Four Questions That Drive Me
My mind has always been an intensely curious one. I love questions. I love ideas. I love exploring, examining, understanding. I love not being clever enough to understand. Sitting in front of an idea, or set of ideas, that I have not yet understood and wanting to dive in, to push, to pull, to stretch and compress ideas in any way I can to see if I can get them to make sense. I have never regarded myself as an intellectual yet I resonate completely with James Sire’s definition of an intellectual:
‘An intellectual is one who loves ideas; is dedicated to clarifying them, developing them, criticising them, turning them over and over, seeing their implications, stacking them atop one another, arranging them, sitting silent while new ideas pop up and old ones seem to rearrange themselves, playing with them, laughing at them, watching them clash, picking up the pieces, starting over, judging them, withholding judgement about them, changing them, bringing them into contact with their counterparts in other systems of thought, inviting them to dine and have a ball but also suiting them for service in work day life.’
‘True intellectuals have fun with ideas. They move them around, back and forth, turn them on their heads, submit them to ironic reflection, test them with their imagination and don't get so enamoured with their own brilliance.’
James Sire in ‘The Habits of the Mind’
When I heard this definition in my heart lept with joy because I could see myself in the definition. I love ideas and I love questioning ideas. I love the pursuit of truth, I love exploring questions that others in my world avoid, even if simply to know why they want to avoid the questions in the first place.
But in the course of time I became terrified of questions. I had questions which were attacked, denied, silenced, and altogether ignored by parties whom I thought were as desirous for truth as I was! I experienced disciples of Christ who feared and suppressed truth instead of pursuing it. I could not believe my eyes and ears! Surely, if people were disciples of Jesus they would be desiring truth and mercy, righteousness and peace? How very naive I was.
After a while I found myself with a new set of questions. There were people I knew and loved who were injured horribly by their experiences with churches and Christian ministries. They were from a huge range of cultures, ages and denominations. The more I learned, the more I come to see that there were thousands of churches who were abusive towards their own people! I had read and reread the bible through a number of times. (I was a bible college principal for 11 years after all!) I was familiar with passages in the prophets where God had brought judgement upon His own people, and in particular the shepherds, who were abusing the people He had given them. In my naivety I believed that those days were passed. I had somehow concluded that if a church or a minister was theologically accurate (i.e. they recognise and submit to the traditional Christian doctrines) they would not be abusive towards God’s people. How wrong I was! As I continued on my own journey I heard story after story of men and women who had been sinned against horribly by ministers and leaders in the local church, and then excommunicated because of sins committed against them!
I heard a story of rape by a youth pastor. I heard stories of theft from church staff members. I heard stories of extortion, intimidation, assault, coerced marriage, sexual manipulation and exploitation (by both male and female congregants) and subsequent denials and looking away by church leadership. To bring light to these stories can be dangerous for those who do not wish to live in silence.
I also heard horror stories from pastors who had been abused by their congregations. Sin is not a one way street. Pastors also bullied, coerced, manipulated and intimidated by financial boards, dominant families in the life of the congregation, or insufficient protection from organisational policies to protect the pastor from being abused financially by the church governance body. So much ugliness to behold!
I did not hear these stories from one source but from many. Many people in different parts of Australia and other countries who had been treated so horrendously by ‘pastors,’ ‘reverends,’ ‘ministers.’ It made me sick to my stomach to listen to these men and women convey their horror stories.
It caused me to ask a new set of questions. Questions which, it turns out, are often avoided passionately by ‘church leadership.’ Yet the questions must be asked.
My big question was ‘How can this be?!’ How can it be that an organisation dedicated to the love, the righteousness and the holiness of Jesus Christ come to embody the very kingdom of darkness that we have all been commanded to fight? How have we become the very forces of darkness that we are meant to be at war against?
From this one big question, four other questions began to emerge. (Each of these questions will have its own post)
1. What is the lifecycle of abuse for the person who is abused in a church or ministry context?
From the moment of entry, to the moment the person is discarded from the church system, what does that cycle look like? My belief is that there are patterns to everything. If we can understand the pattern, we can anticipate, prevent and respond. What is this pattern in a ministry context?
2. What is the process of healing for people who experience abuse in a church or ministry context?
I have met many, many people who have harrowing tales of abuse in and out of church contexts. And whilst many never fully recover from their experiences, there are others that do. What happens for those people who can eventually let go and move on with their lives? Not only move on, but retain a deeper and sweeter connection with God after their experiences with abuse?
3. What is the system that produces abuses in churches and ministries?
William Edwards Deming famously said that, ‘Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.’ From dysfunction to abuse to denial to cover up, what is the process of abuse from the organisation’s perspective?If this is so common (and it is!), surely there has been research conducted and patterns observed in churches and/or other ministries that can help with diagnosis and response.
4. What is the system that produces healthy discipleship in churches and ministries?
Is it possible for a church or ministry to recover from cultures of sin and abuse? The bible seems pretty clear that God can and does redeem some horrendous situations, but what is the process by which mercy and truth meet, where justice and peace kiss (Ps 85:10)? And moreover what does healthy ministry look like?Ministry where abuse is not only avoided, but church members grow in their love and maturity in Christ?
These are the questions that drive me, and drive Co-lab Consulting. Avoiding these questions simply perpetuates the systems that have produced the results they have. Answering these questions means a beautiful, healthy and redeemed Church of Jesus Christ.
