Brad R. Braxton’s quick departure from the pulpit of Riverside Church, after only eight months on the job, and just a few short weeks following his formal installation, underscores the challenges facing clergy, especially in large congregations. Having recently completed a year as rector (senior minister) of an Episcopal parish, albeit on a part-time basis, I understand his frustration.
Not so very long ago in American history, a bright and promising young man, if he felt so called—and even a few women—viewed ordination as a path toward social status and cultural influence. Clergy held moral authority within the congregation and the community. When colleges and other institutions looked for leadership, they often tapped ministers to be their presidents and to serve on boards of directors.
Although some clergy still enjoy such authority and influence, at least within their congregations, public esteem has diminished at the same time, paradoxically, that clergy seek more and more to be viewed as professionals. (Fifty years ago the basic academic prerequisite for ordination was the Bachelor of Divinity degree; now Master of Divinity, generally a three-year, post-baccalaureate program, is considered the norm.) The televangelist scandals of the 1980s discredited ministers in the eyes of many, and the pedophilia crisis in the Roman Catholic Church has done little to instill confidence. Young people see other, surer paths to upward mobility—business, finance, law—avenues more financially promising and that appear to be comparatively less clogged with contentious personalities.
But for those who discern the call to preach the gospel, even for those of us who pursue ordination later in our careers, such concerns fade to insignificance. We approach our calling with energy, enthusiasm and idealism—and then run into the buzz saw of congregational infighting and politics.
Although the vast majority of churchgoers, in my experience, are decent and kind, parishioners less charitably disposed can find ingenious ways to make a minister’s life miserable: criticism of everything from comportment and grooming to sermons, salary and administrative style. If you’re decisive, you’re an autocrat; if you seek to build consensus, you’re a weak leader. Late in my father’s very successful ministerial career, the board of elders in a large and affluent congregation demanded that he personally reimburse the church for the photocopies he made for church business.
Some congregants, intent on disruption, can be more devious, striking by indirection. In my case (and, as I understand it, at Riverside), dissident members leveled criticisms at the minister’s wife and family. I’m inclined to follow the injunction of Jesus to “turn the other cheek” when criticisms are directed at me, especially when I’m confident that I’ve acted honorably. It’s a different matter, however, when the people I love come under attack.
Eventually, such sniping exacts a toll. I threw myself, heart and soul, into my parish, despite the fact that mine was carefully stipulated as a part-time appointment. No matter. The vestry (the governing body of the congregation) insisted on still more. Worse, by the actions of some in the congregation, I was asked, in effect, to choose between the parish and my marriage.
I requested that my contract not be renewed for a second year.
In the course of my professional career, which spans a quarter of a century, I’ve been a teacher, a journalist, an editor, an author, and a documentary filmmaker. For more than a decade I served as chair of my academic department, a challenge often compared with the task of herding cats. Nothing approached the difficulty of negotiating church politics and leading a congregation.
When Dr. Braxton of Riverside Church called last week to inform me that he intended to submit his resignation, I felt badly for him, for his family and for the many good people at Riverside who, I knew, would be devastated by his departure. Sadly, it’s the less vocal, salt-of-the-earth types who suffer most in situations like this.
I did not, however, urge him to reconsider. Having been through a similar experience myself, I understood.
Tags: brad braxton, riverside church
Mr. Balmer is to the point in a direct and clear way. He says most members are well-meaning and kind. But there are those who delight in criticizing all the people and areas he mentioned. Such activities take their toll on health and well-being of the clergy. Now that I am retired, I see some of those stories in my own life and I see what congregations can do to kill clergy. It is sad and why I could not clearly recommend the parish ministry unless a person feels so called that they can do nothing else. I am glad my school has such a good visiting professor.
I think it is not fair to the many well-meaning and kind members of a congregation to resign without ever having called upon them to intervene in a good way. Instead of suffering in silence, a clergy person should raise these issues publicly, provide suggestions for how congregants could intervene to stop whatever negativity has been happening, and give them some kind of deadline beyond which, if the problem has not been solved, the clergy person will consider resigning. It's usually the case that most people don't know what is going on, and if they did, they'd wish to stop the negativity. But they need to be told precisely what is happening that is hurting the clergy person, what that clergy person needs, and smart suggestions about what an ordinary congregant could do to change a toxic reality. This process can be emotionally depleting, but it may also reveal to the clergy person in question the depths of support s/he has in the congregation, and that may compensate for the nit-picking of the few negative people that are part of most congregations. Don't underestimate the amount of love and caring that is also there in the pews,and don't disempower it by assuming that people won't respond to an appeal for help if it is given with humility and with clear directions about how to manifest tha help. There are too many wonderful clergy who have faced these problems--it's time for us to stand up and fight back with love and with openness about what we are facing!
