, with just notepad and sharp pencil in hand. They were instructed to say nothing. One half of the pair was to look at the other person, just to see, for a whole minute, and then for two more minutes to sketch the other person's face. The discomfort was palpable; to cope, giggling and funny faces began the process, and a handful of council members kept protesting that they had no artistic skills. But Shane kept reassuring them that it had nothing to do with artistic skill but with seeing, and asked them to please honor the silence. After a few minutes, they switched roles, the sketched becoming the sketcher. Then Shane had them switch seats and repeat the process a couple more times, spending a few silent minutes staring and drawing each other until they had each drawn, and been drawn, three or four times.

As the exercise came to completion, the once uneasy atmosphere in the room became calm, almost relaxed. Then they debriefed their experience, and Shane asked how it felt. People expressed what they sensed in the room as a whole, that after pushing through a level of unease, these short few minutes of silent attention to this other person drew them to the other, looking into their face in order to draw it forced them to really see each other. It was a galvanizing experience for everyone—well, everyone but Dave.

As people took their turns stating what it was like to share these few silent minutes with the person across from them, Dave spoke up. He stated, "I felt very comfortable with everyone as I drew them, I mean I really did." People nodded, affirming that this was their own experience as well, but Dave wasn't finished: "I mean, I felt really comfortable with everyone, everyone … except Jodi."

It was as if the air had been sucked from the room. Dave continued, "Yeah, looking at Jodi just made me feel really uncomfortable, I mean, I felt judged just looking at her." The tranquil atmosphere turned toxic. People sat shocked. Did he really just say that? Shane thought. Did he really say that Jodi, little, smiley, kind Jodi, made him feel uncomfortable? No one knew what to say; after all, the absurdity of Jodi making anyone, let alone Dave, uncomfortable seemed crazy. But Dave continued to insist, stating again, "I mean truly I felt comfortable and safe looking at everyone; but Jodi, I really have no idea why, she just made me feel uncomfortable, just uncomfortable. She just did."

As Dave continued to spew his reactions, the rest of the council, as inconspicuously as possible, looked over at Jodi. Her face was bright red, almost matching her curly hair. And her eyes opened wide; she sat frozen, as if knowing any move would bring a flood of tears. Shane now knew something needed to be said. He regretted ever doing this exercise in the first place, cursing his memory for ever recalling it.

He took a breath, hoping to repress the response his flabbergasted anger desired, like, "Hey, Dave, why are you being such a jerk?" Shane imagined such a response receiving a standing ovation from the rest of the group. But he resisted. Instead, to his own shock, he turned to Dave and asked, "OK, we definitely hear that she made you feel uncomfortable, but that is only a reaction to a feeling. Why do you think you are reacting with discomfort?"

Jodi still sat frozen and Shane's pushing of Dave only seemed to amp up the tension in the room. It was clear that people couldn't take much more. Dave folded his arms across his chest and stared at the floor. Shane watched him, not sure if he was reflective or shut down, searching for an answer or ready to explode.

Finally, Dave broke the silence. He stated, "Well …" and then stopped. His voice cracked and the muscles in his cheeks twitched. "Well," he started again, "you all know my daughter Donna. She grew up in this church, and I told many of you that she just moved back in with us. When she was 13 she kind of stopped coming often to church, and now that she's back with us, she has only made it to church once every month or two. I've said it is because she works late on Saturday. Well, she does work Saturdays, but she's done by four. And she is done with that job now anyhow; she was just fired for not going. I'm sure a few of you know this, but Donna suffers from severe depression and she can't come to church because she can't get out of bed, and now she can't get out of bed to go to work. She lost her job, her apartment and even her car, because of the depression."

Now, everyone's attention shifted from Jodi and rested squarely on Dave. The tension in the room evaporated and in its place was only attention, attention to Dave. Where tension tends to thrust us into ourselves to be concerned with how we are feeling, attention to another person and their story pushes us thorough ourselves into the other's experience.

The council sat hanging on Dave's every word. Dave breathed another deep breath, his eyes filling with tears, and then he continued. "And I guess, that's it. I guess I feel so defensive and uncomfortable looking at Jodi because when I see her, I see who Donna could be if she didn't suffer from depression. I see my little girl in Jodi. It just reminds me of my sweet Donna, and all that she could have been."

Something had just changed, something holy. Something transformational had just occurred. Dave was seen, and seen in the fragility of his humanity. As my friend explained to me later, "It was from that moment that everything changed; Dave was no longer an annoying know-it-all hindrance, but a person. He became someone we shared not just leadership, but life with."

Persons and relationships

While we in the church frequently discuss the importance of relationships for our ministry, we have often failed to recognize that relationships are dependent on persons. They are dependent on personhood, on seeing those in our churches and communities as persons, not as consumers of programs, not as "giving units" or volunteers, nor as rational calculators that decided that they and their families can get the most out of their involvement at this church over another. And we have done this too often. We have deeply wanted our ministry to be relational, but not for the sake of persons, for the sake of the ministry, for the sake of bringing success to our initiatives. In other words, we've wanted people to feel relationally connected so that they might come to what we are offering or believe what we are preaching or teaching. What gives witness that our relationships are ends and not means?

When Dave confessed why Jodi made him uncomfortable, when he revealed Donna's depression and his own broken heart, the group reacted with empathy. They felt Dave's pain and opened their own person to his. Through his expressed suffering, like a reflex, the rest of the group opened their person to Dave's, because through his expressed suffering they saw not an individual, but a person. It is no coincidence that his suffering was the yearning and pain of stressed relationship. We are our relationships, and for Dave to express the burden of this relationship was to open his very being to the being of others.

In the end, because we are persons, we will see ourselves and we will know ourselves through others. To have our person embraced is to find our person bound to others and therefore transformed in and through the relationship.

Jesus calls himself a vine and us the branches. We are invited to remain in him as he remains in us—participating in his personhood (John 15:5). Now, in the community of others, in relationships of persons, Jesus is present transforming death into life, so that our person might live forever with his own.

Andrew Root is in the Baalson Olson Chair as associate professor of youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary.

This is an excerpt from The Relational Pastor: Sharing in Christ by Sharing Ourselves (IVP, 2013).