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.

An Ill-Equipped Leader

As I wrote in my last post, God used a cute blond co-ed to get me to walk through the doors of the Lutheran Campus ministry at Central Michigan University. After that I started attending on my own. I’m not sure why, other than the fact that I felt comfortable and at home in a church. The people who met on Wednesday night welcomed me into their group right away. I learned that the they traveled to lead worship in churches around the state one weekend every six or eight weeks. Those trips. like the Wednesday evening rehearsals, were completely organized and run by the students.

When I returned for my sophomore year I brought a used guitar I had picked up at a garage sale. I started learning the half dozen chords needed to play the songs that we sang and stood up front at rehearsals with the other guitar players. My playing wasn’t great but it was passable. At the end of that year the people who had been leading the group graduated and everyone gathered to elect new leaders. When I was chosen to lead the group I felt honored and a bit surprised.

Returning to school my junior year I found myself leading not only the student folk group but also the tuba section of the marching band. That gig had been handed to me by the previous section leader. I was excited about leading these groups because I loved being a part of them and I wanted to give back and support them. But I also felt ill-equipped to lead them.

Both groups were centered around music and both groups had members who were stronger musicians that me. I worried that someone would make an issue of that fact and point out that I wasn’t fit to lead.

The other reason I felt ill-equipped was because of my natural introversion. Leaders have to be in front of groups. They have to motivate and energize people to move in a desired direction. Leaders need to have really good social skills. As an introvert I prefer quiet reflection and developing strong relationships with a few people. While my passion for the groups that I lead naturally showed in what I did, sometimes my lack of social skills got in the way and caused all sorts of frustration for myself and for others.

It was also about this time that I started thinking again about being a pastor. That sense of call crept back into my mind as my peers began putting me into positions of leadership. Finding myself with the responsibilities of leadership, while at the same time feeling ill-equipped for the task, created a strange mixture of confidence and fear that continues to be with me to this day.

Learning to lead (and live) with this paranoid confidence has been the real work behind everything I have done as a pastor.  I’ve tried bluffing and bullying my way through certain issues. I’ve tried meditating and reminding myself constantly that God loves me the way that I am, telling myself to “do my best and God will do the rest.” I’ve tried delegating to others. I’ve read leadership books and journals. I’ve attended leadership conferences. So far, nothing has changed that swirling mass of mixed emotions that resides within me.

In the Bible there are many stories about people called to leadership who feel ill-equipped for the job, or at least they claim to be. The best, by far, is when Moses is called to lead the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt. Moses excuses himself by claiming that he’s not a good public speaker. The funny thing is, he tells this to God in one of the most eloquent and cleverly crafted speeches in the Bible. Then, throughout his time of leadership, Moses constantly struggles with his belief that he is ill-equipped for the job.

I wonder sometimes what the world and what the church would be like if every leader had this paranoid confidence and shared it openly. Would people still follow? Would it make for better leaders?

Returning to my sense of call meant entering into a place of discomfort and rarely feeling at ease with myself or what I needed to do. It meant that I would be discovering and rediscovering that the joy of being chosen is quickly overshadowed by the immensity of the task. And, as it turns out, it meant entering into a daily struggle between the awesomeness of being called to something bigger than myself and the dreadful realization that I will never quite be up to the challenge.