Health begets health, sickness begets sickness
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Growing up in the church, I would never have used the word “toxic” in a church context. When I was little, I was unaware of the unhealthy people and dynamics at work in my home church. It was not until I did my field education work at a United Methodist church in Somerville, MA that I would have used “toxic” to describe a member of a church.
I went to visit a couple in the church. We had a lovely visit at first. In the conversation, one of the two asked why we were using matzah for Holy Communion. I thought this was an innocent inquiry and talked about my understanding of it. In my explanation, I suggested reaching out to the Communion steward to give her feedback on it.
Reach out, she did. She yelled at the Communion steward. This upset the pastor. Who did not chastise the person who verbally attacked the Communion steward. The pastor chastised me. I did not intend to have the person go after the Communion steward. The thought never crossed my mind. It was easier though to go after me than confront the toxicity of the person upset by matzah.
Early in my ministry, I encountered people who were caustic. Caustic is a harsh adjective, but it is the most fitting one for their personalities. They could be nice, friendly, congenial, but they could be nasty too. I realized quickly a reason why people would leave the church.
My first encounter with their corrosive personalities is when I met with the staff parish relations committee before being appointed to the church. The committee was asking me questions and one person asked me about my view on a controversial issue. I shared my honest, though diplomatic, perspective. The district superintendent loved my response so much he shared it with the bishop. Everyone in the room seemed satisfied with it. The person who asked was not.
Instead of having further conversation with me about it, he took a different route. Before I got to the church, he salted the earth. The man reached out to everyone and their mothers, informing them of what I said in a confidential meeting. He wanted to know how I could be their pastor with this perspective.
When I found out about his attempts to undermine me before I started my ministry with the church, I was told not to worry about it. That is just how that person is. You just must live with it. As long as I was their pastor, I did have to find a way to coexist with his caustic nature.
He would say biting and mean-spirited things all the time. Sometimes he would dress his words in humor, but often not. At one point, he went on a crusade to get a church leader to attend Sunday School. The way he hounded her did not sit well with the leader. It got to the point where she was on the verge of leaving the church.
I tried to talk with him in a reasoned and civil manner. Saying if his goal was to get people to come to Sunday School, this was not a good tactic. He was not interested in my counsel. Instead, he wanted to know who was snitching on him. After the meeting, he told everyone that I yelled at him for inviting people to Sunday School.
He was not the only caustic person. There was another person who also could say mean and biting things to people. She one time criticized me for writing her a thank you note (to be fair-my hand writing). But whenever I brought up that their behavior was not healthy or proper, people would make excuses for their words and actions. Oh, that is just that person. Don’t take it personally. The person has always been like that.
These experiences led me to think about attractional models of church. For a time, this was a buzzword in church leadership circles. You wanted to create a church community that attracted people from the outside. I started thinking about attraction in terms of health and sickness.
Some would argue only healthy things grow. So, you could judge the health of a church by its growth. Healthy churches grow and unhealthy churches decline. It’s not true though. Cancers grow. Infections grow. I would contend unhealthy leaders and unhealthy people sometimes attract more unhealthy leaders and unhealthy people.
An unhealthy church will not appeal to a healthy person. No one healthy wants to be around caustic people. Churches that care about the emotional and spiritual health of the congregants are going to create boundaries and lines to stop caustic people. They won’t make excuses for a caustic person or turn a blind eye to the consequences of their behavior.
Toxic leaders will send up red flags to someone who is emotionally healthy. An unhealthy person though might resonate with the sickness of the toxic leader. A church can grow by attracting unhealthy people to it. Unhealthy leaders can attract unhealthy people. Sickness can resonate with sickness. We get what we sow. Sometimes unhealthy seeds produce unhealthy fruit.
Up above, I argued the contentions healthy things grow and unhealthy things decline are not true. I then contended that unhealthy things can grow. I would also contend that when a person tries to be healthy in an unhealthy situation, that often can lead to decline, not vitality.
After reading Edwin Friedman’s book A Failure of Nerve, I am convinced that our best bet for making a difference in the world is to be the healthiest version of ourselves. The problem with a healthy person in a situation, though, is that the person points out, either intentionally or unintentionally, the sickness of the situation. Unhealthy people dislike their sickness exposed. A caustic person does not see themselves as caustic. Systems form/develop and people like the system as it is and do not want the system to change. An unhealthy system depends on sickness and sometimes even attracts it.
The irony is that healthy leadership can sometimes lead to a decline in a church. Healthy leadership might be what people say the church needs, but it is not what a church might want. Systems work the way they developed to work. Health is like the light in Plato’s allegory of the cave. It may be what is best, what would benefit us most, but it hurts too much to embrace. Sometimes we prefer the darkness.
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