Encountering Dysfunctional Church Systems

In the 1962, Western classic, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” Jimmy Stewart plays a fresh-faced young lawyer, Ransom Stoddard, determined to bring law and order to the wild west town of Shinbone. Before he even makes it into town he is robbed and brutally beaten by the outlaw bully, Liberty Valance.

As much as Stoddard tries to persuade the authorities to bring Valance to justice, the young dandy is at last forced to shoot it out on Main Street with the outlaw.  

You’ll have to get the movie to find out what happens next but here’s my point: pastors who would bring godly order and God’s blessing to troubled churches sometimes find themselves needing to face down bullies and confront dysfunctional behavior with a boldness that they never dreamed they’d ever need to manifest in the ministry.

A few show-downs of my own have taught me a few basics for encountering dysfunctional church systems:

Be a calm, assertive, non-anxious presence. Without the grace of God, most of us couldn’t do this. With God’s grace we can. Consider Paul’s confidence as he contemplates a trial before the Emperor Nero: “I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage, so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death” Philippians 1:20.

Love everyone lavishly. You don’t necessarily have to like troubled, troublesome or even boorish people, but you have to love them, and as above, by God’s grace you can. Loving people gives you the license to speak the truth to them.

Give fresh starts. After getting “the skinny” on the problem people and teaching from Scripture the way we Christians are supposed to treat each other, don’t hold people’s previous behavior against them. Give them a do-over.

Draw lines in the sand. As above, teach patiently from Scripture how Christians are to love one another, speak the truth to one another, confront and forgive each other. You may need to put it in the form of a covenant, asking people to come forward and sign it or even enshrine it behind glass in the church foyer. Having done due diligence, you can expect people to behave better than they have in the past.

Ignore some behaviors. It takes a lot of prayer and sensitivity to God, as well as some good counsel from godly church leaders, but there are behaviors which we must confront right away and others which we can tolerate for a while. In one congregation I gave the old bully a pass as far as speaking a bit disrespectfully to me. When he started picking on our brand new, young, enthusiastic, secretary, we let him know that his bullying would no longer be tolerated.

Other folks behave badly simply because they have ultra-low social skills, no social awareness, no ability to read facial clues, etc. If a board member says that Mary Jean is harmless, she probably is.

Have a sense of humor about unusual people and your own dignity. Just recently a church attendee introduced himself to me and proceeded to boast about how he had single-handedly influenced the church to lower the salaries of its pastors.

Others will delight in telling you why they voted against you or that they would have, had they only know you were a _______________ instead of a ______________. Take God seriously but don’t take yourself so seriously.

The happy ending here is that God can use a healthy pastor who is walking oh-so-close to Himself, to transform the cultures of troubled congregations.