2024-08-13
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
Rev. Judy Bagley-Bonner
"What Your Pastor Wishes You Knew"
August 11, 2024
I’ll start today’s sermon with a bit of background. I do a fair amount of pulpit supply at various churches in our Association, often for churches that are between pastors during an interim period as you soon will be. So given your pending transition, and given the fact that I’ve given the subject a fair amount of thought over the years, I thought I’d take this opportunity to write a new sermon for my circuit riding ministry, based on the idea of what I believe your new minister will wish you knew in terms of how you treat them, and the clergy-congregation relationship in general. But first, I want to be crystal clear about one thing: None of this has anything to do with anything I’ve ever heard from Hamilton or Betsy. This is not tailored to Federated in any way, shape or form but is just a general list of things that over thirty plus years in ministry have occurred to me, although I did also do a bit of consultation with other clergy for this effort. I belong to a private facebook group of women, UCC ministers, and I posed the question to them. I told them I was going to be writing this sermon and that I might include, with their permission, some of their input, should they care to offer it. So I asked them what they wished their congregants knew in terms of how they treat their minister and each other. Interestingly enough, I had over fifty comments in the first hour, most of them fairly lengthy, and within a couple of days the number exceeded one hundred. It would seem there are a lot of strong feelings out there among clergy, and it struck me that it might be a good thing for me, as someone who is retired and has no skin in the game, to take the lid off, if you will, and speak on behalf of many of my clergy colleagues.
So I have loosely divided the content into three broad categories. First I will take on the little stuff: small behaviors and issues that clergy mostly wish you would re-think and, frankly, mostly NOT do. Then I will take on the medium sized stuff, which has potential to become serious but is usually time limited. And finally, the third category which directly relates to today’s scriptures, the deeper matters of how to create a healthy emotional and spiritual climate in a congregation, as opposed to having a congregation full of toxic conflict, gossip, and indirect expressions of anger. Most clergy in my very unscientific survey concur that these issues in the final category are among the top burn-out issues for clergy, and congregations that take on and generally overcome these are a pastor’s heaven on earth.
So first, the smaller stuff. I’ll run through these relatively quickly in something of a list form and in no particular order:
-Most pastors probably wish you would refrain from the all too common practice of calling them at home on their day off, inevitably opening by saying, “I know it’s your day off, BUT…” Now for most pastors, emergencies are the exception to this rule. But for everything else, please save it for the next work day. Pastors are essentially on-call for emergencies 24/7 and they really need those days off to unplug and renew spiritually and remember who they are outside of the pastoral role.
A close second to this would be the exhortation that you not put your pastor in the position of providing unofficial pastoral counseling when you run into them in the grocery store. This used to happen a lot in my small church in rural Minnesota where people felt uncomfortable about making an appointment for pastoral care conversations. They seemed to feel that making an appointment would be making too bit a deal of whatever it was, but they were ok sharing the concern in the cereal aisle and even going on at great length. I was never really aware of this, and didn’t so much mind it until one day when I was walking into the store with my then three year old son sitting in the child’s section of the grocery care. At the store doorway, he took my face in his little hands, looked me in the eye, and emphatically said, “while we’re here, PLEASE don’t talk to anybody.” Indeed I became instantly aware that it had been unfair of me to ask my three year old to sit quietly with nothing to do for twenty minutes or even half an hour while a hurting parishioner poured out their struggles at the grocery store. I quickly changed my response to a clearer boundaried one, where I would say, “you know, I really want to give this matter the time and care it deserves. Could I meet you at my office tomorrow morning?” And I would press them when I got the common response of, “Oh I don’t want to bother you because I know your busy” by saying, “Pastoral care is not a bother and is a big part of why you called me. What time would you like to come in?”