Another part of the process requires some help from each other. Our Network of Spiritual Progressives(NSP) has been encouraging progressive clergy to form a support group for each other in every city, town or region where there are a few members of the NSP www.spiritualprogressives.org to meet monthly or bimonthly and talk about the issues they are facing in their churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. and in their denominations--a support group that is rarely provided by the official interfaith committees or even local group of clergy in one's own denomination. Try doing that in your area--because that kind of support can provide a foundation for brain-storming as well as for needed encouragement and comfort.
I think it is not fair to the many well-meaning and kind members of a congregation to resign without ever having called upon them to intervene in a good way. Instead of suffering in silence, a clergy person should raise these issues publicly, provide suggestions for how congregants could intervene to stop whatever negativity has been happening, and give them some kind of deadline beyond which, if the problem has not been solved, the clergy person will consider resigning. It's usually the case that most people don't know what is going on, and if they did, they'd wish to stop the negativity. But they need to be told precisely what is happening that is hurting the clergy person, what that clergy person needs, and smart suggestions about what an ordinary congregant could do to change a toxic reality. This process can be emotionally depleting, but it may also reveal to the clergy person in question the depths of support s/he has in the congregation, and that may compensate for the nit-picking of the few negative people that are part of most congregations. Don't underestimate the amount of love and caring that is also there in the pews,and don't disempower it by assuming that people won't respond to an appeal for help if it is given with humility and with clear directions about how to manifest tha help. There are too many wonderful clergy who have faced these problems--it's time for us to stand up and fight back with love and with openness about what we are facing!
Another part of the process requires some help from each other. Our Network of Spiritual Progressives(NSP) has been encouraging progressive clergy to form a support group for each other in every city, town or region where there are a few members of the NSP www.spiritualprogressives.org to meet monthly or bimonthly and talk about the issues they are facing in their churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. and in their denominations--a support group that is rarely provided by the official interfaith committees or even local group of clergy in one's own denomination. Try doing that in your area--because that kind of support can provide a foundation for brain-storming as well as for needed encouragement and comfort.
Growing up, I watched how poorly many rabbis were being treated, and although I wanted to be a rabbi myself, I eventually postponed that path for many decades in part because I didn't want to be subjected to that kind of treatment. When I finally did receive ordination, I decided to create my own congregation, even though that would mean receiving only a very inadequate income, rather than serve a congregation that thought it had the right to push around their rabbi. I know that this is a special privilege and that most clergy simply don't have that path as an option. Yet I found that the financial marginality was worth the emotional and spiritual freedom such a path made possible. So even though we don't have a building and have to rent space in a church, we have a congregation of people who really feel good about each other and really have chosen to be with this particular clergy person,my message, and my set of limitations and screw-ups that each of us has in our own unique and at times debilitating ways. Being able to talk about those limitations, as well as one's needs, can make for a great deal of freedom and a great deal of caring from your community.
And then, and this is important not to forget in the busy-ness of running a congregation, there's another important source of comfort: God. I find that prayer and meditation can be an important source of support when what I really want to do is yell "I'm out of here."
Nice idea, except . . .
Most congregations, like most groups of people, know their weaknesses and limitations. They know that old Bob can be crotchety, that Sarah is bossy, that Ned and his gang willalways manage to take over contruction projects and run others off with their overbearing ways, etc. The things that happen in congregations that are toxic are not secret.
The open secret is that people who participate in such congregations do so for their own reasons-- and by and large, since congregational membership is a voluntary exercise, people in congregations (especially toxic ones) like things pretty much the way they are or they would leave and go somewhere else.
Preachers who try and get the congregation to own up to what is happening and do something about it simply add another layer to the toxicity-- they make members pick and choose whose side they'll be on in "the fight." Nothing gets resolved-- nothing changes-- the fight just become sabout the fight rather than about the preacher's wife, or his accent, or his work habits.
The problem isn't the topic of the fight-- the problem is the fight, and simply put some congregations define their life by the fight they have with one another, usually across several generations.
I agree that congregations are difficult beasts, having been an active member of various churches all my adult life. An unhealthy work environment can turn even a stable, sane person unhealthy in body and/or soul. I don't know the situation at Riverside. I appreciate Balmer giving us the minister side of how difficult ministry can be.
