In January, I shared a short article about shame and blame in ministry. That article ended with a quote from Dr. Brené Brown’s book, Dare to Lead: Brave Work, Tough Conversations, Whole Hearts (New York: Random House, 2018) from page 240 where she writes:
“When we have the courage to walk into our story and own it, we get to write the ending. When we don’t own our stories of failure, setbacks and hurt – they own us.”
We could talk about this on a personal level. Every pastor, priest, rabbi, imam, counselor, or therapist has a catalog of examples of what happens to individuals and relationships when people deny past traumas. But it doesn’t take a traumatic incident to have a serious consequence on someone’s personal life. As Dr. Brown indicates, any failure, setback of hurt that hasn’t been worked through, that someone stills feels shame around, will keep someone bound by that experience. If such a person is in a position of leadership, like the leader of a congregation, their leadership will be lessened or even stymied because of it.
For those who want to know more about the importance of owning your own personal story and the consequence of not doing so, I highly recommend Dr. Brown’s book mentioned here. If you want to know how to tell your story, the good, the bad and the ugly of it, I recommend Tiffany Largie and will be glad to connect you with her. But the focus of the rest of this article will be on congregations owning their story, including the bad, the ugly, the failures, setbacks and hurts.
For some time now I’ve been involved with a committee in the judicatory where I have lived and served for the past 25 plus years. The task of the committee has been to update the history of this denomination in this state, including the histories of each congregation and all of those professionals who have served these congregations. This has become a 3-volume set, with volume 2, published in 2017, being dedicated solely to the histories of individual congregations.
The history of the last congregation that I served before retiring was submitted for this volume a year after I left the congregation. In reading their history, as well as that of the other congregations in the state, it’s all about when buildings were built and improvements made, the names of sons and daughters of the congregation who have entered the ministry and other accomplishments.
There’s nothing wrong with talking about good things – except when it ignores the difficulties, pains, or struggles that have been overcome and the growth that has happened because of that. That last congregation I served omitted two critically important pieces of their history, one about 150 years ago and the other very recent, actually that existed while I was serving that congregation.
The recent event started with a burial in the church cemetery. That burial led to a misunderstanding, hurt feelings which then snowballed into a lawsuit filed against the congregation and the widow of the deceased over where her husband was buried. For six years the congregation lived with the uncertainties and divisiveness of that situation. It was during and because of that situation with the cemetery that an older member of the congregation told me about what had happened about 150 years earlier. He told me that a dispute arose between two members of the congregation, which was still a very new congregation. One of the members hired someone to set fire to the church building. That person removed the Bible and communion set prior to setting the fire and hid those items. The items were found and the nature of what had happened was discovered.
The man telling me the story said that his father knew who the member was who had gotten someone to burn down the church. When the man sharing this asked his father who that was, his father refused to tell him. His father said that there were descendants of that person still in the congregation and he didn’t want any sort of ill will or suspicions cast on them for something an ancestor had done so many years earlier. It was an issue of forgiveness and grace. The father literally took this information with him to his grave.
I asked the man who shared this piece of the congregation’s story if I could share this with the congregation in an upcoming sermon. He said yes.
It was well known among all the long-term members that the first church building had been destroyed by fire. When I shared the rest of the story, especially the part about the identity of the member who hired the person to set the fire being taken to the grave with the father of the man who told me the story so that descendants would not be blamed, shamed or treated differently because of what an ancestor had done – when I shared this, I could see that this was having a major impact on everyone who was there.
That story, the pain of division and anger literally burning the church down and the grace of one man who did not allow that past to continue to bring division into the congregation – that story changed things. No, the lawsuit about the burial in the cemetery did not get settled then. It ran its course. But the attitude of many members of the congregation softened towards the person filing the lawsuit and those who supported it. The fuel for divisiveness and anger cooled significantly.
Telling our personal or congregational story is often scary, because we think it opens us to criticism and judgment from others. Most often it reveals more about how we blame and shame ourselves. However, not sharing the failures, setbacks and hurts – hiding the story from ourselves and others – denies us and others the growth, grace and love that can come from those parts of our personal and collective story. As Dr. Brené Brown says, sharing those parts of our story allows us to write the ending, and to rewrite it as we continue to grow.
As you think about the story of the congregation that you serve or belong to, remember the setbacks, failures and hurts. They are opportunities to re-member those involved, opportunities to show grace to others and ourselves, opportunities to see God present and acting even in the midst of those situations.
How has God been with you in the midst of the story of the congregation you serve or where you’re a member, not just the good times, but the whole story? That’s a powerful story of God’s grace and love. We have the opportunity and the calling to tell the whole story.