Another thing your pastor probably wishes you knew is that we can’t visit you at the hospital if you don’t let us know you’re there. When I first started ministry in rural Minnesota, the hospital chaplain or social worker would call and inform me when a parishioner was hospitalized. With HIPPA, all that changed and the hospital is no longer allowed to inform clergy of member hospitalizations. Please, when you are hospitalized, have someone call the church. We WANT to be there for you and your loved ones, but we can’t go if we don’t know. Please do not rely on word of mouth because the chain often breaks down, and its better if it comes clearly and directly from you or a close loved one anyway.
Another important one is to remind congregations that a minister’s family should not be expected to be free labor or even necessarily to be involved or attend the church. They are separate people usually with their own jobs, and if they get involved, that’s wonderful but it should not be an expectation.
Another tidbit from my facebook group: “remind them that it takes ten to twelve hours to write a good sermon, plus the time it takes to prepare a meaningful liturgy.” Indeed, some say that a good sermon requires an hour of prep work for every minute of preaching. Preparing for Sunday morning, along with the many other tasks of ministry including pastoral care, meetings, and the countless details that clergy are responsible for, keep ministers very busy. There are at least a few folks out there that thing we only work on Sunday mornings. Your help in dispelling that myth would be greatly appreciated.
Another item that truly falls under the heading of little things is that it’s best not to approach a pastor about a pressing personal issue OR try to give them information on a Sunday morning, especially close to worship time, unless you follow it up with an email or call. Our minds are in a million places on Sunday mornings and details tend to get lost.
A close corollary to this: Please do not come in ten minutes before worship starts and ask to have an announcement made. Careful attention has been paid to the flow of the service, including announcements. Please call ahead to get on that list.
Here’s another item: if you want your church to grow, please understand that your pastor will be trying to connect with newcomers after church or at coffee hour and are not ignoring you. Please do your part toward growth by also reaching out to newcomers, and don’t interpret this as your pastor ignoring you.
And finally for this category, please also understand that events, even the really fun ones, count as work for pastors. And your pastor works a lot of evenings and weekends and almost always works beyond their contracted time. Please be generous with time off and insist that they take it for the good of the pastor as well as the congregation.
And now a couple issues that are not little, but also don’t usually rise to the level of “clergy killers” like the issues I’ll take on in a few moments. A couple mid-sized matters:
-Please know that while your minister probably loves you very much, and you share intense, life transitions where there are strong feelings on both sides, that your pastor cannot be your friend in the same way that you have other friends. There is, in healthy ministry, a subtle but necessary professional boundary. This can become apparent when a pastor leaves and needs to cut ties. Please, if you hold any affection whatsoever for your pastor, let them go when they leave. Do not ask them back to perform pastoral functions after they have left which will only break their heart when they have to say no. Also, please do not talk about them endlessly, or make of them saints, to the new minister. There is actually a term for this among clergy. Former beloved pastors of whom the congregation cannot let go are called “BFPs” (beloved former pastors.) This is why there is an interim person or at least an interim time, so you can grieve a beloved pastor’s departure, give that grief its healthy due, and then prepare yourself to welcome a new pastor without the ghost of the old constantly being invoked.
And now on to the deeper part of this sermon, which is about the emotional or spiritual climate of a congregation, and how a congregation deals with conflict. Because I believe that nothing will burn out a pastor faster than a church where poor boundaries are rampant, where people take their complaints or concerns about the pastor sideways and share them with others rather than directly with the pastor, or where people gossip about each other and are passive-aggressive with their anger. (For those of you who haven’t heard the term passive-aggressive, it can be defined as “a pattern of indirectly expressing negative feelings instead of openly communicating them.”) It’s often anger hiding behind humor, making a point through sarcasm, or perhaps false humility, saying, “oh it’s all right.” when clearly it is not.
