Tag: community

Forgiving the church

It’s been a while since I posted to this blog. I started a couple of posts recently, but then abandoned them. Somehow what I was trying to say wouldn’t come together, probably meaning that I didn’t really need to say it. Cyberspace is clogged up enough without another maundering and meandering blog post!

I started thinking about forgiveness once more after reading a post by a good friend. Read it HERE. The writer is living with the ongoing business of forgiving hurt caused by a church community several years ago. I know whereof she writes, having been through my own time of hurt coming from within a church. I’ve posted about that before: there’s no need to rehash the event.

The issue that presented itself this time was how much pain comes from a hurt caused by a church. I have spoken to many people who have harbored deep sorrow or anger after some event. It seems to me that this pain is often out of proportion to the actual offense, and I have had cause to wonder why. Here’s what I have come to conclude.

The church is called to proclaim good news: love, peace, mercy, healing, welcome, kindness, compassion, caring … the list could go on until tomorrow morning! When we choose to make our spiritual home in a congregation, we expect that we find all of these things in its midst. In contrast to other groups, the church easily becomes the object of higher expectations, shaped by the message it seeks to proclaim. When it fails, the failure is harder to take, and the source of greater pain.

All this is a reminder that churches are human organizations, populated by ordinary people who share a calling to seek something better. We sometimes fail in that calling, and act in ways thapeace beginst belie the goals with which we have been charged. We fail because we are human, but our failures are inevitably held up against the strong light of divine ideals. There’s nothing wrong, and everything right, about those ideals. Nonetheless, we should temper our expectations with the knowledge that people can and do fail.

As I noted in my previous post, forgiveness is hard work, but it is at the heart of Christian life. We cannot find God’s peace when our hearts are at war.

I still choose to forgive.

 

Honesty isn’t the best policy…

It’s the only policy.

I’m in my first year on my condo board. I said when I retired and we moved in here that I would never do this: condo boards deal mainly with finances, building issues, and complaints, the three aspects of church vestries that I found most tiresome. The missional aspect of church life helps to put these matters in some perspective. Not so in a condominium.

Nonetheless, I found myself drawn to this service, in part because I felt that things were not altogether right in how our building was being run. Somewhat to my surprise, I find I’m enjoying the work, or I was, until this week. Back-story: earlier this year we embarked on a project to revitalize a common lounge by the main entrance. After some months, and an expenditure of a reasonable but not huge amount of money, the project was finished, and many people commented on how much better it looked now. But — boom! — we received a package of 11 letters of complaint at this past week’s meeting. The writers didn’t like what was done, and they didn’t like the way it was done. I can accept that some mistakes were made. I also know that you can’t please everyone in matters of taste. People are entitled to their opinions, and if some feelings were hurt, as seems to be the case, some kind of apology could be made.

Dear_Sir_formal_letter_iStock_000004683049XSmallExcept…

Only one of the letters was signed: the property manager had removed the other signatures at the writers’ request. They apparently didn’t want to be open to recriminations, wanting to keep the building peaceful. For me, this just makes things less peaceful, because anonymous complaints make any kind of meaningful response and reconciliation impossible. It’s a matter of community building, which requires openness, honesty, and taking responsibility for one’s own actions and feelings.

In one parish where I served as Rector, we had a spate of critical anonymous letters, very often placed in the collection plate. They bothered me mightily until I realized that I could not respond to them without being in dialogue with the writers. The trouble was less the (sometimes valid) content  than the one-sidedness of the process. I announced a policy of refusing to acknowledge anonymous communications, inviting people who had concerns to come and see me in person. Over the next several months, I had a number of very worthwhile conversations with parishioners. The dishonest communications stopped and the parish never looked back. We discovered the benefits of openness and honesty.

Why would I call anonymous letters dishonest? Simply because they allow the writer to hide behind a veil, covering up any other matters that might pertain to it. The letter may be the truth, but there is no way of knowing if it’s either the whole truth or nothing but the truth. Lies of omission disrespect the recipient, and are every bit as dishonest as lies of commission.

In another parish, I encountered a more straightforward kind of dishonesty. A parishioner had donated a couple of buckets of soup for a church lunch. Somehow, someone had set them on the back steps, where they were forgotten for long enough that they went rotten, ruining the ice-cream pails they came in. A group of people came to me to ask what they should do. What should they tell the donor, who had a sharp tongue and a habit of holding grudges? They wanted a plausible story which would save everyone’s face, but they were rather taken aback when I suggested they simply tell the truth and suffer the consequences.

It worked. The doPrintnor was annoyed about the waste of her gift, and also about the loss of her pails, but the fact that her friends gave her the respect of the truth served to smooth the waters. Trust had been damaged, but if a lie had been told, further trust would have become impossible.
In the church, even more than in a condominium, we are concerned about the building of community. Let’s remember that true community can only be built on trust, and trust can only be built on honesty. And, of course, dishonesty destroys trust.

Jesus said “…you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:32)

 

 

 

Sports and me, and other things

I had a brief exchange with a Facebook friend the other day. The friend is a baseball fan; I am not. To be truthful, I’m not much of a fan of any sport. OK, I’ll watch the occasional hockey game, and once in a while I’ll turn on a Canadian Football League game, but on the whole, my life proceeds very well without watching any sports, whether on TV or live.

It hasn’t always been so. In my first year of university, some of the great events of my first year living in residence were the football parties. A black-and-white TV, several pizzas, and the inevitable and (then-illegal) cases of beer. And all sorts of guys hanging around having a good time. The action on the fuzzy screen was almost incidental. I’ve never played football, except a couple of ill-advised forays into “touch” football, both of which ended with many bruises and sore joints for most participants.

I used to watch the Edmonton Oilers on TV, back in the glory days of the ’80’s w
hen Wayne Gretzky was in his prime. I enjoyed the daring and skill the team displayed, even if I’ve never really understood the game’s subtleties. My love for the Oilers started to wane when Gretzkoilersy was traded to LA in 1988. The only other hockey I ever watched much of was my home town’s senior team, the Drumheller Miners, who won the Allan Cup in 1966. My father was the team physician, and got free admission. I went to a lot of the games with him, sitting in the high bleachers behind the goal. The ambiance counted more for me than the game. As I said, I’ve never really grasped the subtleties of the game.
Hockey is only one game that I don’t really get. Truth be told, I don’t really get any of the common team sports, which may be because I was never any good at any of them, or any other athletic pursuit, team or otherwise. As a child, I was clumsy, slow, and badly coordinated, and Physical Education in school was usually something akin to torture: I couldn’t do most of what we were asked to do, and my classmates teased me endlessly about my incompetence.

There’s good reason why I don’t relate well to sports!

Nonetheless…
I still find myself getting caught up in others’ excitement about sporting events, because it seems to have something important to do with community. The great days watching football with my university buddies were great times of community. The rejoicing over the Oilers’ Stanley Cup victories was a collective party for the whole of this city.

If you like a sport, well and good. If you care deeply about it, that’s your business. I’ll try not to rain on your parade by revealing my lack of interest in something that you love very much.  All I ask is that you be tolerant of me when my eyes glaze over as you discuss the accomplishments (or lack thereof) of your favorite team or player.

I get excited by other things (classical music, church history and politics, food, photography…), and I know that my own passions can provoke the same kind of glazed-eye response as much of sports talk evokes in me. It takes all kinds to make a world, and that’s good.

Whether it’s sports, music, knitting, or whatever, let’s try to rejoice in each other’s passions, without trying to make our own passion someone else’s.