Church Politics

Anyone who is actively involved in a congregation quickly learns about church politics. Nobody likes them but it seems impossible to do anything without running into them. As in most institutions, politics in the church does more to hamper good ideas than to help them get done.

I had been called into the senior pastor’s office to meet with the president of the congregation.

“It appears that we didn’t follow the rules to the letter when we called the special meeting,” the president said. “Nobody put the notice in the local paper.”

It had been four days since the meeting and we knew that there were people who were upset about the decision to buy a new house to serve as the parsonage. The house was located adjacent to the church property and the owner, a member of the congregation, was giving us an unbelievable deal. The house was in better shape than the current parsonage and it made sense to own the property right next to the church. The people who had been at the meeting approved the proposal to purchase the property by a margin of 60-40.

But another member, who also had property adjacent to the church, was upset by the decision because he had plans to offer the same kind of deal to the church when he retired in a few years. After the meeting he went home and combed through a copy of the church constitution and found the loophole he was looking for. The church council had made the proposal and notified the congregation of the meeting two weeks in advance by newsletter and in the weekly Sunday bulletin. But nobody was aware of the by-law requiring special congregational meeting notices to be published in the local paper. The decision made at the meeting, therefore, was null and void and the disgruntled member was threatening legal action if the congregation went ahead with the purchase.

While in seminary one of my professors had worked in a steel mill as an electrician’s assistant when he was a student. He said it was important to know how the power was designed to flow through the wires. But he said that the electricity didn’t always flow the way it was designed to flow. “It’s more important,” he said, “to know how the power really flows. It’s the same in congregations.”

I am a process person. I believe that a good decision making process helps everyone get involved and is transparent to anyone who has questions about how a decision is made. A lot of my work as a pastor has been to clarify and improve these processes. Nothing frustrates me as much as when a process is agreed upon and then decisions get made outside of that process.

An elderly colleague told me early in my ministry, “A German congregation will argue tooth and nail before a decision is made but then they will all go along with it. A Scandinavian congregation will go along with a proposal until a decision is made, then they will argue tooth and nail about it in the parking lot.”

I grew up in a congregation where the former was the rule but I’ve worked in congregations where the latter is the way business is done. It’s a recipe for hair-pulling exasperation. I’m always embarrassed when someone asks me who they need to talk to when they need a decision to be made. Do I send them to the person/s that is designated by our agreed upon policies or do I send them to the person/s who will ultimately make the decision? (These are often different people.) Do I pretend that the process makes a difference or should I just be honest about the way business is done?

It has been my experience in the Lutheran church that decision making processes that are outlined in constitutions and by-laws are not reflective of the way that decisions are really made. Talking to colleagues, I see this to be true of most congregations not just the ones that I’ve served. People often refer to this as “church politics” and it has the ability to suck the life and energy out of an otherwise vibrant ministry. Unfortunately it’s what occupies the energies of too many congregations.

In the end the congregational council had to declare the vote at that special meeting to be  invalid. The person who owned the property withdrew the offer, not wanting to create more contention within the congregation. The member who was upset had tipped his hand to his intentions and basically ruined his chances of selling his property to the church. The congregation missed an opportunity to upgrade its property and ended up spending money to repair the existing parsonage. Nobody came out a winner.