Well-Intentioned Dragons.

Can we work with the dragons rather than slay them?

One Sunday afternoon way back in 1991, I read the book “Well-Intentioned Dragons” by Marshall Shelley. I was a cadet in the Salvation Army Training College and that afternoon I saw the book on a shelf of another Salvation Army Officer. A few hours later I was considering abandoning God’s call on my life. This book terrified me!

1985 Word Publishing

Today, November 10 2017, I have read the book again. I now want to encourage every minister to get it and read it. 

The premise of the book is simple and one which will be well known by ministers across the world – those people in your church community who, while seeming to be well-intentioned, are also dragons who crush your hopes and dreams. It might surprise some people to know that churches can face such a problem. If it is a surprise to you, then I expect you are not a church minister. If you are a church minister and these words are a surprise to you, just wait. It will come. 

Shelley doesn’t call for ministers to be like St George and seek to slay the dragon. The sub-title of the book “Ministering to Problem People in the Church” shows a deeper purpose, and through the book suggested pathways are shown. 

Shelley has put together a number of accounts from ministers and some of the troubles they have worked through. These include the church treasurer who decided that because you weren’t preaching at church on Sunday you didn’t need to be paid, the lady who seemed to know everybody’s problems and made sure you knew about them too, the man who thought that because he was chairman of the board meant he was in charge of the church, and more. In reading these pages I am reminded of people I have known and worked with – and argued with. 

What I enjoyed now about reading this book was seeing again that while there are difficult people in church, there is a way to work with them and not against them. Shelley’s work offers some good thoughts on this.

In 1991 when I read the book I was terrified because I was reading of churches with hundreds of people where these two dragons destroyed a minister. I knew, or expected, that I would be going to a church of 25 – 40 people, but these two dragons were sure to be there. How could I be ready to face that as a young minister? Over the 25 years of ministry, I have indeed met some of these dragons. Looking back on some, I can see that they were well-intentioned. But the cost to me, my family, and others in the church was enormous. 

2013 Bethany House

I also look back and wish I had handled some situations differently. Perhaps there are some things you can only learn with experience, no matter how much you read and seek to learn from others. Maybe one day someone will ask me to contribute to such a book as this and I can write about my experiences with these dragons. Maybe it’s best that those things stay buried too. To be fair, maybe look on me as one of these dragons too. 

The book I’m reading was published in 1985. I am now aware that there is an updated version published in 2013 which apparently addresses social media stuff. Obviously that wasn’t written about in 1985. 

If you are in ministry, I encourage you to get this book. No matter which version it is you will learn good things from it.

Seventh Session

Relational and Incarnational Youth Ministry 07

Session 7

The idea of place sharing is helpful not just in youth ministry, but in ministry across the church. 

Changing metaphor of the Pastor

Book: The Relational Pastor - Andrew Root.

Pastors continue to be told 'everything has changed' (as if we needed to be told). In the 90s it was a move to post-modernism. We know we are in a post-christendom era.

Book: "The Empathic Civilization" - Jeremy Rifkin. Rifkin looks at three things that bring change. New energy, which leads to New Communication which leads to New Consciousness. There is a connecting change in ministry.

Journey through history

Pre-agricultural

Energy was Hunting / gathering. The earth was a living thing we responded to. We lived in small groups. Communication was oral, which was needed to help know what was safe or dangerous etc. Consciousness is mystical consciousness.  The spiritual leader would be a cosmic story-teller. Telling people why and what the world actually was. (Youth in our groups don't assume we would know what and what the world is - they expect science classes will teach them that.)

Agricultural

Energy was Agriculture. Earth was no longer a 'person', but something that could be managed and organised more than responding to it. Now resources began to move - trading grain, diverting water, etc. Communication now becomes script - writing. When people learned how to use agriculture, they developed script to work the trade across localities. Now, God was no longer seen to be a local deity, but much more transcendent. Consciousness moves from blood ties to religious ties. Now humanity begins to connect with people of faith. The pastor /minister is the rise of priesthood."The priest is the manager of divine things. Offering sacrifices or sacraments as text demands. He is also the one who reads the text to the people - the sacred reader" Max Weber

Industrial Revolution

First Industrial revolution - energy is the machine. Communication is the printing press. Consciousness is now ideological. Now that coal and steel become important, boundaries become important to protect these resources. The earth is no longer seen as a living thing but a container of resources that can be taken out. (The earth is no longer an enchanted thing). Now we fight along ideological lines. (WW1 shows nations who believe the same text and even singing the same songs of faith fighting each other.) Something else happens along this too: it starts the arrival of the 'self', the individual. You are now the individual that reads, that thinks, that votes, etc. Religion is in the nation state - so we talk about countries as 'Christian countries'. Ministry becomes about protecting a certain way of life. So Eisenhower, in the time of the Cold War, wants people to go to church. He wants his country to be different to the communistic state. Minister is pushing people to be moral and upstanding. he was the upstanding man in the community. He held cultural esteem. 

Evangelism - moving the message - started to become global, especially in the UK. The steamboat will take you to people who are not in the same energy regime that you are. (A dark side of this is the view that because they are in a different energy time they must be less than us - the heathen.)

As we come into the next phase, there is a significant change in attitude to church. 

Second Industrial Revolution

Second Industrial Revolution - now has Oil / Electric as the energy. (Churches built from this time on need a car park, but earlier churches didn't). The car becomes significant. It now makes people feel even more an individual - the car will take you to what you are interested in. We are free from needing others to get our interests met. This leads to a change and confusion between want and need. (Barth on Lord's Prayer: "This is the invitation to pray our need, not our want.")

Communication becomes the wave. It began with receiving the wave as sound - the radio, and eventually with vision - the TV. At this time, you could travel alone to get home to watch TV alone. Now with more tv and radio, you are what you are interested in. You should be able to watch what you're interested in. 

Rifken says there is now a therapeutic consciousness - we are individuals with interests that must be met. Technology is meeting our needs, so we can chase our own fulfilment. (He also comments that the periods of energy have a shrinking period of time.)

How does all this impact ministry? Ministry becomes about programs of intervention. For the first time we become obsessed with programs because programs cause people to make the choice between my church or another church. So, if parents are interested in helping their kids connect to other kids, they'll go to the church that has the best youth program. 

This is exhausting for pastors who see people come to their church for a while and then leave a few years later to go to something 'better'.

What happens to the pastor through these times? He moves from the moral exemplar to the creative energetic visionary. He's not the one with the deepest theological understanding, but someone who can manage the programs. He is someone people can identify with - he's no longer the 'holy' one in clerical garb, he's the guy in a Hawaiian shirt. He's not the 'man out there', but now a golf partner.

Ministry now depends on numbers, because programs run on numbers. This is the first era in the history of the church that we are so interested and burdened by numbers. Youth ministry is the lovechild of individualism and program - we were birthed in program. As such, it is really hard for youth ministry and for youth ministers to break out of the mindset of ministry as a program. 

Be careful to remember that neither programs nor numbers are evil. Programs help to organise our ministry, but I hope our ministry is more than just managing programs. Numbers can tell a story. If you had fifteen kids in the youth group, and now have five, there is a story behind that. 

(To be continued)