Still floating after a wonderful ordination experience last weekend, 
I was talking with colleagues today about why such an experience is so rare. I’m not talking about the rarity of a moving worship service. I’m talking about the phenomenon of a person who has been wholly and truly nourished by the congregation of her birth through childhood and teen years and into her young adulthood.
People wonder why there are so few young adults in church. There are many reasons. But the bottom line is that few young adults have experienced authentic hospitality and unconditional love, not to mention spiritual meaning.
If we have experienced lavish love in a spiritual community, we will stay with that community.
Too many of us have experienced these kinds of scenarios:
- First time guests come into worship trying to figure out where to sit and how to find the bathroom. And a church officer greets them in the lobby with, “Welcome! We’ve never had anyone with a pierced lip here before.“
- During the Passing of the Peace, a teenager wearing her soccer uniform is greeted by a church leader with, “I see you didn’t have time to dress appropriately this morning.” During the Passing of the Peace.
- A middle-aged single woman – new in town – sits in the pews by herself and not one person says “Hello” much less, “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” or “Would you like to join me and my sister for brunch after worship?“
I wonder sometimes if we have failed – as a church – in teaching basic Christian behavior. So many broken people come through our doors and we fail in showing what wholeness looks like.
In fact, we tend to excuse bad behavior – afraid that difficult people will leave. We fail to hold each other accountable.
I remember calling out an elder on her bad behavior – she was sending incendiary emails out randomly to church members – and after telling her that it was unacceptable, not to mention a violation of her ordination vows, to behave in that way, she said, “So are you asking me to leave the church?”
I said, “I’m not asking you to leave the church. I’m asking you to stop being so mean.” She was stunned – in a good way. Because of her own “stuff” she tended to misbehave so that she would be kicked out of a community. She was used to being asked to leave every organization or job or friendship she’d ever had.
We don’t want mean/rude/inhospitable/gossipy people to leave our churches. We just want them to stop it and start making an honest effort to follow Jesus.
How does your community deal with bad behavior?
A Church for Starving Artists 
“How does your community deal with bad behavior?”
Poorly. We absolutely need to be better at calling people when they are behaving badly.
Each church I’ve served has had problem people who treat others like crap. When people complain to me about how they were treated by this person, or how they saw this person treat someone else I ask them if they said anything to the person. The answer is always ‘no.’ I then beg them that when they witness something please stop right there and say to that person “What you just did isn’t right.”
Hasn’t happened yet.
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Shawn – I know.
A former pastor of the last congregation I served shared that, at a post-worship brunch, the conversation was about me and what a terrible pastor I was. When I asked what the other members said when The Angry Couple complained about me, he said, “Nobody challenged them at all.” Ugh.
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It’s all so painful.
I’m getting ready to appoint an Appropriate Behavior Monitor for a governing body that needs new ways of behaving well with one another.
I’m not kidding. I’m going to ask someone to do it, and I’m going to tell the governing body that this person will help us live into new ways of relating to each other. I’ll let you know if this ABM is available for other consultations….
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I love this and had to post part on my facebook page. You hit the nail on the head with this one….Thank You and God Thanks you too!
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As far as I can see mostly people do nothing. As you probably know 😉 my church went through a lot over the past few years. As clerk I was regularly (like several times a week) attacked by email by one particular person. I learned after awhile that no one really wanted to hear me complain about it because…. well, just because, I guess. No one wants to hear complaining over and over. But we couldn’t ask him to leave, or do much of anything, because people didn’t want him to think we were just getting rid of our critics before the crucial vote. But as far as I know no one ever really called him out.. There’s that whole section in the Book of Order about what it means to be a member, and this guy didn’t fit most of them.
As one of those things they didn’t teach us in seminary (although of course we talked about “church conflict”) is how incredibly cruel church members can be to each other.
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