I have experienced them ever since I was a kid – mean people in church. I have also experienced lots of kind people, and the truth is that there are more kind people than the other. And to be honest, those mean people didn’t drive me away from the church. In fact, the only time I haven’t attended church was in my early teens, right after confirmation. Given the choice to go to church or sit at home and eat donuts while watching television, I chose curtain number 2. Anyway, mean people. This is my truth for today; mean people in the church often drive people away from what should be a safe place – a kind place. Their potency grows as the nice people leave; their authority and control grow as well. I will never understand why mean people choose to attend church. I guess they don’t realize just how mean they are being.
In the congregations I have served, I have interacted with too many mean people trying to undermine the work we were doing. They fought every positive change we made – they ignored new people looking for community, or worse, treated them badly. When I was serving as a college chaplain, our family attended a lot of churches, and we experienced this kind of rejection in most of them. Why would anyone want to worship God in a place where mean people ruled the roost? In addition to the churches I have served, I have done some coaching of clergy and congregations, focusing on the first year or two. One of the things I drive home to the congregation is that they cannot be mean to people and expect to attract them to church. A congregation can’t mistreat their pastor and expect kind people to stay. This isn’t rocket science, people! And yet, it continues.
I want mean people to stay, but if they stay, they need to change. All of us need to grow in our faith practices, so this thought isn’t an us vs. them diatribe. Meanness, however, is a form of bullying, and bullying can never be allowed to flourish, especially in a place that is supposed to be a hotbed of kindness. Another truth is that all of us have our moments when we are not at our best. All of us have baggage and bad days. At those times, we need to receive grace; when people are mean or dismissive, we need to give them a chance to show us that they are, at their core, kind. Unless it is a pattern – then we need to speak the truth with love. We need to thoughtfully tell them what their behavior has done to us and how it is damaging the community of faith. We need to create a culture of kindness where meanness and bullying are not welcome. We need to discern our own behavior and take the logs out of our eyes as well.
There are too many mean people in the world, and a lot of them go to church. The damage they inflict has a ripple effect that poisons everything it touches. We need to do better. It’s a God thing to try.
Prayer – Holy God, show each one of us how to grow in our faith so that we can practice kindness and generosity. Amen.
Today’s art is supposed to be on a website that doesn’t exist anymore. I think it is pretty great.