Paul tells us succinctly in today’s Ephesians text that anger in the church is inevitable. He says, “be angry, but sin not.” In other words, in any community of people, some degree of anger or conflict is inevitable. Wherever two or three are gathered, there are politics, after all. And anger and conflict actually serve a purpose. They let us know when something may be wrong and signal the need for respectful, open and creative resolution. Indeed, anger and conflict are inevitable in community of any kind. The only question is how they will be dealt with. Will you express negative feelings directly and respectfully to the person involved, or will you take them sideways and gossip to someone else? Permit me to be specific: one of the oldest tricks in the book in church life is for one or two people to go to the pastor and say, “people are saying x, y and z” but refuse to identify who the “people” are…The bottom line here is that people need to speak only for themselves. To play the old “I speak for those who wish to remain anonymous” card has pay-offs, don’t get me wrong. You can imply that it’s a lot of people when it may be only a few or only you. And you can hide behind others and not take responsibility for your own agenda. I cannot stress enough how damaging it is for people not to go to their pastor directly, and speak only for themselves. To invoke nameless “others” is to set up a triangle…the speaker, the hearer and the unnamed third party who now gets pulled in, but precludes the pastor from being able to address them and attempt to find resolution. Triangulation is always toxic and tears at the fabric of healthy community.
James does not mince words on all these matters: He says the tongue is a fire! It stains the whole body, and is itself set on fire by the very fires of hell. And, James adds, no one can totally tame the tongue—a restless[c] evil, full of deadly poison.” No one can tame the tongue? I think this is James’ way of telling us that if we are really, deep-down- honest, we have to admit that pretty much everyone, on occasion, gossips or triangulates. I know I have! It is almost an inevitable part of being human, at least on occasion, because it is just so intoxicating to be “in the know” and to hold the interpersonal power, negative though it be. We humans need to just be honest about that, that to a greater or lesser extent, on occasion, we all do it. We need to admit that to ourselves and then ask God to do for us we cannot do for ourselves and tame our tongues! And… we need to create a church climate where it is ok to remind one another when we forget, and hold each other accountable. Church vitality expert, Peter Steinke, in his book “Healthy Congregations” says that church bodies are like individual, human bodies, and we need to develop an immune system- a critical mass of basically healthy, direct communicators who will set a tone of direct, respectful, healthy communication free of gossip and triangulation. And this critical mass needs to gently address it when they sense that gossip is gaining a foothold in a congregation, reminding others that healthy churches don’t operate that way. This can be in the form of taking someone aside and offering a gentle reminder, or at the very least, pointedly not participating in the gossip and assertively changing the subject. Eventually, people need to get the message that this simply isn’t that kind of church. We have disagreements, but we deal with them directly and respectfully, and we do not tolerate a climate of gossip or passive aggressive, indirect communication. Some churches actually have behavioral covenants for how they will deal with conflict and gossip. I like this idea because then there is standard to which people can appeal in holding the line. In any case, churches that develop something like Steinke’s immune system, and create a healthy baseline climate of loving, direct communication, are worth their weight in gold. They become healing communities that model healthy communication for individuals and for the wider community. And they create glimpses of the Realm of God! And once word gets out that you’re that kind of church, I suspect you will get more ministerial profiles in the search process. Clergy people talk. They tend to hear which are the healthy churches and which are the ones where toxic communication styles have become habituated. I will add here that I know Federated to be basically of the healthy variety, with some exceptions, of course. And kudos to you for creating that climate. But it never hurts to be reminded. and to be exhorted to guard this healthy baseline fiercely! You simply cannot put a price tag on a church that operates from this place of health and wholeness.
Well, I hope that his has not evolved into too much of a clergy whine-a-thon. But I think it means something that there was so much energy around my facebook post, and I think these matters kind of do need the lid taken off now and then because, ironically, it’s hard for currently active clergy to address these issues precisely because it sort of does sound like whining. And nobody wants to be a whiner. So I hope you can receive this as healthy, direct communication from somebody retired, again with no skin in the game, just sort of telling it like it is, talking turkey if you will. I offer it with love, to you, my beloved community of which I am a grateful member. And I offer it with the hope that our next pastoral ministry will be a wonderfully, loving relationship, back and forth, between all of us and the pastor, even as we continue to create a community of robust health and healing, Christian love. To God’s glory and the healing of the world. Amen