Disruptions

What do we do with disruption in our community?

It's not a life/death scenario of a hostile, gun-toting shooter in our midst, but the violence can be real.

Wait ... "real" violence?  What?

We're talking about the relational violence of accusations, group texts, real time disruptions in a meeting.  "Hurting people hurt people" is not just a nice bumper sticker--there are layers of truth to it, and sometimes hurting people hurt people in the form of a community disruption.  And it feels violent, and it does damage.

In this letter, I'm not talking to the hurting person.  Obviously if I were I'd recommend "first, do no harm."  I'd say that as Christians organize themselves (into churches) in partnership with the Holy Spirit, there is going to be some level of yieldedness where leaders are trying to do the right thing and are open to correction.  And so the hurting person could be safe/wise to trust God to deal with the leaders without their help--maybe strike a note like: "Dear Church Leaders, it's painful to be in relationship with you and I feel hurt because of these words/decisions, so I'm leaving or considering leaving this fellowship."  

To the hurting person I'd caution against gossip, where you are talking to person B about person C when person B isn't part of the problem or the solution.  I'd recommend lots of "I" statements.  I'd remind them that in spite of their best efforts to pierce the veil between outward actions and inward intentions, they really, truly cannot discern motivations.  Stay curious.

But I'm actually not talking to the hurting person, because the topic is what to do with disruption and I'm assuming that the hurting person went and did the thing.  They wrote an angry letter and sent it to the whole church.  Like David's son, they stood at the city gates and talked to everyone about how much better it would be if only they could be king.  They shouted accusations during the offering.  They dumped a bunch political heat into a private chat group.  They started selling a miracle cream and set up a table next to the communion wafers at the front.  They did something that caused disruption, and the community is aware of it.  What now?

It's embarrassing.  Usually the shouter (aka hurting person) has already interacted with the church leadership and is now broadening the audience.  There are seekers and new members in the room, and they wonder "what have we gotten ourselves into?"  If you ask three people you'll get four opinions about how to handle the shouting in the moment and how to approach damage control.  Ignore it?  Escort them from the room?  Issue your own defensive press release?

In our church, we deeply care about the shouter AND about the community.  I don't already know what we're going to do in each case, ahead of time.  Right now is "ahead of time" and I am mostly asking you to trust me/us.  Trust that we are trying to balance the good of the one with the good of the many, and when thinking of the many we're thinking of the ones who are new/seekers AND the ones who are emotionally/relationally connected.  There's nothing about it that's just an easy answer.

Also you can know that there is benefit to slow communication.  When it's painful it feels like there's urgency to get everything said, and then urgency to respond, but there is benefit to going slowly.  So sometimes we'll temporarily freeze communications if they're being used to the detriment of the community, even though the freezing is also harmful (smells like Control, denying Free Speech, etc).  

Finally, my promise is that I am doing my best to stay yielded and open to the Father.  That applies to all the people who are trying to lead the church--we're trying to do a good job of it.  We're open to his correction and really, really trying to do the things that he's prepared in advance for us to do, to run the race well, to hear him say Well Done.  What it means is that when there's disruption in our community your best call is to pray for us to hear clearly how to respond, pray for the hurting person, and pray for the healing process.  We're so grateful!