By Mark Tidsworth
Pinnacle Leadership Associates
Many of us live in communities who are suspicious of people who participate in church, imagining all kinds of wild thoughts about who we are and what we do (based on the high-profile negative example of the few).
So, there are Christian people who experience this demotion in their church’s social status, reacting with anger.
Some perceive themselves as being persecuted. When they gather for meetings, Bible studies, worship or fellowship events, anger is thick in the air. Their posture toward the world around them is chest out, chin up and ready for a fight. Newcomers to these churches discover a culture of defensiveness, hostility and self-righteousness. The prevailing attitude is, “our community needs to repent and get back with it, appreciating us for the good organization we are.” Most everyone who encounters these churches quickly looks for the exit door, thinking to themselves next time they pass that church campus, “that’s where all the angry people are.”
Looking in the mirror
Certainly most Christ-followers are not this way, but those who are feel free to spew their anger over the others, often unchecked by others. This kind of anger is like an emotional virus, infecting and damaging church witness. So, what’s a church to do when it sees itself in this mirror? What if even a small portion of your church’s people are stuck in their anger?
Recognize the anger as a distress signal.
Those with a healthy theology of emotions recognize the gift our emotions are to us. These Christians and their leadership engage rather than deny emotions, looking for the learning inherent therein. When someone displays and expresses anger, there is typically some kind of hurt below the surface.
Wise Christian leaders follow the anger, staying with it, peeling back the layers, until the hurt below the anger can be seen. Caring Christian leaders then respond with empathy, recognizing and affirming one’s hurt, whether justified or not. When we are heard, understood and cared for, often the hurt is on the way to healing.
Raise awareness with accurate information about our cultural context.
I’m always fascinated with how we human beings will find a way to explain our experience, whether we find accurate explanations or not. We are sense-making creatures with a high need to understand what’s happening. When well-meaning people in churches don’t understand the larger dynamics shaping culture in their community, they will invent explanations, which often lead to angry responses. When Christian leaders notice anger currents in their churches, they explore the anger, followed by providing learning experiences which can help make sense of culture change.
Present movement-oriented options, inviting your church forward.
Stages of development … understanding that we are works in progress, moving from one growth stage to another, can equip and empower people to let go and move ahead.
Anger, frustration and blame are often included in the early stages of movement involved in the shift from a modern era worldview to a postmodern era worldview (process of discipleship). When people understand they are simply at one stop in the journey, they give themselves permission to continue the journey.
Return to your first love, the good news of the gospel.
One would think this goes without saying. We get so caught up in the running of the church that we lose the why. Return to the why.
God so loves this world that He goes to extreme lengths to demonstrate that love. The gospel is life-giving and life-altering. Focusing on ourselves, indulging the false narrative that we deserve cultural privilege, leads to a slow, depressing spiritual death.
Shift from member to disciple identity.
Membership identity and culture has so very little to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus taught that laying down one’s right to membership privileges is actually the way to life.
Transformation work
Disciples generally don’t care much about prestige or organizational status since they are so caught up in God’s transformation work.
So, let’s change the perception of far too many in our culture … the perception that church is where the angry people are. Let’s be churches who reflect … Jesus.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Mark Tidsworth is the founder and team leader at Pinnacle Leadership Associates and 2023 breakout leader at BGAV’s annual meeting. This is an excerpt of an article originally published by the Baptist General Association of Virginia.
When I was 10 years old, I remember waiting at my elementary school with some friends in the hot Texas heat of July 1976. We were waiting for the church van to pick us up and take us to Vacation Bible School.
It was a time that catapulted me into a deeper relationship with Christ.
So how did VBS get started? You will have a hard time believing this, but VBS was started in a New York Beer Hall!
It all began as a plan of a compassionate doctor’s wife.
Mrs. Walker Aylett Hawes moved to New York City from Charlottesville, Virginia, with her husband who was specializing in a medical ministry. She noticed that many of the children who came to her husband’s clinic had injuries from playing in the streets.
In 1898, Mrs. Hawes, a Baptist and sister-in-law of John A. Broadus, the founder and later president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, rented a beer hall in the city’s East Side to hold the first Bible school.
This first VBS (first called Everyday Bible School) lasted all summer. As the concept grew, it morphed into the one-week event we now know.
In 1907, the first VBS in Pennsylvania was held in Philadelphia.
My life was changed by VBS and possibly yours as well.
VBS is still a much-needed evangelical tool in our present day.
Most kids who attend VBS each summer, and even some of the kids who attend church, do not understand the good news of the gospel.
Brad Horne
DOM, Keystone Baptist Association
New Cumberland, Pennsylvania
We can only do so much to change the world at large, but we can do a lot to make our immediate world a loving, peaceful, kind, forgiving place.
Richard Blackaby
@richardblackaby on X
We serve a God who breathes life into the shattered soul and creates something new and more beautiful than ever before. And you are never so broken that God can’t make something beautiful out of your life.
Dare to believe it, sweet friend.
Lysa TerKeurst
@LysaTerKeurst on X
If the church wants to reach the students of this day, the plan cannot be to try to out pace the world in terms of entertainment value and flash. Gospel truth and gospel love has been Christ’s plan from day 1. We have to chase gospel-grounded ministry, not trends.
Daniel Ritchie
@DanielRitchie on X
There is nothing that you and I will ever face that God can’t intervene, change and turn it all around. Nothing is too difficult for God! Jeremiah 32:27
O’Shea Lowery
@EntrustedHope on X
Word of the day: Invest
Invest in your walk with Christ
Invest in your family
Invest in your community
Invest in your co-workers
We are created to build relationships with one another. Relationships strive when investments are made.
M. Barrie O’Bannon
@BarrieOBannon on X
“The National Congregations Study of Expressive Worship,” in cooperation with Duke University, published some interesting research findings about American worship. In summary, worship has become more expressive in recent years.
Those who raise their hands in the worship of God (churches, synagogues and mosques) are numbered in more than 62% of our congregations, up from around 25% in 1998.
I can’t remember people raising their hands in my boyhood church, or in most of the churches I’ve attended since, but we see this more commonly in evangelical churches.
The Apostle Paul wrote about men “lifting holy hands” in prayer in 1 Timothy 2. Typically the Jewish male would stand, bow his head, lift his arms and turn his palms upward in prayer. This is what Paul was schooled in.
It’s apparent the writer is describing an attitude more than a practice; that is, when we pray, we also ask God to cleanse our hands of anything dishonoring to Him.
Praying with holy hands means we examine the things in our hands and ask ourselves whether they’re holy, be they relationships, books, TV remotes, checkbooks or computer keyboards.
Another part of proper prayer is praying for political leaders (vv. 1–2).
The late Richard Halverson, chaplain of the U.S. Senate, said failing to offer prayer for our leaders is among the greatest sins of the modern church.
It’s noteworthy that the world ruler at the time Paul wrote was Nero, one of the vilest men who ever sat on the Roman throne. If Paul prayed for Nero, surely we can pray for our leaders. And praying for our leaders will guide us to be less critical of them.
Michael J. Brooks
Siluria Baptist Church
Alabaster, Alabama
