Healing Hurting Churches: The Economou Process, by Dr. Don Hebbard, Credo House Publishers, Grand Rapids. Kindle Edition.
On the fifth Tuesday of each quarter of the year, I share a book I’ve read recently. I highlighted “mustard seeds,” which impressed me. I hope you find one or two that will be helpful to you.
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Here are the “mustard seeds” I highlighted:
My adoptive parents were married for 53 years. My father died first, leaving my mother devastated. When we were leaving Restland Cemetery in Dallas, riding in the limousine together, I asked her, “Mom how are you doing?” What she did not say was, “Oh, just fine, honey. That cute funeral director was so nice. He and I are going to go out on a date tonight. I think it’s time I moved on, don’t you?” In our lives, marriages, and families we realize that there is a “time for every season under heaven.” We realize that the difficult transitions in our lives require us to stop, catch our breath, and evaluate how we want to move forward with life. It was obvious my mother did not need to be searching for a new mate coming straight out of a major loss. Why, then, do we think a church can come out of a major loss, search for a new minister, and install him like an interchangeable sixty-month car battery? (page 12, Kindle Edition).
The tried-and-true old prescription of just pray harder, do more, and put it behind you is espoused by leaders who lack the wisdom and skills to attend to hurting people, walk through conflict, or deal with issues in their own lives that may be hurting the congregation(page 12, Kindle Edition).
Counseling works only when the client is ready to do the hard work of change. Churches are the same. If we ignore the wounds, if we ignore the pain, it doesn’t go away. Like Israel’s sin in the Old Testament, the pain just gets rolled forward. Eventually the issues and the pain must be dealt with, or they will bring the church to its knees. I tell my clients, “Deal with your pain, or your pain will deal with you” (page 14, Kindle Edition).
Conflict isn’t good or bad; it just is. Our approach to conflict is a key to the health of any congregation (page 21, Kindle Edition).
The Tough Bargainer is a church leader who is highly committed to personal gain and has a low commitment to relationship maintenance (page 22, Kindle Edition).
There is an axiom of leadership: a system cannot be healthier than its leadership. If the leadership is functioning well, the family, church, or other organization will function better. If the leadership is sick, the congregation will mirror their pathology (page 34, Kindle Edition).
Narcissistic ministers are charismatic speakers and inspirational leaders. They can convince a church that they are capable of doing great things and making significant sacrifices (page 34, Kindle Edition).
Narcissistic ministers believe they are in a special category. They are different from everyone else because they have been gifted with a special “calling from God” (page 36, Kindle Edition).
Empathy involves two steps. First, one must be able to recognize pain in another person. Second, one must be able to respond in a meaningful way to that condition (page 36, Kindle Edition).
The narcissistic minister is incapable of self-reflection. They are convinced that everyone else is to blame for whatever goes wrong (page 37, Kindle Edition).
The Second Axiom of Leadership is that a leader in a dysfunctional role will produce other roles around them that are also dysfunctional(page 39, Kindle Edition).
In some churches, sex, money, and power are the “big three addictions.” We simply baptize their addiction in spiritual terminology and ignore the damage they do to the church (page 55, Kindle Edition).
Remember, sick leaders will continue to make poor decisions, even when the house is burning down around them (page 56, Kindle Edition).
The sexual cover-up is designed to move the church as quickly as possible through the crisis and restore the minister to his place of ministry, so members can all “get on with the work of the Lord” (page 56, Kindle Edition).
The sexual cover-up strategy fails in its attempt to restore the minister, to heal the marriage, and to assist the church in moving forward. It puts a band-aid on a cancer that often reappears within a short time (page 58, 59, Kindle Edition).
When an affair is blossoming into a full sexual relationship, the two people involved will assume that no one around them notices their behavior. Nothing could be further from the truth (page 63, Kindle Edition).
Sex offenders are drawn to a certain age and gender of child. They will seek out those programs offered to the kids of that age group and try to join those programs to gain access to children. They will target certain children and begin giving them special attention or gifts to gain their trust and the approval of the parent or parents (page 70, Kindle Edition).
The church is left to stagger forward into the future with a massive wound on its collective soul that will never be spoken of and likely never be healed. An exodus of disenchanted members will slowly happen, and it will be blamed by those who are “higher and holier” for not being people who can forgive. We conveniently forget John the Baptist’s command, “Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” In other words, don’t tell me—show me (page 74, 75, Kindle Edition).
I find that some churches avoid the hard work of healing because they believe it is somehow unspiritual to admit that we are worn out and in need of a season of rest. I remind them that even Jesus needed to “get away from the crowds,” but some churches believe they need to do better than Jesus (page 121, Kindle Edition).
A Cutoff Congregation constructs a belief system or set of religious “doctrines” that is against everyone else. The members of these churches get their sense of identity from putting other people down. Likely, members of these churches were cut off in their family of origin (page 135, Kindle Edition).
Cutoff Congregations are filled with highly wounded individuals who will not seek help for their own core brokenness. The congregations are closed systems and highly defended from the influence of outsiders. A Cutoff Congregation will generally not seek help (page 135, Kindle Edition).
Too many leaders I work with are too concerned about what they have to say. That is why so few people are really called to minister to hurting churches. I am not saying that one has to be a licensed therapist to do this work. What I am saying is that those who have a calling to help wounded churches will have the gift of listening (page 214, Kindle Edition).
In the counseling profession, I am required by law to seek supervision when I encounter a client situation that I’m not sure how to address. The same should be required of the minister—when you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s a really good idea to get some wise counsel (page 217, Kindle Edition).
The first rule of transitional peaching is that the transitional preacher never takes the long-term job. Period (page 223, Kindle Edition).
If a church’s sense of humor begins to emerge, that is a positive sign of recovery (page 239, Kindle Edition).
There is the unstated belief among many church leaders that, if the church is wounded, all we need to do is ignore the problem, and maybe it will all just go away (page 256, Kindle Edition).
Churches that resist spiritual-emotional healing may opt for the “Let’s all get busy and we will get over this” myth (page 256, 257, Kindle Edition).
Systems that do not address dysfunctional patterns will begin to spiral downward. They will lose healthy members who become frustrated with the church’s inability to address dysfunctional patterns (page 262, Kindle Edition).
In order to process congregational emotions, I need the leadership to agree that we need a season of healing. During that time, the focus of the church will be on binding up wounds of the past and dealing with the spiritual wounds of God’s people. Nothing new needs to be initiated during that season of restoration. No building renovations, no new ministry launch, and no big missions programs—we need to “be still and know that I am God.” Church leaders fight me on this, and that is a critical mistake (page 267, Kindle Edition).
To find more information or buy this book on Amazon, click the link or the picture below: https://amzn.to/42HW3Gl
Servant of Jesus, husband to Gail, father to Jerrie Wayne Barber, II and Christi Parsons, grandfather, great-grandfather, Interim Preacher, Shepherd coach, Ventriloquist, barefoot runner, ride a cruiser bicycle
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