Sometimes church drama and attacks on your husband take a toll on your spiritual life, marital life and your husband's career, but sometimes, mean and messy people's efforts for disruption and destruction are just plain silly.
Has anyone at church ever tried to ruffle your feathers or create drama out of nothing...and you were able to laugh it off and see the silliness for what it was?
Two of our reader questions are perfectly suited to this week's PMS topic. Choose one, choose, both but tell us what you think!
"This is a lonely road at times...my question is what to do with all the negative comments that your pastor hubby gets, knowing how hard he works and how faithful he is...really gets me sometimes!"
"I need some ideas on how to continue to show love towards persons that are constantly tearing down my home, and my husband."
Chime in!
My PH knew his calling to ministry since his childhood in Communist Romania. He experienced religious persecution in grade school, I was raised in a missionary family - and we both grew up fairly aware that there are mean people in church. Fortunately, our parents helped us understand that church doesn't automatically make people perfect - so it never fazed us much.
Until one particular church district. It was a fractured church, with a long history of running off its pastors. A few months after we arrived, the senior pastor and his family became the target of a vicious campaign of gossip. They suffered bravely, and we ached alongside them. It was particularly painful for me, as I'd seen my parents subjected to similar pointless vilification at one point in the mission field. The injustice of it all made me question God for a time.
Finally, the senior pastor's family felt that it would be wise to leave. We supported their decision, but it was hard to be left alone to pick up the pieces. My PH spent hours each day on his knees. We shed many tears together, sought counsel and advice from mentors...
When my PH and the church elders gathered the congregation to carry out a few measures of biblical church discipline, we didn't know what would happen next.
Then the hate blogs began. My PH's name, as well as those of the church elders, were maligned in skewed renditions of the church disciplinary actions. Comments left on blog posts indicated that people around the world were reading the hurtful spew, and some were even taking my husband's name into their seminary classes as a case study of "what not to do."
My husband lost 35 pounds over the next few months (and he didn't have much padding to begin with). He looked emaciated, had no appetite. His hours of prayer were interspersed with our agonized conversations on how to lead this community of people in God's will.
He talked about going back to school, getting a degree in business, going into something - anything - else.
One morning we went jogging together, and passed a dead possum in the middle of the road. It took a moment for us to notice the several live babies scattered in the messy roadkill. A car whizzed past us, and with a sickening THUNK one of the babies was gone. We paused, stunned, as cars kept coming. Finally, unfrozen, we flagged traffic to a halt and wrapped the last living baby possum in a jacket.
We stood by the road together, tears streaming down our faces. It was as though we'd just seen a brutal illustration of what was happening at our church. Innocent bystanders and young children torn apart by the actions of those who didn't care.
Eventually, things settled down. By the time we accepted a call to a new church, God had worked healing in a way we'd never expected. We didn't want to leave. As we said goodbye, we cried with our church family. My PH stuck to his call to ministry. And we now knew first hand that God truly can bring wholeness to shattered places.
(Oh yes, and we took the baby possum to an animal rescue center to be raised and released into the wild.)
by Michelle Wegner
I woke up this morning bleary eyed, stiff, cranky, but trying to put on a smile for my tired and cranky girls before school. While they were munching their cereal I snuck a peak at my email. For the second Tuesday in a row, there was a notice that yet another blogger had ripped my husband apart on his site.
Blogging has unfortunately become the handy “Christian Weapon of Choice.” Never in history has it been easier, faster, or handier to whip up your angry thoughts and make them instantly viral in seconds. Your words are instant, global, and permanent. When I was at Rick Warren’s P.E.A.C.E. briefing last May, he briefly addressed the issue of hate bloggers. He said he used to ignore it…they’d go away. But, they don’t go away. Their hate and anger builds and builds on these sites claiming all sorts of Bible and Doctrine to support their case in dismantling the leadership they literally seek to destroy. Engaging these bloggers may actually be the thing to do. He said that you need to correct their information and move on. Make a stand for yourself, and then don’t continue the conversation.
Our church and its leadership have borne the brunt of many (and I mean many) an angry blogger. There are men and women whose sole mission is to pick apart the words my husband and the other staff at GCC say piece by piece to discredit them and their message. Rob has been compared to Hitler… (Yeah, really), called a heretic, a pagan, one of the leaders of “Granger Community Circus.” Pretty unbelievable stuff.
The guy that compared Rob to Hitler really got to me. Really. I’ve been to Auschwitz and seen the horrific aftermath of one of the cruelest leaders of our century. I don’t think my husband who comes home happy and singing, ready to wrestle the kids, do the dishes, or play Polly Pockets has anything whatsoever to do with that kind of evil. In fact, every fiber of his being is wired to oppose evil and fight for whatever is good, noble, excellent, or praiseworthy.
I engaged that guy in conversation. I needed to. I let it sit in me for way too long, and my own rage just built and built. Engaging this guy was most likely pointless as far as getting him to change his mind goes. That wasn’t my goal. My point was to shed light on what damage his words had on our family. Our girls were at the age where they started to understand Google-ing their mom and dad’s name, and sure enough, guess what article they pulled up? I wanted that man to know that his words harmed my children. He didn’t care. He said “the lies and deceit your children hear at your church every week is a thousand times worse than anything they would ever read on my site.”
Whatever dude.
So, what did I do this morning?
I didn’t click the link. I deleted the email.
What do you do when the hate-talkers start their talking? Here are some things we have done that you might try:
This week on Clutch we're talking about mean people, you know the kind that do everything in their power to thwart your PH's ministry efforts and your church's programs. We'll learn through other PW's experiences about how they've dealt with attacks from mean people, how they shield their children from drama, how they stay committed to ministry and maintain their faith in God when mean people strike, how they support their husband's through it all. At the end of the week, we'll try to end on a lighter note and laugh about those wanna-be-attacks that give you and your PH a good laugh, instead of a headache.
We'll need lots of your feedback this week, so be sure to chime in!
We hope to offer encouragement and perspective that will help you face situations with mean people and come out stronger when the dust settles.
Mean people. Drama. Let's talk about it.
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