Like individuals, congregations carry the wounds of old traumas and difficult pasts, not to mention some of the worst kinds of theology that encourage enduring abuse and being self-sacrificing. And like people, conregations often inflict old issues on new people and may never be ready for a good minister. On the other hand, a bad minister can create those wounds.
I have been a member of three congregations with terrible ministers who were incredibly difficult to remove. One actually wore a gun to worship one Sunday.
Another, a distinguished phd former dean, was passed on to our church with a long, distinguished career, without any hint of a problem with his behavior. He was a sexual predator and visited women at home alone. When our personnel committee started investigating, they discovered he had a pattern of predatory behavior in his dean's job and was pushed out (their reason for not warning our church: they didn't want to ruin a good career! I think they were desperate to get rid of him, rather than dealing with him in a responsible way.). It took over a year to force his resignation. After he was forced out, he took a small group and started a congregation across town.
The third had been in the pulpit, a church he helped to found, for ten years when a congregant charged him with inappropriate sexual behavior in a counseling situation. I had been a member for just a year and been elected to the board when we had to deal with this complaint. Same long process of investigation, polarizing conflicts in the congregation, months with a conflict negotiator, and, finally, a forced close vote after a congregational meeting. To maintain impartiality, we paid a fortune to hire one of a few dozen licensed parlamentarians in existence for a four hr meeting. I voted to fire him after months of listening conferences with him, after which I concluded that his minister, too, was a predator with no boundaries and, on top of that, an incompetent minister with no pastoral skills and a destructive personality. He was, however, a charismatic preacher and advocate for justice issues, which made him especially beloved with the activists.
feel bad, not badly, please
Thank you. I also posted a comment about this mistake.
I am a student at a well-regarded "mainline" seminary. There are 17 students in my class year on an ordination track and exactly three want to go into full-time parish ministry at this point. What the author calls "the buzz saw of congregational infighting and politics" is the most often-cited reason for avoiding parish ministry, but another is an unsurprising corollary: many of my fellow students --most of whom are "church insiders" -- think that churches are terrible places to try and live into the Gospel's call to deeper discipleship that transforms the world.
Forty-one years ago, I was a ministerial student in a seminary of a mainline denomination. The seminary was an excellent school. I felt the way some current seminarians now feel. I doubted that congregations were places where I could realize ministry. Congregations are probably still vital parts of our common Christian life, but I doubt that they are as central now as they once were. I had never felt as free to be Christian as I felt the day I left seminary. I think my subsequent work in education and law enforcement provided much better opportunities for ministry than I would have had as a pastor.
Churches can be hazardous to the health of people called to lay ministry. Politics and good old buddy systems are not the only problems. Churches seem to be run and viewed as businesses nowadays. Even volunteers have job descriptions in churches as small as 150 on Sundays. As a seminary educated volunteer, I found it difficult to divide my ministry as a pastoral care assistant into what I did in that official volunteer capacity and what I did as a member of the church. For instance, circulating among the people during coffee hour to get news was not among my "official" duties...but considered essential for my providing good pastoral care. Churches are dangerous places for many reasons.
After a life time in the ministry I'm thinking size doesn't matter when it comes to getting the boot.
Larry A. Witham, in his "Who Shall Lead Them? The Future of Ministry in America" notes that in 1988 Southern Baptist alone dispached 1400 from their pulpits. By 2000 SBC "forced terminations" stood at 1000. Predictions now are that over a third of all Baptist clergy will experience "termination" in their ministry.
SBC congregations are hardly the size of a Riverside. In fact, the denomination after growing to fifteen million plus remains predominantly a denomination composed of churches with memberships of one hundred or less.
A friend of mine, a Methodist pastor, was appointed to a congregation of about 600 members. If I remember my visit to Riverside his pastoral charge could be seated anywhere in the sancturary and not be noticed amoung the other congregants.
Mark lasted nine months longer than the average three month life span of his terminated counterparts in SB life.The appointment system had him moved in June of this year. Size really doesn't matter. But, there is something to be said for the connectional system.
After all these years I'm thinking what does matter is what my mentor told me when one of the deacons tried to get me fired from what was at the time my second pastorate. "Curtis." Glen said with that West TX drawl of his. " You know. in the Church, good and evil fight a long battle with a short stick."
It is typical of the clericalism running rampant in TEC to blame the congregation, the laity. The truth is that of all the priests I've had in my adult life only a few of them had any idea how to manage people, conflict, or organizations. I have to actually deal with those things in my job, not just complain about them.
What is TEC?
