What Happened?

Excluded by Church Power Plays

In my overview, I stated that there are four general categories that hold the mechanisms for becoming dechurched - excluded from a church or faith community: Differences in Doctrine, Church Change Decisions, Power Plays and Social Popularity.
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Power Plays
 

Power Plays are integrally woven into church politics, but should not be considered the same thing. Politics, in its pure form, is simply individuals and sub-groups trying to persuade a full group to move in a particular direction. Sadly, people are often not open and honest about their intentions and will mishandle or abuse positions of power to achieve their ends.

 

In this discussion, I will attempt to extract the core essence of a church Power Play from the situation in which it is exercised. This takes some deliberate discernment when watching such an event unfold, because no power play happens without a political reason for it. For example, I discussed the issue of organ vs. keyboard in my discussion on Church Change Decisions. This change is part of church politics (two groups trying to persuade the body as a whole to move in one particular direction) and has difficult issues to navigate. If we add people seeking to deliberately hide information or damage reputations, the issue of organ vs keyboard becomes the vehicle for a church Power Play. Another facet of church Power Plays that makes them unique from Doctrinal Differences, Church Change Decisions and Social Popularity, is that they always involve someone in a position of church authority, whether actively or by manipulation.
 

Let’s look at an example.

Jacob has been an upstanding member of First Church of My Holy Imagination for many years. He is routinely elected to the Deacon Board and often rotates as a speaker for the Men’s Group & Young Adults Sunday School class. Sadly, last winter he and his wife Patricia lost Dinah, their 15 year old daughter, in an auto accident. Jacob was driving. He lost control of the car on black ice and slid into a concrete embankment. The passenger side of the vehicle and Dinah were crushed. The whole family continues to grieve this loss, but the younger children, Joshua and Hannah have been able to move forward. Patricia has not. Deep down, she blames Jacob for Dinah’s death.
 

Last month, Patricia and the kids moved out of the house to live with her parents. She filed for a divorce. Jacob hasn’t said much, but churches being what they are, people are quickly aware of the estrangement. Although the church was very supportive of Jacob for the first month or two after Dinah’s death, lately people seem to be cooling toward him. He’s not sure why.

A few weeks ago, he was asked by the Christian Education Committee chairperson if he’d be willing to give up his month teaching the Young Adults so a newer member might have a chance to “practice his gift.”  Jacob agreed, feeling he was helping nurture this young man in his spiritual growth.
 

Last week, he got a call from the Deacon Chairman that the regular mid-month meeting had been cancelled and to just “enjoy the night off.” When Jacob asked if the meeting was being rescheduled, he was told, “No, we only had one item and we can take care of that at another meeting.”  Jacob thought that sounded odd, but was busy praying and trying to work through his family issues.
 

After the next Sunday service, the pastor asks if Jacob has some time to talk later that afternoon.  Jacob had intended to visit his kids, but figured he could bump it an hour or two and agrees to the meeting. The Pastor comes to Jacob’s house … with the Deacon Chairman in tow. They thank Jacob for meeting with them and come quickly to the point. They ask Jacob to resign from the Deacon Board.

Jacob is dumbfounded. He asks why he should do this. He’s told that several members of the congregation “have been concerned” about Jacob’s well being since the death of Dinah. When word got out that Patricia had moved out of the house with the kids, the Deacon Board felt it was time to have a prayerful discussion on the matter.

“This has been a really hard decision,” they tell him. “But for your sake and that of the congregation, we feel your home situation is not in a place that is in keeping with the scriptural model of a spiritual leader.” Jacob is assured that if he and Patricia work things out, he will gladly be accepted back into a leadership role.
 

Jacob’s story can play out in a variety of ways. He can accept the terms as is. He can challenge the leadership privately or publicly in a church meeting. He can begin to align his own coalition of supporters to garner support and challenge the church leaders seeking to remove him from his elected office. No matter which path is chosen, spiritual damage will follow.
 

*****

To understand what happened to Jacob, we have to look for the Power Play behind the scenes.

After Dinah’s death, the congregation was truly shocked and supportive of the family. But, after the funeral, Patricia continued to blame Jacob for the death. She was not always quiet about this. Her closest friends heard her confess this to them and she maintained a blog where she would be more frank with strangers than her friends. Pretty soon, the friends would whisper to other friends and a prevailing feeling that perhaps, just perhaps, Jacob wasn’t paying proper attention to the road at the time. Perhaps he wasn’t quite the father and husband he should be. Perhaps his church leadership wasn’t all it should be, either.
 

