The Institutionized Church's Emotional Problem

As I've noted in the past, I was among the first crop of CGGC, uh, leaders (Oi! How times have changed.) to be invited to participate in the General Conference's Missional Leadership Initiative resourced by Reggie McNeal. I enthusiastically accepted that invitation and completed the two year program.

At one point, during a question and answer time between participants and Reggie, I asked what the MLI program was intended to accomplish.

McNeal's answer was so unexpected to me and it was so profound that I still remember it vividly. He used three terms to describe what he intended to achieve through MLI: Frustration, Agitation and Critical Mass.

By that time I was already meditating on Paul's assertion, contained in 2 Corinthians 7, that it is godly sorrow that produces a repentance that leads to salvation.

I was struck by McNeal's insight that the CGGC's most basic problem was--IS--emotional, and that the emotions we need to experience in order to become missional are frustration and agitation.

What are the components of godly sorrow? In the face of the spiritual decline taking place in the CGGC, frustration and agitation certainly must be present, as at least a starting point, if our body is to reverse course.

What is critical mass? In physics, critical mass is the smallest amount of material necessary to create a nuclear reaction.  It strikes me that, in the way McNeal was using the term, he was describing the formation of a remnant in the CGGC which, though it was small in number, would transform the body with the force contained in a nuclear reaction.

When I returned home from that MLI retreat, I sent an email to Lance in which I said that if frustration and agitation are the goal of MLI, then I should be its Poster Boy. My participation in MLI had created frustration in me on two levels. And, I was becoming increasingly agitated.

First, I was more frustrated than ever with the value system embraced by many CGGC congregations in which, to use language I first heard from Reggie, the laity wanted nothing more than to consume religious products and services provided by its pastor/staff.

Second, though I had not yet coined the phrase, To Talk is to Walk-ism, I was becoming aware that talking a radical talk without taking corresponding action is a core reality among some who were on the CGGC mountaintop at the time.

[I need to stop here and note that Lance, in my opinion, does not, and never has, practiced Talk-ism but that Talk-ism is part of the CGGC leadership culture.]

My frustration produced the agitation that motivated the writing of my email to Lance.

Lance's reply was gracious, as it always is. He described his reply as a "push back." And, it was an intelligent and extremely thoughtful push back.

That said, it was a push back that had the goal of easing, not feeding, my frustration and quelling, not intensifying, my agitation.

And, therefore, it did nothing to increase the likelihood that there would be critical mass to transform the CGGC.

This is a core problem in any shepherd dominated leadership culture. Any tension must be soothed by shepherds, even though godly sorrow produces a repentance that leads to salvation.

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And, now, about six years down the road, we, across the CGGC, are neither frustrated nor agitated and there is no critical mass. But there is continuing decline.

Yet, I, personally, am more frustrated and agitated than ever and, if the gossip is correct, I have been defrocked, if the gossip is true, for actions that are fruit of my frustration and agitation and my efforts to form critical mass which is what Reggie McNeal said was his intention in MLI.

I am, as far as I can tell, what MLI, or Reggie McNeal at least, wanted. And, in the CGGC, I am, if the gossip is true, in poop up to my eyeballs.

And, some wonder why the spiritual decline continues.

There must be repentance.