COMMUNAL SPIRITUALITY WITH ROD WILSON

How can we make our organizations healthier?

Inever want to work in a Chris- tian organization again,” said Robert after his nonprofit role ended. “All they did was gripe and complain in a way I never saw in my secular business career.” After many years of working on staff in a church, Debbie was done. “I grew tired of the triumphalism and the belief that we were the only thing God was doing in town.” And Cathy formerly identi- fied herself with the Christian faith, but it was clear she wanted out. “More and more I am sensing that churches and Christian organizations are not expressing compas- sion either toward insiders or outsiders, but are actually being cruel.”

For Robert, Debbie and Cathy, it was not individuals who pushed them to the edge. It was the organization. It was the group, the church, or Christian organizations in general. It was the collective infused with unhealthy qualities that eventually pushed them out the door.

Attitudes are in the DNA, hidden behind the walls and floating in the air. Often it is not one person who does the damage, but toxicity that exists in the way the community functions.

It’s almost as if the individuals participate in something bigger than themselves. There is an ethos to each organization, qualities present in the team that make it easy to speak of, for example, suchand-such church as a snooty place, or that youth ministry as a place with a lot of whiners, or that particular ministry training centre as an organization with attitude.

Evangelicals tend to speak of sin as a category that applies solely to individuals, but principalities and powers can also infuse communities and social structures. Sin is not simply something I do or you do, but something we do as a community. The sins of communities can sometimes be more damaging than those of individuals.

In Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Augsburg Press, 1992) theologian Walter Wink writes that any “attempt to transform a social system without addressing both its spirituality and its outer forms is doomed to failure. Only by confronting the spirituality of an institution and its concretions can the total entity be transformed . . . . ”

What would it look like if we addressed the collective spirituality of our churches and Christian nonprofits, to move us toward greater communal transformation? Communal lament, humility and kindness can help us find the way.

AN INVITATION TO COMMUNAL LAMENT

We never see advertisements for seminars on how to complain, gripe or whine. Most of us find it easy to do. We need no instruction. Many communities and churches have that spirit deeply implanted in their way of being.

These are the communities where the glass is always half empty, where problems absorb the thinking and dominate the speech. These are settings where staff are complaining about the church community, where the church community is critiquing the leadership and the whole body is whining about the world. There may be a preponderance of sermons, talks and lectures where the Church and mainstream society are constantly critiqued and evaluated.

The answer to this spirit is not a pollyannish, “You need to be more positive,” but an embrace of biblical

lament by the entire community.

When the psalmist expresses his complaint in Psalm 88:1–3, “Lord, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you. May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry. I am overwhelmed with troubles and my life draws near to death,” he is bringing his genuine concerns to the right place.

The God who saves is the recipient. As the creator and sustainer of the universe, He is both willing and able to take on the laments of His people. In the process the people engage in a process of recalibration influenced by their understanding of God.

Recalibration invites us to ask, “What is the nature of my complaint and where is God in the process?”

Lament is an opportunity to verbalize our anguish, speak about God’s apparent silence and try to make sense of the darkness. It elevates our petty criticisms and frames our griping and complaining. It turns concerns into an opportunity for vertical connection rather than horizontal discouragement.

Churches and nonprofits would be healthier if their leaders mobilized their organizations to:

immerse themselves in the lament literature and ensure it works its way into the fabric of their work together pray with genuine lament rather than whine about relatively unimportant matters.

In Surprised by Hope (HarperOne, 2008) Bible scholar N.T. Wright reminds us that for communities in the process of lament, “Even when they find no way to turn the corner toward resolution, they are eventually if sorrowfully content to leave the dire situation in front of God’s door.”

AN INVITATION TO COMMUNAL HUMILITY

For many of us humility might be wrongly identified as a view of ourselves characterized by negativity or denial. As C. S. Lewis advocates in his famous Screwtape Letters (Harper, 1942), biblical humility is very different:

God wants to bring man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. God’s whole effort therefore will be to get the man’s mind off the subject of his own value altogether.