When word began to circulate that Patricia had left Jacob and was intending divorce, a few members became gravely concerned about Jacob’s leadership. First Church of My Holy Imagination feels strongly that divorced men are not to be Deacons in their congregation, citing various scriptural passages to support their position. Although Jacob is not yet divorced, this seems inevitable. They approach the Pastor and Deacon board with concerns about “obedience to Scripture” and “Jacob’s example to the Young Adults” if Jacob and Patricia do divorce while he’s still serving as a Deacon.

As a precaution, the Pastor asks the Christian Education chairperson to replace Jacob with a younger man in order to “groom” this younger man in his spiritual teaching gift. The CE chairperson is unaware she is a pawn in this exclusion of Jacob, so she is able to come across as completely honest and sincere in her request.

The Deacon Chairman has a couple of one-on-one “prayer sessions” with the Pastor about the matter. They decide they need the support of the whole Deacon Board to avoid making a big scene, so they cancel the regular mid-month meeting and hold a “special session” at another date and time to discuss Jacob without him. In that meeting, they prayerfully come to the decision that it would be best for “Jacob, Patricia and the church” if he resigns his position. This will remove “the burden” of church responsibility to him and Patricia “time to heal and reconcile.”  The Deacon Board gives the nod and directs the Pastor and Chairman to approach Jacob.

Did you see the Power Play?

The primary Power Play is the Pastor and Deacon Chairman making a decision to remove Jacob from leadership. There are, however, smaller Power Plays and some aggravating conditions that allowed this to happen.

1. Gossip. People can often create fertile ground for Power Plays by saying things to one another that they a) have not or b) would not say to the person who is the subject of their conversation. This begins to form a loose alliance of opinion within a group that can be exercised to dangerous ends by someone savvy enough to manipulate it.
2. Strong emotions. People are seldom rational when emotions are driving their decisions. Ineffectively dealing with emotions surrounding big issues can allow someone to manipulate those emotions or make decisions that will try to quell those emotions. In the example I offered, the Pastor and Deacon Chairman are seeking to prevent “rocking the boat” within the congregation and are therefore making decisions to quell emotions. However, they also use the “concerned” people’s emotions as leverage to convince the Deacon Board to side with them in their decision.
3. Manipulation.  The CE Chairperson was unaware of the real reason she was being asked to substitute a younger man for Jacob as the Young Adult Sunday School teacher.
4. Hidden meetings. This can be touchy. There are legitimate times when leaders of any organization need to have “closed door” sessions. Churches are no exception. I would offer that when closed door meetings happen in a church setting, one must be very cautious about the topic. If the meeting has any bearing on affecting the organizational status (membership, leadership role, etc) of a church member within the congregation – a Power Play is very likely in motion.
5. A Political Maneuver. In my example, Jacob was asked to resign. This was done to keep things quiet and neat. It prevents the Deacon Board and Pastor from having to openly remove Jacob from office. Other church political maneuvers include bringing unscheduled agendas into routine meetings (or omitting key issues from them), using petitions to lobby support for a particular agenda prior entering a meeting, adjusting meeting times & places to prevent “certain people” from attending, and so on.
6. A tie to Scripture or Beliefs. In order to best empower a Power Play with a church, it needs to have a tie to core church values. In the illustration above, the concern was a potential violation of scripture regarding a divorced man being a deacon. Let me be clear, this is not to say the church is right or wrong on this belief! What I am doing is illustrating how the tie to this belief creates the perception of a Greater Authority being the reason and validation of the Power Play.

Summary

Sadly, I could go ad nauseum with examples and subtleties on this topic, but I think the above illustrates my main point. After all I’ve written, here is something that might surprise you:

Church Power Plays are usually not insidious in their intent.

Really, I mean that.

In my example, you can picture the Pastor and Deacon Chairman as two guys simply trying to do their best with a difficult situation or you can see them as men who are manipulating others with ulterior motives. This is one of the really sad things about Power Plays, even if the intentions are good, doo-doo gets smeared on everyone. One of the real ironies is that those in positions of power/authority are usually the most likely victims of a Power Play.

There is a dark back door to Church Power Plays. It’s called Spiritual Abuse. I have that on my list as a completely separate discussion topic. For now, I encourage you to pray for your church leaders. They will eventually face a difficult situation. Pray that they have wisdom to handle it well. For those who’ve been burned by Power Plays, I pray you Christ’s healing. The wounds of a friend are deep and not easily closed. Nevertheless, when we ask the Holy Spirit to bring Light to the darkest corners of our heart, all things are possible.