Today I have asked Don Ross (Advanced Coaching Alum, Renegade Pastor and the Lead Pastor of Creekside Church in the Seattle Area) to share a post from his own personal experience.
Hope you find this helpful:
“Pastor, you seem so angry. Are you angry?”
…asked the woman in front of me at the end of our Sunday morning service. I didn’t feel angry, but I was a little mad that she thought I was angry.
I thought about her question. Was I an angry pastor? Soon after this question, my board fired me, even though the church had grown to just under 1000. Now I was angry for sure.
As I sat in a counselor’s office, trying to sort out my broken life, I was again asked about anger by my counselor. I had to admit I was angry. The situation with my board had been brewing for two years, and although they forced my exit, I also had been a contributor. I had been and was still an angry pastor. It was a painful revelation.
If you are leading a church, and especially a turnaround church, you are going to deal with personal anger, and if you’re not, you’re probably in denial. Some people will not like you or what you are trying to do. They will not just resist, they will try to hurt you.
For those of us who lead churches, we soon learn we are ripe targets for people to hurt us, and hurt is usually the basis of anger. If we don’t learn to get a handle on anger, we’ll be ineffective at best and end up leaving the ministry or hurting someone else at worst.
I know that sounds a bit fatalistic, and I did want to get your attention, but I don’t mean to sound fatalistic. I just want us to be aware of the issue so we can be protected and thereby also protect our church.
Here are three lies I told myself that perpetuated my pastoral anger to unhealthy levels.
Lie #1: It’s OK to be angry and not deal with it. Yes, it is OK to be angry. God gets angry. We are told to be angry but not sin in Ephesians, but we are also told to “not let the sun go down on our wrath”. That is God’s way of saying our anger has a shelf life before it goes toxic on us. God wants us to deal with our anger, because that’s what God does.
Lie #2: I have a right be angry. Maybe so, but you don’t have a right to remain angry or not deal with the issue. If we hold onto our anger, we end up nursing our hurt feelings, cursing those who hurt us and rehearsing the incident or conversation over and over again.
Lie#3: I can keep my anger secret. Wanna bet? The Arbinger Institute’s book, “Leadership and Self Deception” deals with this. This book says that people can feel what we think about them, regardless of what we say or how we act. If that is true, then we may be blind to our own anger, but others aren’t. They can feel when we’re angry, even if we’re not angry with them.
I have learned to process my anger with trusted friends and Jesus in prayer. I’m not always successful, but it’s better. And I mean raw prayer. The kind of words you can’t say in public, but deeply express your feelings of hurt and open your heart to His healing.
Remember, we all need an internal turnaround before we can lead an external one in our church. Facing our anger is a big part of that.
For information on the Turn Around Church Coaching Network, see www.turnaroundchurch.org
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