Okay, right off I’m going to grant you that I may just be too cynical for my own good… but yesterday I was driving along and thinking about past (bad) church experiences, and what causes us to stay in those situations, even thinking that they are normal or acceptable. We feel affection for or affinity with the leader, we’re “in it together,” and we’re “on the same team” and all that. Then suddenly — sparked by a news story on the radio I think — I found myself thinking about Stockholm Syndrome.
Not to be too harsh or to put too fine a spin on it… but isn’t that essentially what we’re talking about here? Perfectly normal people suspending their better judgment on many issues based on identification with the perpetrators (or ringleaders, or whatever) of some, let’s say “unhealthy” system. Those of us who have a CLB, especially who were leaders in said church left behind, can probably relate. I remember fairly distinctly (though I’m trying to forget) teaching people things that I now know are not right about the way church leadership works and many other things that distorts one’s view of God. We treated them badly, and this has been one of the hardest parts of my own detox — the knowledge that I was a perpetrator, that I was part of the problem so badly for so long.
I kept others confined even as I myself was kept that way — which doesn’t make it right. Now, for those just tuning in, I’m not talking about the essentials of the faith… I don’t believe I promoted or was part of a fundamental lie of faith, rather that the truth of the faith was distorted and made more self-serving, more controlling. It’s easy to get drawn in, and hard to move outside of this sort of system. The fundamentals of the faith are intact, so there’s Truth to be found in it, and to the extent we’re experiencing some form of Stockholm syndrome, we identify with those who build error on top of truth, and we even want to be a part of this system. We fear leaving, for fear the loss of our friendships and cherished relationships… this is a genuine and difficult fear, one which we were under for a time. But speaking now from outside the bubble, I can talk your ear off about how wrong the fear is, and about the nature and quality of the relationships which will or will not survive your extraction. I can also talk your ear off about how things have been and how they should be. I find myself longing to help build a new city, but one which rises up in better form the less we pick up our own tools to help.
Now, it’s possible I’m entirely too cynical about the whole thing. But whether or not that’s true, it’s also just possible that I could be right. Provisionally at least, I think this realization or analogy (whichever it is) helps explain the reality and the depth of what people experience within these systems, at least in my mind. Your thoughts?
Stockholm syndrome may not be exactly the right way to describe it, but I feel as though you are really onto something. The fears you describe (and other related fears) are both legitimate reactions and part of what keeps people tied to dysfunctional church structures. Moreover, it’s sometimes much easier (or more pleasant) to believe that despite all evidence to the contrary, the situation is actually contributing to some, far off and future, good.
Brother M.
You have asked for out thoughts….here are some of mine. I write this carefully because I do consider you my brother.
When are you going to drive and think about the GOOD experiences that you had with your CLB? A person can only wallow in the mud for so long. Yes, you have had some hard times, but there have also been the good. It has been a combination of both the good and bad that has brought you to this moment.
A word of advice is to leave the past behind. Focus on the good and toss the garbage.
To be honest I have yet to find a healthy system when it comes to DOING church. When people meet, there is both the positive and negative expressed. I wish that I could meet all the peoples needs in our community as a pastor, but I cannot. And in not being able to meet the needs or expectations of people they leave. And people feel that their needs are not met, they leave angry or hurt or frustrated with me (because I am the pastor..or the target). So be it…Below is an excerpt of a letter that I have recieved that is similar to what many people feel in the church community. Allow me to be transparent…
“While we have found it to be an inviting and edifying place these past 3 years, we have come to the conclusion that our future does not lie in this place and it is time to move on…This is never an easy type of letter to write, however, we feel that it is only fair to leave you with an honest account of our current thoughts and feelings…We also both feel strongly that a relationship with the pastor and other church leaders is something that is important and it seems given the immense growth that has occurred so quickly this is no longer possible. Though we have been encouraged to be patient, as Soul is still developing, we feel we simply cannot wait any longer.…this is not a critique of your ability to manage your time, however, it has become apparent that if a relationship with the pastor is something that we value, realistically this is not the place we will find it…By the way, we recently met with our small group leaders, to share our thoughts with them and they did encourage us to be patient with the growth that Soul has undergone. However, as I’ve stated, we have decided that it’s time to move on.”
(The sad thing about this letter is that I would have never recieved it, if I never contacted them asking where they had been because I had missed them.)
