Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. James 1:23-24

When installing an appliance or putting together a piece of furniture, it seems to me there are levels of understanding. The lowest level is when you know you don’t know anything at all, so you sit down with the instructions first, before you do anything.  The next level is when you think you know something about it, so you start without the instructions and soon find that your are in fact an idiot and then sit down with the instructions. The third level of understanding is when you know enough about the task to know that each case is a little different, so you start by sitting down with the instructions.

If there are higher levels of understanding than this, I admit to being totally out of touch with them.  I myself typically float back and forth between the first two levels. When my wife sees me walking through the house carrying a tool, she immediately drops what she’s doing and follows me as she grabs the phone and calls for help. I have learned (mostly the hard way) how helpful it is to read and follow the instructions from the beginning.  In my case, it doesn’t guarantee success, but it at least prevents me from screwing my table top into the floor, or other such embarrassing results.

When asked how I can mediate congregational conflict in such a wide variety of denominations and churches, how it is possible to effectively navigate church conflict even with little understanding of the culture, the answer seems obvious to me: I just stay focused on the instructions, i.e., scripture.  I learned early in this ministry that there is no amount of worldly wisdom or experience which can guarantee a peaceful, successful mediation in a congregational dispute.  Emotions are high, the pain runs deep, and volatile relationships are unpredictable at best.  There simply is no putting things back together without starting with the instructions: the Word of God.

Interestingly, once you start there, the cultural differences suddenly do not matter much.  Scripture has this remarkable ability to cut through culture and the things of this world.  I certainly cannot always explain why it works…I just know that it does.  That, of course, is what child-like faith looks like.  Finding our way through broken relationships requires a child-like faith in the Word of God and what it tells us about relationships.  As my Dad always says: when all else fails, try reading the instructions.

Of course, I have from time to time encountered a group for whom the Bible is not the final word…a group who questions its authority.  I am always quick to clarify for them that I really have nothing to offer them.  I wouldn’t even know where to start.  If as a “church” they don’t recognize God’s Word as their supreme authority, then for me it is like trying to put something together with no instructions at all.  If the instructions which come with my new appliance are nothing more to me than guidelines, i.e., loose fences to lean against, then chances are pretty good that my new appliance will never work the way it was intended to work.  For a Christian, “The Word” should be at the very center of life.  For a church, it should be the very foundation upon which all things are built.

When it comes to mediating congregational conflict and all its inherent complexities, I am just not smart enough to come up with my own “wisdom” about how it should go.  I am at the lowest level of understanding.  So, I start with the instructions.  I let scripture order my steps and inform my process.  I allow God’s Word to set the agenda.  Then, just maybe, there is at least a chance for success at the end of the day.

© Blake Coffee

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Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

Tuesday Re-mix -

This is the next in a series of posts originally titled “Habits of Peacemakers”.

I think my favorite peacemaker in the Bible was Abigail (I Samuel 25).  She saw a disastrous conflict coming (thanks to her absolute jerk of a husband) and she got involved.  She “handled” communication in such a way as to avert a very painful scenario for her family and probably for others as well.

That is a habit of peacemakers.  They see danger coming where there has been a breakdown in communication and they involve themselves in the communication efforts.  They become “interpreters”, helping each party hear the real concern on the other party’s part.  They become “press secretaries”, helping each party learn a better, more productive way to say what they are feeling.  They become “scribes”, making sure that only the right words get etched in stone for posterity’s sake.  And in some cases, they become “advocates”, giving voice to a party who’s voice is otherwise not going to be heard.

Peacemakers understand one thing about relationships: they rise and fall based completely upon perceptions.  Your response to me (i.e., your half of our relationship) will necessarily be based on your perception of me or of something I have said or done.  Knowing this, peacemakers help control that perception by controlling the communication.  They get involved in that process in order to ensure that genuine communication is really happening (as opposed to speculation or wrong conclusions).

Peacemakers insist that there be communication when there otherwise would not be.  They stop the gossiper and insist that he/she talk directly TO the person rather than ABOUT the person.  They push me to talk to you about my feelings when I might rather stew and steam a while longer.  They let you know that I am stewing and implore you to come to me and listen.

Peacemakers intercede between you and me in order to help me understand your pain and to help you understand my pain.  They have an ability to take my deepest concern and express it to you in words you will understand, and vice versa.  They step between us, just temporarily, in order to get us past this communications glitch.

A peacemaker sees someone trying desperately to communicate something important to another person who clearly is not understanding, and the peacemaker is compelled to step in and help the communication happen.  It is how they are wired.  They cannot help it.

Peacemakers have, over time, naturally developed a knack for delivering difficult messages, hard or painful truths…so much so, that their friends and family often ask -them to handle difficult communications for them.  This particular skill, perhaps as much as any other, sometimes pushes them into leadership positions.  Because saying the hard things is something leaders do.  For genuine peacemakers, “speaking the truth in love” is more than just an admonishment, it has become an art form.  And they are artists.

So, who do you know like this?  Who are the peacemakers in your life?

