Complaining About The Congregation

Recently I purchased Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. Every now and then I need a reminder about why I am doing what I am doing. I used to find such immense joy with God’s people, I practically lived at the church, even when I didn’t have to be there for some obligation. I just loved God’s people that much.

In examining myself and trying to figure out what has changed and why obligation seems to have replaced love, it is hard to understand a subtle shift in priorities: we go so easily from love to disappointment, don’t we? Our expectations are such that we are constantly measuring those around us. Measurement leads to complaining. Bonhoeffer says:

A pastor should not complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men (Life Together 29).

In my own line of work, my congregation is composed of students, teachers, and their families. I cope with daily disappointment form all three. However, it is not my job to blow smoke at them. I need to love them. God called me where I am to love them.

…if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ (Life Together 29).

So severe is this problem among Christian workers today, both in leadership and among laymen (as if there was any difference in God’s expectations of them both), that it seems we criticize normatively those God called us to love and cherish.

I love my own children. I would not treat them that way. My wife and I commit to instructing them, nurturing their present and their future. My other flock is no different, or shouldn’t be.

When a person becomes alienated from a Christian community in which he has been placed and begins to raise complaints about it, he had better examine himself first to see whether the trouble is not due to his wish dream that should be shattered by God; and if this be the case, let him thank God for leading him into this predicament. But if not, let him nevertheless guard against ever becoming an accuser of the congregation before God. Let him rather accuse himself for his unbelief. Let him pray God for an understanding of his own failure and his particular sin, and pray that he may not wrong his brethren. Let him in the consciousness of his own guilt, make intercession for his brethren. Let him do what he is committed to do, and thank God (Life Together 29-30).

Ultimately, if my words and actions lack tears and love, why am I doing what I am doing? I have the wrong reasons for being where I am.

What is your little flock? Do you have the same struggles? My move, or better, my decision to love or not love those around me reveals so much more about me than about them and their failures.

While the papers pile up, while the students scurry in and out of my office, while the teachers bark, and the parents criticize, I choose to love them. God gave them to me. These students are God’s students. These parents are God’s parents. These are God’s precious teachers. Their failures and flaws are my responsibility. How can I shepherd them?

In realizing this, joy comes back, the joy not that people took away from me, but the joy of the Holy Spirit that left me when I assumed it was my prerogative to criticize the brethren for all their foibles. The reality is and was that my criticism of the flock says more about my failure as a leader than it does about their failures as flawed Christians.

In choosing to enjoy people and not indict them, the motivation returns. The dread of leadership is replaced by desire. I begin to see again that I cannot look at people or my ‘job’ among them as a barking session. I don’t want my trip to my church or my school or my home to look like someone driving up to a vet’s kennel, where all the caged breeds yap at random when someone walks into the room.

When I drive up to my church and go into work, I want that joy where my heart races faster. I want to say, “I love these people. I take joy in them. I am going to cherish this day.”

The reality is that I wake up at 3 a.m. with night terrors about unfinished details. I have to consciously decide that this is not what will define me. This is not what life is about. It is about learning to cherish the moment in our ‘life together’ to discover what Bonhoeffer realized before they imprisoned and executed him: we need to discover as a fellowship “the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.”