Don’t Go In There By Yourself

Something I have learned from wise colleagues and from wise lay leaders is this maxim, “Don’t go into the lion’s den all by yourself.”

I was reminded of this during a conversation with a colleague the other day when she was describing a troubling development at her church and trying to figure out how to solve the problem all on her lonesome. It’s SUCH a typical ministerial thing to do, to try to understand the situation, the people involved, the sensitive issues, and the needs of the church all in one balanced perspective and do the right thing to resolve the problem.

The problem with that approach is that it leaves the minister holding perhaps too much sensitive and potentially dangerous information all by themselves, relying on their own best instincts to work everything out. And the problem with THAT approach is that pastors tend not so much to work everything out as to smooth everything over, perhaps holding to a teensy weensy bit of, shall we say, unreasonable optimism or maybe just denial than is healthy and realistic. I love my colleagues but we can really be dingbats in the trust department. You don’t want to get cynical but when a minister sees someone running at us with a knife held firmly in their fist, we’re too often like, “OH, I bet you’re running over here to cut a big sheetcake and give pieces to everyone, right!?”

Wrong.

Call someone in on your dilemma. Take counsel with them. If the situation involves your congregation, for heaven’s sake tell a trusted lay leader who can help you strategize next steps. That’s the way we should be working together for our churches.

It’s not that unusual for ministers to have a messiah complex or to be Lone Ranger types of leaders. But please, don’t be a hero. You won’t be in the long run, anyway. What you will have been was one human being with limited perception and a boatload of conditioning in wishful thinking (what is it be a person of faith, after all, if not to be a person of Wishful Thinking!?) who should have asked for help at a tricky time in the life of the church.

Bring it beyond yourself. Tell someone. Talk about it. Admit that you we don’t always know what we’re doing, and in fact, we seldom know what we’re doing.

You can pray, of course, and you should. But remember that story about the faithful man in the flood fighting to keep his head above water while the waters coursed around him and he clung to one remaining roof beam of his house. A friend rowed by in a little boat and said, “Jump in!” and the man said, “No, my friend, I know that God will save me!” And the guys in the helicopter lowered a rope and said, “Climb up!” and the man yelled, “No, I know that God will save me!” When the man drowned and went to heaven, he confronted God. “I had so much faith in You, why did you not save me in my time of need?” And God took a big drag on her cigar and said, “Sweetheart, who do you think was in that boat and lowering the ladder from the helicopter?”

Okay, I added the part about the cigar, but you know the rest is plain truth.