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

“Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.” Hebrews 3:1

This week in The Gathering, I will teach about God’s perspective on grief.  Tough lesson for me, since I have been blessed with only a limited amount of it in my life.  Frankly, I’ve done a whole lot more consoling of others than I have needed consoling myself.  But you don’t have to be an expert on grief to know that it has a profound effect on our ability to see truth.  In fact, a part of the healing process is learning to look through the pain to some larger truth which, difficult as it may be to grasp in spite of the pain, still has a way of guiding us.

But the grief process is not reserved only for individuals.  Churches grieve also.  The loss of a much-loved leader, the loss of a ministry or program, the loss of a “way of doing things”, the loss of unity…all of these can cause a type of grieving process for a church.  And like the grieving process for an individual, it can be unpredictable and unrelenting.  It can last a few days or a few years, perhaps even an entire generation.  It can cause the church to do and say things it doesn’t mean to do and say.  But most of all, just like the grief process for anyone else, it is painful…unbearably so.

Moreover, grief has a way of disorienting us, both as individuals and as congregations.  It turns up into down and right into left.  It leaves us not even knowing which way to look for direction.  It is chaotic and complex and confounding.

So, it is in the pain of real grief when we are often left with little orientation other than to fall back onto whatever “safe harbor” we have established ahead of time.  For me, that would be God’s Word.  Whether in my individual grief or in my corporate grief, I have already long since decided where I will turn.  I have placed my most childlike faith in God’s Word, so that, even through the unspeakable pain of emptiness and loss, I can at least find some general sense of my bearings.

Of course, hearing the truth–perhaps even knowing the truth–does not take the pain away.  It does not bypass the grief process.  We must still go through all the pain which grief brings, for however long the process may be for us.  But fixing our eyes on eternal truth at least serves to give us direction, it reminds us to breathe, and then to breathe again.  It walks before us every day of the journey, calling us one more step forward…not around the grief, but through it.

It gives us the only thing we can trust during the otherwise mixed-up season of emptiness and loss.  There is nothing else trustworthy, nothing else which is not capable of leading us astray.  We must fix our eyes on Jesus and cling to His Word…and crawl forward, and then do it again.  And at some point a long way down that road, clarity begins to come again.  And though the loss is still there and has carved out a new normal for us, we still have the one thing worth holding onto through it all…God’s love.  And isn’t that exactly what your church needs most?

© Blake Coffee

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Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

]]> http://churchwhisperer.com/2010/08/26/82610/feed/ 0 blakecoffee Focus on the Cross http://churchwhisperer.com/2010/08/24/82410/ http://churchwhisperer.com/2010/08/24/82410/#comments Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:00:29 +0000 Blake http://churchwhisperer.com/?p=2083 ]]> Tuesday Re-mix:

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Hebrews 5:11-14

I have not yet met a pastor or a church leader who thinks their church actually has too much community or too much in the way of genuine relationships.  The truth is, all of us are always looking for ways to develop a deeper sense of community among our members.  We all understand that there simply is no richer, deeper, more fulfilling sense of God’s love and grace than to be fully known and fully loved, i.e., to have someone know our darkest secrets and struggles and flaws and still love us!

I have found that kind of community in our church’s support group ministry.  It is the absolute best way I have ever seen to say to hurting people, “We understand you and we love you anyway!”  I have come to believe that the more church members we can get involved in it, the deeper our sense of community becomes.  Here is a great example from that ministry:

The underlying message behind support groups is the same message which is at the heart of all genuine community: you are not alone. My church’s support group ministry is built on two simple foundational pieces: (1) God’s Word, and (2) friends who share your pain.  There seems to be no limit to how much healing can take place with those two elements working together in a person’s life.

Of course, there is much more to a good support group ministry than that.  But that is the core of it.  Anything about this message which might help your church in the area of community?  Would it at least be worth an e-mail to me for more information about starting this kind of ministry?

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

Tuesday Re-mix -

Peacemaking means a lot of things to a lot of people, even within the context of the church.  There are gentle, non-anxious leaders who are often called peacemakers.  There are true mediator-like people who help resolve conflict.  I believe there are even those who have a Spiritual gift of peacemaking.  In my ministry, I suppose I am a bit of a “collector” of peacemakers.  That is, I have people from all walks of life who have joined me in peacemaking in churches all over the world.  So I can say with some confidence that peacemakers come in all shapes and sizes, and how they do what they do comes in many forms as well.

But I have also come to see some commonalities among them.  There are common experiences and common reactions to circumstances.  There are things all peacemakers do, whether they know it or not.  And that is what this series of posts will address.  I am calling it Habits of Peacemakers.

The first observation is the clearest for me.  Every true peacemaker I have ever known has been given an ability, a “gift”: peacemakers see broken relationships.  Usually, peacemakers see them before most other people see them.  Often, peacemakers see them before the parties themselves even realize the brokenness is there.  I’m sorry for this connection, but I just couldn’t help drawing from a favorite movie of mine.  Maybe you remember it.  M. Night Shyamalan’s best effort yet, in my opinion.

