Marshall Shelley - Ministering to Problem People in Your Church: What to Do With Well-Intentioned Dragons

Church or Dragons Lair?

Can you pull in Leviathan with a fishhook or tie down its tongue with a rope?... Its breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from its mouth.

Job 41:1, 21

Anyone whos involved in leading a church recognizes the irony: the community that gathers in the name of Jesus Christ is often populated by problem people who make things much, much harder for everyone. In this book, we call them well-intentioned dragons.

Dragons, of course, are fictional beastsmonstrous reptiles with a lions claws, a serpents tail, a bats wings, and scaly skin. They exist only in the imagination.

But there are dragons of a different sort, decidedly real. In most cases, though not always, they do not intend to be sinister; in fact, theyre usually quite friendly. But their charm and earnestness belie their power to destroy.

Within the church, they are often sincere, well-meaning saints, but they leave ulcers, strained relationships, and hard feelings in their wake. They dont consider themselves difficult people. They dont sit up nights thinking of ways to be nasty. Often they are pillars of the communitytalented, strong personalities, deservingly respectedbut for some reason, they undermine the ministry of the church. In most cases, they are not naturally rebellious or pathological; they are loyal church members, convinced theyre serving God, but they wind up doing more harm than good.

They can drive pastors crazy... or out of the church.

Some dragons are openly critical. They are the ones who accuse you of being (pick one) too spiritual, not spiritual enough, too dominant, too laid-back, too strict, too lenient, too structured, too disorganized, or ulterior in your motives.

These criticisms are painful because they are largely unanswerable. How can you defend yourself and maintain a spirit of peace? How can you possibly prove the purity of your motives? Dragons make it hard to disagree without being disagreeable.

Relationships are both the professional and personal priority for church leadersgetting along with people is an essential element of any ministryand when relationships are vandalized by critical dragons, many pastors feel like failures. Politicians are satisfied with 51 percent of the constituency behind them; pastors, however, feel the pain when one vocal member becomes an opponent.

Sightings of these dragons are all too common. As one veteran pastor says, Anyone whos been in ministry more than an hour and a half knows the wrath of a dragon. Or, as ministry veteran Harry Ironside described it, Wherever theres light, theres bugs.

Research by Leadership Journal , a professional publication for church leaders, indicates that 80 percent of the pastors who read the publication need help with difficult people in the congregation.