Ted,
I Googled TEC. Came up with everything from Infra-Red Grills to Telescope Engineering Company. The most promising sounds like the The Educational Cooperative. Best I can tell it is a support group for public schools " West of Boston."
Curtis
:-D Thanks, that sounds about right.
It stands for The Episcopal Church. The author of this article is an Episcopal priest.
Thank you. I did not know what it meant.
My background is in the UCC, DOC, and in whatever is the mainline Presbyterian denomiation. The destructive people havae been mostly lay people but not always.
As a second-career rabbi, I thought I had the maturity and experience to handle a small pulpit (90-95 families). I loved my congregation, I loved much of my work. The politics was horrendous and, because of the size, it was essential not to alienate any congregant, even those who were holding the rest of the congregation hostage to outdated and dysfunctional practices. In one case there was even a long-distance "hostage" situation, where a former congregant had moved several thousand miles away but was still a donor--and still dictating practices.
People wanted to do things "because that's the way we've always done them," despite being told by consultants that those ways were not going to get them the results (more members) they so desperately wanted.
When I interviewed there, the committee seemed genuinely interested in new ideas and enthusiasm to try different things. After two years--and the consultants--it was clear that some on the hiring committee were the most resistant to change.
I chose to leave after the third year, still loving and loved by most of the people, but deeply disillusioned, saddened, and utterly exhausted. Although I miss many of the people and certain aspects of congregational ministry, I'm finding chaplaincy much more sane: fairly regular hours, reasonable expectations, boundaries, etc.
By the way, at my seminary, too, with every passing year fewer and fewer of those graduating wanted pulpits.
Brad did the right thing. As a young man he realized that he was in a loosing battle. Even though his detractors were in the minority (they usually are), they obviouslly had enough power to create a stir.
To often, too many in the church sit by and let others run off God-called, God-annointed preachers and dont get upset until the work is done.
Brad will get another church, teach at a school, or whatever God has for him to do.
Riverside on the other hand will continue to struggle. If you cant get along with Brad Braxton, it will be hard for you to get along with anybody worth their salt.
In the United Methodist Church system of appointment rather than "hiring" of ministers, the folks in the pews know that they just have to hold out longer than the current appointment, and then they'll be getting a new pastor sent to them by the Bishop. Perhaps that results in fewer confrontations with the pastor -- no need to try to force them out by pressuring them with nitpicking criticisms. Sooner or later the system will move the pastor on. Do any of you other UM ministers have similar experiences?
Notably absent from the above discussion is any specific reference to the reality of "spiritual warfare," much misunderstood, mis-represented and maligned by generations of fundamentalists from all pursuasions, but re-legitimized within the last generation in the "Powers Trilogy" by Walter Wink and the remarkable writings of Rabbi Edwin Friedman on family & congregational systems, most especially in "Generation to Generation" and his postumous "Failure of Nerve."
Friedman's sagacious command of systems theory and Wink's deft exegesis of relevant scriptures combine to expertly inform anyone considering a vocation in religious institutional leadership about the land-mines and toxicity of congregational life: small, medium and large.
After 25 years in parish ministry and 6 teaching in a denominational seminary, I still marvel at the naivete of those (even with significant life-experience) pursuing a vocation in leadership of religious institutions. And, I marvel at the absence of "stomach" (often misreprsented as "I'm too busy" or "We don't have enough time - or money") on the part of lay and ordained leadership to use the bountifully available tools (ancient & modern) for root healing, naming and casting out demons, and creating "truth & reconciliation" contexts where perpetrators & victims (often one and the same people) can air grievances, face their accusors, and experience Amazing Grace!
Is it any wonder that "shame and blame" have replaced mutual accountabilty? What an abdication of the spiritual power conferred upon the church at Pentecost and what a betrayal of the vows taken in Baptism.
Rev. Balmer wasn't prepared to be a priest. He can talk the talk, but, appears unable to walk the walk.
We had hoped Randall would be more available to those who don't have internet. He was not. Whether Randall was part time or full time is a question I need to be answered by the Vestry. At 138,000 dollars per year suggests to me he was full time. To be fair, his wife was employed as associate priest. (There is a question whether Catharine has been ordained. ) Some of these monies could be directed toward visiting priests. I have no clue.. but, I will get to the bottom of this!.
Both Randall and Catharine are brilliant on many levels. I guestion why they took this job on. Sure, there are difficult times today, but, to cast such thoughts on a tiny parish makes me wonder what the Balmer's intent really was. To be so vocal and so publically, really questions my support of the Balmers at present.
May I say... this is really sad. REALLY SAD.
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