“I see dead people.” Haley Joel Osment’s line will go down in movie history.  And real peacemakers relate to his  character’s problem.  When a genuine peacemaker looks across the landscape of a congregation, even a relatively happy, healthy congregation, he/she sees broken relationships.  Other people see wholeness and happiness and progress.  But for peacemakers, there may be a room filled with healthy relationships, but he /she will only see the one that is horribly damaged.  Peacemakers see them all around us, and it is almost haunting at times.

But seeing the brokenness is not the worst of it.  Seeing the damaged relationships, peacemakers are intrinsically and inescapably drawn to them.  It is the whole “moths to a flame” deal.  We cannot help it.  As peacemakers, it is how we are wired.  It is certainly not a choice (at least not for me–my temperament is to run from conflict).  But it compels us.  I’m not talking about the kind of fascination school kids have for gathering and watching a fight.  We all know that feeling.  This is a different feeling.  It is a growing sense that this relationship is terribly broken and that it can be fixed and that I need to help fix it.

In moving toward broken relationships while others are keeping their distance, peacemakers are sometimes accused of being “busybodies” and interfering in matters which are none of our business.  Some of us have erected boundaries to deal with that perception and some have not.  But the boundaries do not change who we are.  They only serve as some well-placed social inhibitions to keep us from doing something silly.  They do not change what the peacemaker sees and they do not change what the peacemaker feels drawn to do.

The church needs peacemakers.  It has always needed them, but in this day of quickly changing paradigms and radically different generations from one to the next, and in this day of new “iterations” of Christianity (e.g., the “emergent church”, etc.), peacemakers have never been more in demand.  And in response to that demand for peacemakers, I personally believe God is raising them up all across the church in many different persons: big ones, little ones, professional ones, lay ones, old ones, and young ones.  You can’t tell who they are by looking at them.  But you can “catch” them pretty easily.  Just find the broken relationships in your church, and then look through the crowd of people moving away from that brokenness and see the one or two or few people actually moving toward it.  You’ve snagged them.  Those are your peacemakers.  They are acting out one of their habits.

Once you “catch” them, be careful what you do with them.  You’re going to need them.  Then again, you’ve probably already figured that out.

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

“The peace of mind one experiences on one’s own, one’s certainty of self in the serenity of solitude, are nothing in comparison to the release and openness and fluency one shares with another, in close companionship.” Muriel Barbery

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.” Oscar Wilde

One of the trends I believe we will see in the church over the next 20 years is its people growing increasingly comfortable with genuine transparency in their relationships…knowing each other more fully and having fewer and fewer deep dark secrets. I believe this because our younger generations (generation X and millennials) just seem to hold genuine community as a much higher value than those of us who are baby boomers and older. If you don’t believe this, spend about 30 minutes on your college student’s social media pages. OMG…LOL! On the other hand, go to their respective grandparents’ facebook pages (if they have a page at all) and you’ll find an utter vacuum of any personal information. These older generations, after all, are the generations who brought us firewalls and the right to privacy and LifeLock and gated communities. For our generation, the walls are up and the shades are drawn! Transparency, it seems, is just difficult for those of us over 40.

If I am right about this trend, then that means we still have about 20 years or so of teaching the importance of being transparent…the significance of truly knowing each other and of being truly known. Being the New Testament church demands that we live in relationships of accountability and that we learn to be involved in one another’s lives. I suspect I will spend the rest of my ministry life finding creative ways to teach this to my generation of church leaders. Then, by the time my work in this world is done, a new generation of church leaders will be in place and they will have a whole other set of issues to complicate their lives!

The protests I hear from my generation of leaders sound something like this:

• It’s just not safe for a leader, especially a pastor, to share too much personal information with his congregation…it will always lead to his undoing.
• There have to be limits…you have to be careful to whom you show your faults and flaws.
• My people don’t want to think of me with flaws…that is not the leader they want to follow.
• My accountability is to God and God alone. He is the only one with whom I can be that transparent.

And by the way, it’s not just the leaders who feel this way. It is two entire adult generations of church members.

Here is what I say to those of us over 40 and struggling with all those troubling scriptures about confessing our sins one to another and holding one another accountable and being transparent with one another: everything in moderation… including transparency (with apologies to Oscar Wilde).

You see, scripture does not demand that every member of my church know every sordid detail of my life. Surely, the vast majority of my acquaintances at church would never want to know those details. So, while I may show only a measured degree of transparency in the larger congregation, I might be a little more transparent in my Sunday School class, and a little more transparent yet in my home Bible study group, and even more transparent yet in my addiction support group, etc. The bottom line to transparency in our Christian relationships is simply that we have somebody (i.e., some small circle of friends) who know our deepest struggles and who carry those burdens with us. In effect, we have “levels” of transparency, depending on the group and the circumstances. And for me, that squares quite nicely with scripture.

So, to my baby boomer friends, take a deep breath and find a support group ministry you can plug into in order to learn what genuine Christian relationships look like. And for my daughters and all their friends…quit laughing at us. We’re trying!

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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