By John Cole
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By John Cole
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How personalities can divide a local church
Tensions turn up in all sorts of places, but often they can be understood as expressions of different people's personality preferences. Inside the local church, for example, we often seem to find the minister wanting change and the congregation wedded to keeping things as they have always been. This sounds like a caricature but there is some evidence to justify it: Research shows that many Church of England clergy self-select (or are selected) in line with certain preferences which tend to make them want to change things, while Church of England congregations seem to have an unusually large number of people who are at their most comfortable in a familiar routine. Between different churches, these deep-seated preferences may do a lot to explain why some people choose to worship using a formal liturgy which emphasises their private devotions while others prefer to join an informal charismatic celebration. The same range of preferences would explain why other people might prefer a church where they get some ‘good solid teaching’ in the sermon. But it would also suggest that for some people churchgoing will never seem anything other than a rather strange and unrewarding activity. These people would rather be getting on with life and responding to the next unexpected thing that is going to happen to them in the ‘real world’. But does this mean that they are never aware of God - never feel called to worship? Is it possible that they are already expressing their worship, but not in the traditional ‘churchy’ way? On top of all this diversity of underlying preferences will be many other layers of experience which will have shaped people's attitudes, their opinions and their prejudices. For all sorts of reasons people may have been hurt or made to feel guilty; their sense of their own self-worth may have been damaged; long-buried experiences of shock and grief may never have been resolved. All this and much more will govern, often at a level below consciousness, how people will respond to the activities of church people in their neighbourhood. If we are to understand our locality, we must recognise that within it we will find this great mix of people, each one distinctive and made in the image of God. Each one is also bruised, fallible and carrying all sorts of burdens from the past - yet each is also full of potential and secret aspirations (even if culture, peer pressure and a general sense of hopelessness make them deny them). Blaming people who have such rich and God-given diversity for not being like us is not a good place to start! |