Chris: Okay, so the thing that I find weird and frustrating and confusing as conversations happen around this kind of the church and the struggles and the things that have happened over the last year to 15 months plus whatever. The main thing I run up against in conversations is, uh, a lack of appetite or energy, towards doing things to improve the situation, whatever that might be. Doesn't matter how big or how small.
Sometimes there's energy around having conversations about, around venting, around talking, sharing. All very good things I think that at a community level, it's important to be able to share pains, hurts, frustrations, joys, celebrations, happiness, sadness, laments, um, praise. All those things are important parts of community.
But taking it to that next step of action, some sort of action, not just like the big extreme blow it all up and start over again kind of action, but like just a, a baby step. Uh, let's schedule a meeting, or let's talk about how we could write a letter, or let's talk about what we could actually do. There is a lack of energy for that part of the conversation. And I get it. It's hard. We're busy.
It just feels like for a community that has been ripped apart in so many different ways, pulled in so many different directions by a very small minority group of people, I would think and hope that this community that's been through many things over the last, however long you've been around 10, maybe just two years, maybe 10 years, maybe 30 years, maybe 40, 50, 60 years.
There'd be an an energy for not maintaining the community as it was during your glory days, whenever that was, but for maintaining what you hoped and dreamed and thought even the community was, and is. And obviously that will look very different for everybody else.
But when core tenets of transparency, accountability, truth, sneaking around, lying, those kinds of things are being done within the community, I would've hoped, and I was naive, I think, that there would be an appetite and an energy for finding a way. I don't have the answer for how to deal with that, but finding a way and wanting to work through how to deal with that. Picking any number of issues and events and the way things have happened over the last year plus.
Just, just even one of them and walking through it as a community. Processing, um, sharing how people were hurt, sharing why people were hurt, sharing the true reasons why things happened, the motives, where we hope to be because of those actions.
Talking openly about all of those kinds of things without the fear of worrying that you're going to either offend someone, or that you're going to reveal something, a motive, a desire, that uh, cancels out the effects of what you just did in terms of leadership. All these conversations can very easily rabbit trail down, like, I can't believe this happened, or did you know that she did this? And then she said that and he, he said this in response to her and, I'm here for that energy, believe me.
But I also want to know and work through. Okay. Well, but now what? It's been a year plus of talking, of flags being raised, of concerns, people leaving, families just like gutted, entire church community gutted, and there is no appetite for accountability. Even just hearing or listening to what has gone on, the hurts, and the pains, and the confusion over what's gone on. Just gotta keep plowing ahead. Once we do X, then we'll be okay. Once we get rid of this person, then it'll be okay.
Once this person stops asking about this, then it'll be okay. But we can't be okay. There's no amount of reconciliation that can happen unless there's truth, transparency, honesty, listening and sharing the hurts, the confusions, the questions. And not telling people what their questions are, not putting a sheet in front of them for discussion that guides them to a specific discussion, and ignores the pain of what just happened in the community.
So that's my thoughts for today, Wednesday, March 15th, 2023. Thanks for listening.