“You use too many stories about your children,” remarked the church member. “I’ve also heard other people say the same thing.”
I was taken back. This was the first time I’d heard this complaint.
“Thank you for sharing your opinion so frankly,” I said, uncomfortably.
At first I was tempted to brush it off as the pettiness of a crank, a chronic church whiner. But as I gave it more thought, I decided the criticism was valid; I did use too many family illustrations in my preaching. Perhaps I was trying too hard to be cute, and besides, my children-who were small-might someday not appreciate being used this way either.
Complaints like this are normal fare for pastors. Sometimes the comments are trivial, sometimes misdirected, and sometimes right on target. If we’re unwilling to endure criticism, we need to look for another line of work. It may not be written in our job description, but coping with critics, complainers, and even the not-so-occasional loud mouth is routine ministry.
From Flak to Flagrant Foul
But not all flak is routine criticism.
In one particularly discouraging moment, I confided in a board member about my frustrations at the church. I mentioned that I had received a call from another church and was tempted to resign. A close friend of mine, this board member grew angry at the conflict sabotaging my ministry. In his attempt to keep me at the church and resolve the crisis, he made the mistake of telling the board chairman about my thoughts of resignation. The chairman had been one of my frustrations.
“You behaved unethically!” the chairman said in the next board meeting. “I don’t like finding out second-hand of your frustrations.” The secretary duly recorded the charge in the minutes.
Privately, the rest of the board members told me they saw no impropriety on my part and no grounds for charges.
At the next board meeting, I made a simple request.
“The board must deal with this charge that has been made on the record,” I said. “If the charge is true, it is grounds for discipline, perhaps even dismissal. If it’s not true, I’d like to be cleared.”
The board asked me to leave the room and deliberated for some time. Later, the board informed me that they had decided to be officially noncommittal: “We do not believe that pursuing this charge is in the interest of healing or unity.”
The next day I questioned one board member about their reasoning. He noted that he had known the chairman for forty years, that he had always been difficult, that we could not expect him to change.
“We have to be gentle with the board chair,” he responded. “After all, he is a member of the church.”
I was stunned. It was okay to attack my integrity but not to call the chairman to account because “he is a member.” That implied that I was not!
What Contributes to Abuse
Abuse is different from-and far worse than-routine criticism. It is not aimed at improving the pastor’s role or work. Rather it is aimed at discrediting a person and even disabling a person’s ministry.
Several reasons make the church environment a hothouse for abusing pastors:
First, since faith is a matter of life and death, we often invest church conflicts with ultimate value. When we fear the fate of our souls might be at stake over the outcome of a dispute, remaining calm grows hard.
Church fights are often impassioned, but that’s not necessarily bad.
“If we didn’t really care about one another and the faith, there would be no conflict,” writes William Willimon. “The person who wonders why the meetings of his or her book club are more placid than those of the branch office of the kingdom of God need only measure what is at stake to understand why church fights are so fierce.”
Unfortunately, however, intensity can degenerate into other things. Rather than recognizing personal motivations and differences, we attribute evil motives to others. Church fights become struggles over right and wrong, good and evil, orthodoxy and heresy. Opponents are not merely antagonists but Satan’s emissaries.
Second, church-goers often project unreasonable expectations on their pastor. Because of their brokenness, many view us as the parent they never had.
Edwin H. Friedman, in Generation to Generation, says, “Much of the negative and superpositive ‘transference’ that we receive from members of our congregational family is a direct result of the ‘baggage’ they failed to leave at home.”
The inevitable result: pastors automatically attract all kinds of misdirected “heat.”
Warner White, an Episcopalian, notes that when members “become stuck in . . . disillusion, the rector as real person is never perceived. Instead, the rector becomes the symbol of antichrist. ‘We thought he was the messiah, but he is just the opposite!’ The rector becomes the symbol of betrayal at the most profound level.
“In these cases parishioners flip the superhuman coin . . . from perceiving the rector as beneficently superhuman to seeing the rector as maleficently superhuman. They never perceive him or her as truly human at all.”
Friedman writes that some people either deify or crucify religious leaders. There is often no middle ground. We are subjected to high expectations, many of which are never articulated, understood, or realized. When these expectations go unmet, then, intense anger erupts, setting the stage for abuse.
Distinguishing Criticism from Abuse
We must distinguish between criticism and abuse. Our work as public figures should be open to regular review and evaluation and, yes, criticism. That is good for everyone and also affords us some protection from leading the church astray.
But some criticism is inappropriate, demeaning, and soul-destroying. Here’s how I distinguish the two.
1. Is it focused on performance or the person? There is a substantial difference between criticizing someone’s performance, which can be legitimate, and criticizing a person’s integrity, which might be abusive.
In the opening story, the member’s concern about my sermons was appropriate. Ultimately agreeing with him, I took action. Another time a woman told me about her former pastor’s sexual misconduct. Having heard one too many of these stories at the time, I burst out, “I am so angry with these pastors! Don’t they see the damage they cause?”
The woman grew ominously silent, but I missed reading her emotional signals. Months later she told me that my venting had offended her. I had not allowed her to share her pain. She was right in criticizing my performance. I apologized, resolving to be a better listener.
However, it is also possible to criticize a person’s integrity: attacking the person, not their performance.
I once helped mediate a church dispute. There was dissatisfaction in the congregation over the pastor’s performance. The resulting conflict grew heated.