So…here both the system and the individual has failed the person. What can one do? Personally, I cannot be all things to all people no matter how hard I try, but as a leader…I have left a bad taste in someone’s mouth. Was it on purpose? No….but it has happened. My only hope is that they find an expression where all their needs are met and that they leave behind the negative experiance that they had with me. You write about those on one side of the equation, today I respond as one who is on the otherside.
Carefully submitted
Gerry
I would suggest that putting pastors or spiritual leaders in the same category as kidnappers or terrorists is a bit of a stretch. But religious leaders do hold a tremendous amount of power over people because of the traditional perception that these people speak for God. The dependency created by never fully developing people into followers of Christ, which serves the pastor’s ego, but in effect stunts the individual, has the potential to create a powerful controlling aspect. Jim Jones would be the worst case scenario.
Having fully lived on all sides of this topic, this is what resonates with me:
1. Sometimes abusive spiritual leaders are worse than kidnappers or terrorists, because they take the name of the Lord in vain when they do terrible things as God’s anointed–and control and coerse using power and fear. If you have ever experienced this, you know exactly what I mean. If not, count your blessings….
2. Sometimes misguided spiritual leaders are more like abusive husbands/fathers, who physically or emotionally “beat” their wives/children for not being perfect or doing exactly as commanded…and then require an apology from said wife/children for provoking them…finally, forgiving them for their failures/disobedience/provoking–warning them not to speak of this to anyone. If you have ever experienced this, you know exactly what I mean…well, you follow my drift….
3. Sometimes loving and well-meaning spiritual leaders just have bad information they’re acting on–like those who “run” their church like a “business” and focus on “efficiency”…and in the process treat their precious brothers and sisters in the Lord (and thereby, Christ, himself!) as “things” to be used and leveraged for the good of all, even if that means they get “used up” and “discarded”. (See #2 above.)
4. Sometimes pastors and flocks have inappropriate expectations–of themselves and of each other. They become symbiotic or parasitic…and instead of everyone growing up more and more into the image of Jesus Christ–fully discipled disciple-makers–they become dependent upon each other to meet their needs for fulfillment and belonging and usefulness without maturing out of the focus on self for the meeting of the needs of the Body–equipping the saints for the work of ministry. If you have ever….well, you know….
5. Finally, sometimes we do such a good job of focusing on the good things that we never truly deal with the things that are wrong…and when we do that, we become part of the problem. The hard work that it is to speak the truth in love is so hard that few do it. It is easier to leave…to submit…to be used up…to focus on my needs…to abdicate responsibility….
I am in a CST (church–still there) trying to be responsible and speak the truth in love…so that the wrongs can be stopped, new ways can be explored, reconciliation can happen and the Body can be built up. It would be easier to leave…but I do not fear man–and God is walking me through it a step at a time. And then I will be free to go…because he is calling me to something new…and asking me to use what I have learned to strengthen the Body.
Forgive and forget is not particularly biblical…to forgive and not hold something against someone is. Too many want to forget–as in avoid dealing with the consequences…and there’s the rub.
So that’s what I think!
Deep breath…. Okay.
Fernando,
Right — it’s a conversation starter, a different way of looking at a question. People in mainline churches are asking why people are leaving… and after leaving a very particular type of church some people are asking why others are staying. That’s what I’m getting at: there’s a good reason that doesn’t use the phrase “deaf, dumb, and stupid.” There I go, being provocative again… but I said doesn’t.
Gerry,
Responding carefully — you’re a good man, a good friend, a good brother, and a good church pastor… but I think you might be missing something here. It isn’t that I haven’t thought about and looked for the good in a particular church experience, I have. And with very few exceptions, the good is rooted in a few personal relationships with good people. After leaving a church of 4,5,600 people, whatever it is (peaked at 800 I think), I can count on one hand the number of relationships that stuck. Maybe both hands if I include civil, friendly acquaintances… the rest are just awkward, and some will view us with suspicion for leaving.
It isn’t that there’s no good, it’s just that the good is not rooted in the teaching, the leadership structure, or the leaders’ ways of dealing with people under their care. And let me say that the key word in that last phrase is probably “under” and not “care.” They “do” church and you’re right — there probably aren’t healthy systems “doing” church… which is why I’m so much more concerned now about “being” church. Which is not to say I’ve got it figured out or do it perfectly, but that the orientation has changed.
