wilderness journey: the emotional side effects of sin

Biblical places are part of our spiritual journeys.  The narrative breaks into our lives and draws us into the biblical world.  There are times in church life when it is possible and good to identify where we are in the story.  We are in the garden of gethsemane, where Jesus is weeping, where tensions run high, where anger strikes out, where forces of power collide.  It is a place of high emotion.  It is night.  We are walking together in my congregation through a difficult time.  It is a time of brokenness and sin.  It is a time when we acknowledge that some behaviors and attitudes have not been consistent with the law of love and grace.  It is a time when it is hard to be together and yet we need to be together.  And I am grateful for those faithful people who remain partners in ministry here, so that we can walk together with courage and hope.  So what are we learning as we walk in this garden?

There are personal stories and dynamics at work here that we are trying to acknowledge and understand.  What we are also trying to convey is that placing blame without acknowledging one's own fault and guilt is both unhealthy and unrealistic.  Scapegoating is classic avoidance. So we are trying to listen for the places where pointing out the fault of the other is a way of denying or avoiding one's own faults. This is not easy work.  It is not comfortable, either.  But it is necessary and it is gospel-driven.  We hope to offer healing and reconciliation to people who are really struggling to remain faithful to God and to the church.
In every instance where someone has struggled with pastoral leadership or the transition that occurred when I arrived here five years ago, that person was grieving some loss or fearing some kind of death.  Some loss of power or control in one area of life gets manifested in a desire to assert power and control over some other area.  Church, the ministry of the gospel, and the pastor as symbol of Christ, becomes a "safe" place for some folks to work out their grief.  Anger, resistance to change, and a need for attention are the calling cards of people who are afraid, in pain, or mourning.  There are healthy and unhealthy ways to seek relief from pain and to garner attention to grief.  if there is a way to address and acknowledge someone's pain or grief, you can begin to offer healing.  Sometimes people are in denial of their true feelings, though.  in this case, we recognize our total dependency on the Spirit of Christ to root out the cause of suffering and to ease or dis-ease.  Some demons can only be driven out by prayer, Jesus says.  Sometimes we can do nothing better than to pray for someone. I pray a lot.  And as a result I am seeing some people differently.  I am seeing them, not as the enemy, but as people whose spirits are in bondage to sin. I am hearing their pain and their fear and their  grief in the voices of their complaints and their anger.  It doesn't make it easier to love or like them.  But prayer has begun to open my eyes and ears to hear and see something deeper at work inside.
Admittedly, I have learned a great deal about emotional dynamics in the last few weeks.  An unacknowledged grief or wound cannot heal.  And the manifestation of those festering emotions can be dangerous---because anger is like jet fuel.  Getting to know the emotional state of individuals in a system is essential to determining how to lead and how to move the system forward through change.
Change is a catalyst.  In the cultural context of rapid, discontinuous change people are experiencing loss constantly.  Rapid change is a constant reminder that you are behind the times, that you are antiquated, that you are not as useful or as important as you once were.  Change reveals our limits.   Change that is articulated as progress is a criticism on the old ways.  I've heard people say, "You mean to say we've been doing it wrong all this time?" Change diminishes what was and the people who were.
So what does all of this mean?  When a leader becomes a lightning rod, is blamed and scapegoated as the cause of division, frustration, and resistance its time to take a look at the emotional story of the system.  What I find is that the big picture truth does not effectively address the internal pain and struggle that some people have in the face of change and grief.  It doesn't matter that decline is the general narrative of small mainline protestant churches.  Not even the presence of good fruit can overcome the grief some have. Pointing out how change has resulted in something good is just more acknowledgement that certain folk are "out of step." In our case the presence of new, faithful members is actually heard as a judgment or a criticism by people who are denying their own sin.  In fact, calling for increased faithfulness is heard as an indictment on them, rather than a gracious word of encouragement.  Imagine that someone hears an invitation to prayer as a criticism that they are not good enough or faithful enough.  They are denying their own guilt or their own stubborn unwillingness to surrender to God's purposes and intentions for them.  
Now there are some people who go too far.  These are folk whose behavior is out-of-bounds, especially beyond the rule of love and grace.  When hate speech and anger become weapons of destruction, then intervention is necessary.  Matthew 18 norms our behavior toward people who sin in the church.  We are working through the steps of offering reconciliation to people.  But the key to it all is acknowledging and identifying the internal struggle and the pain within them that is manifesting itself in unhealthy ways.
My hope is that we will root out the threat of sin to destroy us, that we will communicate with and understand one another better, and that we will continue the ministry of the gospel which calls us into spiritual transformation.  Change is an essential aspect of faith.  God's love changes everything.