If self-forgetfulness gives us one window into humility, what does the opposite look like in churches or Christian nonprofits? Are church ministerials places where pastors are bogged down by oppressive comparisons of other churches’ staff, numbers on Sunday morning and the dollar value of their building campaigns? Do nonprofits self-identify as the best or the only entity that has a particular ministry emphasis? Do new churches set themselves up as being more biblical, Christian and orthodox than other expressions of the Kingdom in the area?

Pretending we are more inferior, or falling short, or not worthy is not the essence of humility. Rather we need to put our communities in right perspective. They are icons, not idols. An icon points us to God and invites humility. An idol is a god, and cultivates idolatry where the community becomes the end and not the means.

If a particular church sees itself as an icon, the community has a humble posture because it is simply one of many ways God draws people to Himself. Other churches in the neighbourhood are not seen as competitors, threats or groups to be looked down on, but as those on the same journey and part of the same Kingdom.

Churches and nonprofits would be healthier if their leaders mobilized their organizations to:

frame their work with humble self-forgetfulness rather than communal arrogance bring a Kingdom mindset to not only their own work but also similar enterprises where God is active and at work.

Other churches . . . are not seen as competitors, threats or groups to be looked down on, but as those on the same journey and part of the same Kingdom.

AN INVITATION TO COMMUNAL KINDNESS

Sexual abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church and others have reminded us of the reality that cruelty does take place, too often, at the hands of Christian leaders and individuals. Specific leaders inflicted pain and suffering on others, but that is only part of the story. The communal response to this reality has also, too often, been characterized by additional cruelties. The systems, structures and communities that turn a blind eye to these issues are engaging in institutional cruelty.

According to Philip Hallie in The Paradox of Cruelty (Wesleyan University Press, 1969), institutional cruelty “Grinds them slowly, smoothly and exceeding small. And the grinder, the victimizer, is usually a faceless establishment, not a single person into whose eyes we can stare with a personal curiosity.”

As individuals we may self-assess and determine we are not cruel because we do not willfully create hardship for others. But that is only

one side of cruelty. It is cruel when faceless establishments are muted, silent and quiet in the presence of others’ pain.

Are our Christian nonprofits and churches agents of institutional cruelty in response to those experiencing pain? The word compassion can be traced to two Latin words – cum patior – suffer with, endure with, struggle with. Unlike cruelty where we depersonalize and stay removed, compassion moves us closer together. We suffer with the person battling with mental health, disability, family dysfunction, theological heresies, addictions and the like. More importantly, we seek to cultivate a community of hospitality and belonging so we are with the other.

When people enter communities of this nature, it is not only answers or solutions they receive. They are not simply carriers of problems, but people to be cherished and prized. Presence is a higher value than advising. Welcome means more than resolution. Messiness is not something to be fixed.

In a compassionate community people soon realize it is not a problem to have a problem. In a cruel community, it is not necessarily your specific problem that is a challenge to the community, but the very fact you have one at all.

Such a compassionate posture is costly – and a lot more work than cruelty. Every time Jesus is described as having compassion, it was not just a sentimental piety or a warm inner feeling. When He was moved with compassion, He reached out and acted (Matthew 14:14; 20:34; Mark 6:34). Compassionate acts are sacrificial, centred on others, and require connection.

Churches and nonprofits would be healthier if their leaders mobilized their organizations to:

understand both the individual and communal nature of cruelty and its capacity to negate compassion participate in the sacrificial spirit of presence, being with rather than the pragmatism of solving and fixing.

In a compassionate community people soon realize it is not a problem to have a problem.

When our Christian organizations and churches are committed to communal lament rather than complaining, communal humility rather than arrogance, and communal compassion rather than cruelty, we make “the teaching about God our Saviour attractive” (Titus 2:10) to those inside the walls as well as those on the other side. /FT