I was reminded this week watching the news coverage of some
of the home-town meetings on the topic of the upcoming Health Care reform
efforts, how effective this method is in killing any real progress. Not only does any point get lost in the
shouting, a perception emerges that the loudest point must be the one shared by
the most people. Even though this is
hardly ever true, the phrase “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” comes to mind. In this case, the associated attention that
gets centered on the hecklers becomes the prevailing perception of the feelings
at the meeting. Again false, but
perception is a hard thing to kill.
I guess it would be O.K., if this sort of thing only
occurred in political circles, on political topics where public interest were
at stake. Unfortunately this is not the
only venue where these tactics are employed successfully. I learned from personal experience they can be
deployed in church. Our local church
“Central SDA” in Orlando Florida was suffering from an aging population,
declining membership, and associated decline in revenue. Since I was not terribly busy at the time, I
decided to write a detailed strategy document on how to turn our trends around. It was a 35 page fully illustrated strategy
document that was embraced by the Pastor, Head Elder, and Head Deacon right
away. The full church board and Ministry
leaders then embraced it, and it was recommended for general adoption at a
general church business meeting. I was
unaware that these meetings even existed, but nonetheless presented my fully
developed PowerPoint presentation as I would have at any of my other board-room
style presentations to the general membership of the church.
I have done this kind of thing throughout my career at many
client companies. I was happy this time
that my personal business skills could be used in a religious setting to help
my local church out. I know enough how
to divert questions and interruptions until the end of my presentations. But then came the Q&A, and the heckling
commenced. Now I don’t mind at all
competing ideas, or arguments over the relevance or effectiveness of a
recommendation that I make. I believe
that ideas improve when debated, or discussed from differing perspectives. I have always had highly diverse executives
reporting to me that I believe has increased the quality of the tasks we set
out to accomplish. I assumed this would
be no different. After all this is my
“church family”. I am donating my time,
skills, and expenses. These people are
supposed to love me and each other right?
Aaaa … but thank you for playing.
It was not that my ideas were debated for being effective or
for relevance. It was my character under
assault. Somehow an older member of the
church who has never even spoken to me, decided I was doing this for selfish
reasons – as if I was going to receive a percentage of the increase in our
revenues as a church. I was not, never
even entered my mind. Another member
decided my entire document was an apostacy and that I was a blasphemer. By the way, this member was only in
attendance to dispute my document, he never actually attended church here in
over 3 years. And of course, he had
never met me, or even talked to me prior to the evening of this presentation. The spiritual basis for his claims of my evil
was based in my call for “tolerance” of the styles of worship that the vast
majority of people prefer in the U.S.
(i.e. we should not condemn others simply because we do not care for
their style of music, style of worship, etc.).
I was stunned.
In retrospect it is easy to see that the singular personal
attacks I endured (without fighting back as I believe this is no venue for it),
were from only a very vocal minority.
There were in point of fact only 5 members who decided I was Satan
incarnate for my efforts to grow our church.
They had no competing set of ideas.
They only wanted to have total control, without any clue or plan of what
to do with it. Suggesting otherwise by
anyone, would have resulted in the same vitriol. The other 90 people in attendance were far
more accepting. In fact, the vote to
approve the plan was over 95% positive.
Despite this, and despite my personal attempts to speak with the
disgruntled, the nay’s were undeterred in their efforts to poison what our
entire church purposed to do. Had I been
in one of the companies I have managed, I would fired the negativity folks
immediately. There is no room for those
determined to see a business fail rather than embrace change in the business
world. But this was God’s house. He wants everyone, even the stubborn ones,
even the wrong ones, even the mean ones, even me …
Heckler’s can destroy the progress of communication. But nay-sayers can only poison & delay
the work, when the work is for the Lord they cannot kill it completely. Our church grew by over 75 new members in a
single year, almost doubling our prior year’s regular attendance. Our revenues increased, we started new
ministries to serve the community, our aging population, and our youth. We opened a Spanish language ministry still
in existence today. We remodeled and
renovated some areas of the church. In
short we grew. But at each church
business meeting, a vocal minority would speak out and criticize our efforts to
feed the homeless (“they are nothing but pan-handlers anyway begging for money
for drugs and their million dollar homes” … an actual quote by the female head
of one of our key ministries for the poor if you can believe that). They would criticize our music. Though during the service, even our DVD based
music performances would get hearty Amen’s from the congregation – where most
of the members loved what we did.
It was really only about the same 5 people who hated
everything. They would not leave the
church to find another one, as this would mean admitting defeat to them. Instead they plotted a take-over. Here is where the disconnects are so large
they hard to comprehend. I took a
leadership role in our church only to help it grow, and because I was the only one
who could at the start. I had no
intentions of remaining in charge, nor any desire to remain as a leader. I served because I felt I must. But I was eager to put another person in my
place and allow me the rest of the lack of the limelight. But the vocal minority had no idea I thought
this way. Because they craved power,
they assumed I must as well. Had they
known I was eager to give it away they could have plotted better than they did.
They moved after covertly gathering intelligence they
believed they could use against me. The
information they had was illegally taken, incomplete, and therefore
mistaken. But it mattered not. I could see what they were doing, and I could
see further they were positioning me to fight back and cause the church to split. But I would not. Instead I resigned quietly, and cleared my
name and reputation with the pastor, and with our conference who had now been
called in on what they believed was a scandal.
It really was not. My quiet
enemies acted on incomplete accounting information gathered before month end,
without the full set of data. Auditors
established I did nothing wrong and in fact were impressed by how well we had
managed our finances. The conference
president and our pastor backed me completely in this. Yet I was resigning quietly to avoid
positioning the church for a split.
I failed. In one of
our last board meetings with me still in office, I was ambushed by one of the
five with this mis-information. His
hatred for me was so obvious, and so determined, and so pointed, that he
literally turned the entire board angry with him. Regardless of my actions, the church was
positioned to split anyway. Now the
vocal minority set about attempting to paint perceptions as reality, and gain
support among the members. But they
failed. Those that saw what happened to
me, realized that I had only ever told the truth. Those that had been deceived by the hateful
minority became genuinely sorry they ever even thought that way, and have since
become some of my closest friends. The
church lost 3 of the 5 members that determined to take control. And again, even though in reality the church
did not actually split, the level of noise associated with all this, and the
loudness of the vocal minority made it feel as though it had split.
It is always easier to criticize than to create. It is always easier to tear-down than to
build-up. When I look around me at what
goes on in our country, and unfortunately even in the walls of our church, I
fear that the vocal minority is drowning out the message of the more tolerant
and sane majority. I have lived through
a most unpleasant experience caused by so few, along with the silence of so
many. Had the majority been as vocal as
the minority, there would have been no conflict. But silence amounts to passive consent. And if we remain silent too long in the face
of vocal insanity, we reap the actions of the insane. I think better to speak out, and speak up in
love, and let love have a voice again …
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