Month: January 2020

We need to talk!

Talk

Why talk together?

We need to talk together because the world is changing! The days of the local church where everyone came from the same background, had similar religious experiences and shared the same cultural views and practices are numbered. Sure they will hang around for a while but they are dying out.

In a very simple, clear and accurate article, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson writes about the future of the church. He makes the compelling case that the game is up for would be homogenous churches. Try as they might most of these types of churches can not grow. This is because demography, culture and changing world views have left them behind. In the US it is expected that 100 of these aging white Protestant mainline churches will close each year for the foreseeable future. It has been happening in Australia and Europe for decades.

Lectures and directives from the pulpit might work when the majority accept the dominant world view. However, when groups are diverse and hold different perspectives and experiences they will not be told. Talk together is the key to sustaining diverse communities.

The changing landscape for the church

Granberg-Michaelson says that the changes that make this death spiral inevitable include:

  • Multiracial congregations are expanding to draw 1 in 5 churchgoing Americans. Surveys on American congregations report a higher level of spiritual vitality among them compared with racially homogeneous congregations.
  • For 400 years, the faith has been moulded by the largely European culture that came out of the Enlightenment. But today church vitality is coming from emerging expressions of Christianity in Africa as well as in Asia and Latin America.
  • These new influences are raising new questions about the relationship of the individual to the community, rational versus non-rational pathways to perceiving truth and the interplay of the spiritual and material realms.
  • As the yearning for authentic spiritual experience moves from the head to the heart in this new environment, spirit-filled communities are flourishing.
  • The culture wars in the church are divisions that are not seen as the core of the gospel and many contemporary people don’t want to fight over them.
  • “Belonging before believing” is reshaping pathways of discipleship. The demand that outsiders first adhere to specific beliefs expressed in creeds or confessions is giving way to inviting them first to explore and share in worship, reflection, and service.

Evangelism needs us to talk together

Anyone who has a genuine concern and capacity for evangelism knows how important it is to understand the context. To understand context  – the life, experience, and values of people – requires listening. Talking together starts with the dominant group listening to the ones who are different.

When it is appropriate there will be a place for the evangelical person, or church, to share their perspective. However, it can never again be in the arrogant, superior, assumption of knowing what others need to learn. The talking will be more in the form of testimony about what God has meant in their life. Then, once again, it is time to listen to how others have experienced God in their life.

To talk together today about faith (or anything in the church) requires patience and humility. It requires a setting and practices that make it possible for all to share. Many of the processes in the Western church assume that there is one place of knowledge and one way to work it out. We need processes for being in a community that is open to learning from the stories and experiences of others. There needs to be space to experience the non-rational ways of gaining insight.

How does your congregation foster open, honest and risk taking conversations? When you meet for Bible study how do you listen to one another? When you meet to make decisions about how to you talk together so that all perspectives are heard? Unless churches develop a process that help them to talk together they will not navigate the changing landscape of society and the church.

Dealing With Difficult People

As is our custom in January we pull some posts from “the vault” and share them with you again. We hope that your 2020 is hopeful amidst all the challenges that we face.

difficult people

 Conflict and Difficult People

Sometimes it is easy to think of anyone who gets in the way of our goals as a difficult person! However taking such a view is to see conflict / disagreement / encouragement to pay attention to other views as a negative experience. Here at makingchurchdecisions.com we consider conflict to be a place for growth. Meeting people with whom we disagree, or who are different from us, invites us to new learning and growth. Conflict is not a bad thing! Combat is optional.

However some negative experiences of conflict arise because we have to deal with difficult people. Difficult people are those who – for whatever reason – do not make a constructive contribution to resolving a conflict. The example might be people who are negative as attempts are made to work through a shared issue. Or it could be that they behave in a way that creates unnecessary tension or strains in relationships.

Examples of Difficult Behaviours

People who are stubborn and refuse to entertain any view but their own are a classic example of people who are difficult to deal with. They turn a healthy conflict into a combat zone. Such people range from those who refuse to take seriously an alternative point of view through to those who put down and belittle alternative opinions.