Understand that I was part of a system for 16 years that only upon my exit when I found the last few months to be so “over the top” that I (and others) categorized it as clearly spiritually abusive (and not just by some individuals but by the system they constructed). The realization is a shock, and it is very difficult to not feel as though you’ve been cheated out of at least a dozen years of fruitful healthy spiritual journey… but in this matter I look to God, who still had me travel that path. On the other side, I say harsh things. In this, I have predecessors far greater than myself, like Paul, Jesus, John the Baptist, Jeremiah… sometimes harsh things need saying; a gentle answer is for turning away wrath, but sometimes a harsh answer is what’s needed to turn from wrath. I know that so much of what I say is not heard by people who do these things… and I know that from saying it gently, and later, pointedly, to their faces for a good dozen years. Now I just say it “for him who has ears to hear,” and hope that some who read my words can find courage to set themselves in a healthier place or solace in having left an unhealthy one… and the latter effect I know, because I hear from some of them. 16 years is a long time, and every once in a while the pain surfaces… I’d like to take a week off and put it behind me, but after almost 3 years now, I wonder if I won’t always walk with a limp. It’s easy to say, “Stop being negative,” but not so hard to do. There were some very negative things going on. That’s not the daily subject of this blog, though it does come up from time to time. Look back over the posts from July to now and you’ll find a lot of talk about missional themes. Still, I’m calling for a change in the way church is practiced, and I’ll be pointing out what I see as having been or being unhelpful as I do that.
I do appreciate your sharing the letter. You’ve got a huge challenge at Soul with the growth you’re experiencing… and I know some of those challenges from being inside a rapidly growing church. Everyone thinks it’s great to grow so fast, but it rarely is, you end up building in ways you didn’t intend. I trust you will continue handling it as wisely as you can, dealing with all those who arrive. At the same time, I have to counter that the person who wrote the letter didn’t have realistic expectations. You can’t approach a fast-growing church of hundreds of members and expect to have a personal relationship with “The Man at The Top.” It doesn’t work that way. If they need a smaller congregation, they’ll perhaps have that, and will be much happier. Soul isn’t that place, and really isn’t called to be as far as I can tell from the outside. They’re right, it is time to move on. *If* you’ve failed them — and I say “if” — it would be in not understanding what they wanted and telling them sooner that they couldn’t have it at Soul… but that’d require the closer relationship that isn’t practical. The model would be more that people need to be caring for one another, not that “The Pastor™” needs to tend after every individual. If the system failed these people, it is in the same way, not seeing that they couldn’t have what they wanted. Their expectations of care and nurture aren’t wrong, just misplaced. If you dig around, you may find they were overlooking what they did have… not that there’s nothing to learn here for next time. Again, thanks for your transparency in sharing the letter.
Jonathan,
I don’t put them in the category of kidnappers and terrorists… but the term “Stockholm syndrome” has been applied to abusers, and some Christian leaders are abusers, inflicting spiritual abuse on people under their care (see note above on that phrase). They lead with tactics of intimidation, fear, and manipulation… they hurt people and do disservice to the name of Christ. Yet people stay within those systems under that type of leader. Why? This is the subject at hand. While tradition may suggest these leaders “hear from God”, the ones I’m concerned about are the ones who persist in subtly reminding their underlings that they hear from God, implying that they have more divine knowledge than do their subjects. (See this post.) Pastors and church leaders occupy a position of trust… which is what both provides opportunity for abusive behaviour and makes it so eggregious.
Peggy,
Good thoughts, I appreciated those on forgive-and-forget particularly. Forgetting is often not righteous. I have never publicly named my CLB despite my assertions of abusive practices there… and I wonder sometimes if I should be warning people against a world of hurt or jut shaking the dust from my feet and leaving “well-enough” alone. It’s in weighing “well-enough” that I have the problem, and for this reason I have not publicly criticized it by name. I did so among leaders (e.g., to leaders who could effect change) when I was still there, but that was another time, another place. There are many times that my heart for the people there wants to find them all and tell them how bad the system is, that they should leave now, for the good of their spiritual lives and for the sake of their families. But I don’t. And those who think that it’s “well-enough” always have a hard time with me when I speak this way… but I’ve seen the underbelly, and it ain’t pretty. It discredits the Gospel &8212; not necessarily all at once, but slowly, over time. Literally, by the time I left it was a choice between keeping my faith and keeping my local church. I chose wisely. My faith could not have survived much longer.
Brother,
I think one of the things you may be on to is creating the distinction for what so many people are experiencing. Part of the problem, I would suggest is the lack of language to describe the experience, thus your post. While I agree with your follow-on comments, The Stockholm Syndrome has a pretty distinct meaning that carries some baggage that may not apply. I would encourage you to push this further and define your own experience with new language (ex:pew syndrome, etc.) You have the readers and the skill to help chart this territory.