Several people conspired to oust the pastor by drawing up a list of charges they planned to present at a congregational meeting. None of the charges dealt specifically with performance. Rather, they were vague generalizations: “no genuine call to the ministry,” “no Christian commitment,” “doubtful Christian faith,” “not believing in the Bible,” “little evidence of Christian spirituality.” This was abusive.
Another church had an open-ended evaluation of its pastor. Not given any guidelines, the members were invited to remark on anything. They attacked the pastor’s weight, his wife’s taste in clothes, and his decision to spend free time as a volunteer in a local amateur play. None of these criticisms was based on a written job description. They were abusive.
2. Is it a plea for help or a shot to destroy? While little criticism feels timely or appropriate, it is not necessarily abusive. It may be someone’s inadequate way of calling for attention or asking for help.
One day I was surprised to get a hostile, almost hateful, letter from a young man in the church. I thought we had always gotten along well. But here he suddenly called me “a spoiled child” with “no call to be a pastor.”
Following up, I learned that he felt abandoned by me. In his view, I had not been available: he was frustrated that I was not in touch with his latest news about graduate school. After I spent some time with him, including listening to him rave about the newest U2 CD, he was no longer hostile. Then I gently raised with him the issue of airing concerns more appropriately.
He had reacted out of his own woundedness. While I did not appreciate his tactics, I did not consider them abusive.
But the following exchange with the chairman of the board was. He had just told me I was not fit to be a pastor.
“That’s a strong criticism,” I said. “Why are you making it?”
“I’m doing it for your own good,” he responded. “I’m worried about your career and the well-being of your family.”
Over the following weeks, the spirit of his charges did not feel like his purpose was the well-being of me and my family. He called me “emotionally disturbed with deep psychological problems,” “unfaithful,” “not capable of acting with good reason,” and “unsuited for ministry.”
Such labeling was not conducive to resolving the conflict. He wanted me out of office, and he was prepared to accomplish this by wounding my spirit. His intent was different from my young friend. All my attempts at conversation did not end the invectives. There was never dialogue, let alone mutual understanding.
3. Is it really my responsibility or am I being shamed? As church leaders, the buck often stops on our desk. Not everything works. And not everything we do deserves commendation. We have an obligation to accept responsibility for errors.
A number of newcomers and converts were joining the church. Our tradition was to have prospective members share a testimony before the church. Then we asked for a members’ show of hands to affirm the request for membership. This was always done in the candidate’s presence. The positive votes encouraged the candidates.
We also gave members an opportunity to vote no. This was a mere formality, however, that we treated with some amusement. Candidates were well-screened before they appeared before the church, and no one had ever been rejected.
During one new members’ service, a young woman with a troubled past spoke candidly about her struggles. Her testimony was powerful, moving, but vulnerable. When the vote was called, one person voted against her.
I was so flabbergasted I did not know what to say. Silence fell over the congregation. Awkwardly I made a transition to the next part of the service. Crestfallen, this woman took the no vote hard. She later left the church. No doubt that incident contributed to her leaving.
I took responsibility for the poor handling of the situation. I hadn’t anticipated such a response, nor was I quick-witted enough verbally to salvage the situation. While I had demonstrated a lack of savvy (and several pointed that out!), making a mistake did not mean my ministry was worthless. Nor did anyone heap guilt on me.
But some individuals want to do more than just make you responsible. They want to shame you.
During a worship service when we had many guests, the church chairman announced, “The pastor has asked to postpone the board meeting this week. If he can ever get around to meeting, he’ll let us know, and we’ll address some of the problems this church is facing.”
Though I had explained to him my reasons for rescheduling the meeting, he ignored them. I could only assume his intent was to shame, to humiliate rather than reconcile.
Responding to Abuse
As painful as it may be, abuse needs to be challenged. When confronted with it, several steps are crucial.
1. Know what constitutes abuse. Abuse does happen, and we must not be blind to it. At the same time, however, we must recognize that even healthy, normal criticism can feel painful. We can err by being too thin-skinned, perceiving all criticism to be abusive.
A peer or mentor can help you sort through the criticism that crosses over into abuse.
2. Confront the abuser. Abusers need to be confronted head-on. In some cases, private or individual confrontation is almost impossible and may not be the best policy. You may have to take it on in public when it occurs.
Confronting abuse has its drawbacks, however; it often makes you more vulnerable to abuse. Churches often react passively to abuse, choosing to avoid conflict at all costs. Dysfunctional systems operate by secret, undiscussed rules: people might not know or might not want to believe what is happening. Or, people might be intimidated or unaware.
Because you name the trouble, you may be accused of being a troublemaker. And if abusers hold high office or are substantial donors, your accusations will be even less appreciated.
But ignoring an abusive situation only encourages it to deteriorate further. Passivity is dangerous. Someone once said of the origins of World War II: “The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.”
If you are unable to confront the abuser alone, bring a peer or two.
3. Break the back of abuse. Refuse to allow abuse to flourish. If it has been confronted but is still continuing, more action is needed. We do no one a favor by allowing it to poison the church. Inaction only perpetuates abuse.
At times, the only way out is resignation.
I eventually resigned from my abusive situation. Too wrapped up in the gut-wrenching conflict, I could not be an agent of healing. And the church didn’t have the will to stem the abuse. Once I left, I was freed from further abuse.
Criticism is often difficult to accept, but enduring abuse is criminal. God’s work is not furthered by acquiescing to cruelty or attacks on our personhood. We must not be complicit in our own abuse.
Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