Still others insist on focusing on things that are irrelevant or minor in the scheme of the issue that is being discussed. We all know the people who want to get into minute detail on something when what is needed is to explore the big themes and grand vision.

Perhaps among the most difficult people are the straight out nasty ones! They use harsh words, put people down and speak in sterotypes. Through body language and tone they make it clear that they are in this fight to win it. Conflict for these people is always a blood sport.

It should be noted that these types of behaviour can show up and the person is not a “difficult person” by our definition. For example people can be negative and oppose things because they have a mental health problem, or are suffering from an illness like dementia, or perhaps transferring emotions from a place of personal pain, eg a deep grief. In these cases they are not being difficult people in order to win their argument. Rather they are outworking – in an unhealthy way – their own illness. We still need to deal with their difficult behaviour. However, it is worth trying to work out where the negative behaviour is coming from because it helps us choose the right intervention.

Options for responding

1.  Don’t react
This is easier said than done! Nevertheless one of the best things to do with difficult people is to suck the energy out of them. Negative people thrive on opposition – it feeds their aggression and makes them feel justified in attacking during a conflict.
Stay calm. That old advice about counting to 10 before you respond to a negative comment has a lot of merit. Process your emotions. Remember to talk slowly and reduce the volume if you hear yourself getting faster and louder
2.  Disarm your opponent
Remember that the comments of difficult people are their weapons – so decide how to take those weapons away. I have found that acknowledging the worthwhile points in an opponent’s argument can shift the tone of a conversation. If people don’t have to defend everything that they believe then it reduces the range of areas where there is contention.
Where people are nasty and agressive then a helpful, but challenging approach is offered by the Apostle Paul in Romans 12: 17 – 20.

17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. … 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, … 20 On the contrary:“If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

3.  Change the game by changing the frame
With difficult people this will require a different response depending on their behaviour. So, when someone is being argumentative and not wanting to hear another point of view it may be helpful to reframe the discussion. For example the discussion is about enlarging the meeting room next to the church office and buying new furniture to set it up. One person may be fixated on cost and arguing against luxurious furniture in the church. By inviting that person to talk about how hospitality is shown in their workplace or home, it may help to reframe the discussion away from money to being about how to be a welcoming community.
If the difficult people are being rude, disrespectful, etc in their attempt to get their way then they need to be confronted. It is not acceptable anywhere to denigrate and put people down in order to get your way. Therefore the reframe here is to call the person out and tell them that the behaviour is unacceptable. The new frame is what is an appropriate way for people to act. Don’t let people get away with bad behviour because they are allowed to continue to think that winning is all that matters!
4.  Make it easy to say “yes”
There are many ways that this can be done but the basic idea is to get a person to work constructively on a solution. By allowing people to remain outside the solution it gives them permission to keep sniping and complaining.
So, if a person continues to make the same repetitive speech about an issue say something like “it sounds like you care a lot about A, B or C.” “Would you like to be part of the solution to the issue that is before us ?” It is pretty easy to say “yes” in response to those invitations. The goal is to find places of partnership.
In the case of bad behaviour the aim of the words might be to help them see the harm that they are doing. It is important to be very careful here so that a person doesn’t say “no” out of ignorance or spite. So know the context and person very well. Some possibilites for comment include: “Have you noticed that people in the church don’t like spending time with you when you behave this way?” “Do you know that your behaviour is hurting people?”  “Do you want to find a solution to our problems?”
5.  Make it hard to say “no”
In some ways this is very similar to the previous point. Difficult people are often very negative in their mindset. They see problems where others see possibilities. The aim is to get difficult people to see the positive in a situation so that they might be drawn into constructive rather than destructive conversations.
Some things that might be said: “Do you care for our church?” Do you want us to find a solution to this issue?” “Can you offer us some constructive options that will meet the needs of as many people as possible?”

Conclusion

Difficult people turn up in lots of places. We can’t prevent that from happening. However we need not be their victims. Most people can take up the steps that are suggested here. Of course there will be some people who have been subject to put downs for so long that their self esteem is damaged and they cannot confront people who are abusive in their way of relating to others. However many people have options and don’t need to be paralysed by bad the behaviour of difficult people.