exploring how to and not to

do relationships

by ken e. read

1|one

2|family

3|love

4|risk

5|different

6|peace

7|loyalty

8|submit

9|power

10|grace

11|discipline

12|gifts

13|blessing

5| different

“Mom, the boys at school were making fun of me because I’m different.”

“Of course you’re different, Jimmy. God made you special. You are one of a kind. Just like everybody else. Have a cookie.”

We are all different. We are different in the way we look, the way we talk, in our values and priorities, and in our families. Some are introverts; others are extroverted. Some are linear thinkers; others process in random order. Some are big picture people; others start with practical application. Some are athletic; others are bookish. We are quick or slow, high and low, black and white, left and right. We are different, every one of us.

I often tell couples who are planning to marry, “Let’s get over the myth of perfect compatibility.” The truth is that any two people come from two different families and two different genders. These two factors alone, much less all of the others, will cause those two people to be incompatible once they start living together. A marriage becomes one, not because they think and act identically, but because they choose each other. They commit to love each other through their differences.

In a church, it is not a good sign when everyone is the same. In fact, it is a sign of severe dysfunction. Cults strongly mold every member to become like the leader’s personality. Likewise, it is not a sign of health that Sunday morning at 11:00 is the most segregated hour of the week. Rather, that is a mark of Christians completely missing the mark with regard to the calling of Christ. It indicates that “we” love only “us,” and over the years “we” have done nothing to include “them.” Not good. We are called to love in spite of, not because of.

Let’s explore this world of loving in spite of our differences. May the world come to see that we are Christ’s disciples because of our love for one another, love that goes far beyond anything that the world has seen, love that is markedly diverse and accepting and demonstrative, love that is turning the world upside down.

MYTH #6: The best way to protect good relationships at church is to create protective programs and policies.

The wisdom of policies: There is wisdom in having certain protective policies in place in a church. Through policies, we can guarantee that we are dealing with those in need of church discipline or correction in an impartial way. For example, we can keep a certain balance of power within our leadership by requiring all elders to rotate off of the board once every three years. We need to be assured that our nursery workers are safe and reputable people. We have paper trails to ensure that proper channels have been followed. In this litigious day, it seems wise to protect ourselves through policies that promote fairness and record-keeping.

The wisdom of programs: There is great wisdom in copying the pattern of a good relationship so that we can reproduce it by doing the same thing with others. When one man disciples another and that man grows strong in the Lord, it is good stewardship to refine and publish an easy-to-reproduce curriculum, and to encourage others to follow the pattern. Or when one woman speaks to her neighbor and leads her to saving faith in Christ, we learn from her method and repeat her pattern in others. After all, there’s no sense in re-inventing the wheel. However . . .

TRUTH: The best way to protect good relationships at church is to be loving, direct and open with one another.

In general, policies and programs are almost without exception substitutes for good relationships. Sometimes they are necessary, but that doesn’t mean that they could not be better accomplished through healthy relationships and good communication.

We create policies to make up for our fear of dealing directly with someone. We create programs as a way of making relationships have the impression of growth. It’s all about relationships, after all.

The weakness of policies: While some policies are undoubtedly necessary in the church, they generally are detours around direct confrontation. Instead of talking to that power hungry elder as a brother, we create a program to automatically remedy the problem. Of course, that policy does not really take care of the problem of a controlling personality. And a paper trail only tracks a problem. It does not guarantee that a person will follow the Holy Spirit’s wisdom with how to deal with a particular person who is in need of correction.

The weakness of programs: Hiring staff or generating programs that will do Indirect Program Evangelism (the Come and See approach) is ultimately not as effective as doing Direct Friendship Evangelism (the Go and Tell approach). We were brought into the world one at a time (even twins!). Each of us has a unique DNA and set of interests and experiences. Rather than categorizing people as seniors, GenX, divorced, or 4^th grade boys who like to BMX, why can’t we simply go next door and tell that individual about Jesus?

This all may sound simplistic and idealistic, but it comes from a quarter of a century of watching the American church try to use programs and policies to deal with relationships, and watching them often fail in the things that are most important (like relationships).

Indirect communication is far more common than direct in most churches. If I am unhappy about the worship leader, I tell the preacher and let him do the confrontation. I tell an elder’s wife to tell an elder to tell the elders to tell the preacher to get the youth minister under control because I don’t like what he’s doing with my child, rather than going to the youth minister directly. Holy telephone, Batman!

How do husbands and wives talk to one another? It is possible, and sometimes necessary, for them to talk to each other through a counselor, or through the court system, or through some other relative. But these are signs of a dysfunctional couple, not of a healthy, loving relationship. In a healthy marriage, we must learn to be vulnerable, to love unconditionally, to keep short accounts, and to speak the truth in love.

In a healthy relationship, there will be confrontation and each person will be dealt with as an individual. There are rules and principles to be sure, but when we make indirect policies to take care of an individual case, it should serve as a red flag that something is wrong.

A friend had a landlady who was about 90 years old. When she went to sign the lease agreement, it was eight pages of handwritten rules! It included such important details like no cement blocks for propping up furniture, no washing fabric in the sinks, no drying clothes in the house, no livestock in the apartment, and various other “important” rules.

This landlady had lived in the same house for her entire life, and had probably added a rule for each tenant who had caused a problem. Of course, there was a healthier way to handle a tenant relationship: if she had communicated up front that she wanted the tenant to ask before doing anything that might damage the property, then they could deal with those rare cases as they arose. But how many tenants will think to ask about whether they can work on their car in the front yard? So, we do the next best thing. We create a long list of rules, which is really just a substitute for a relationship.

One disclaimer here: Sometimes it is not practical to have enough contact with someone to have a good relationship. The larger a church gets, the more indirect management is necessary. If you only see someone once a month for a few minutes, you might not have enough of a relationship to convey your expectations, or even for the other person to anticipate what your desires would be. Policies and programs are in such cases necessary, though I still say that they are not ideal.

Most of us would agree that a family that requires a paper trail, complete with checklists and contracts with notarized signatures in triplicate form is not healthy. But in a large organization where you are meeting new people and engaging people who are relative strangers, it is perhaps a necessary evil.

The model that Jesus would have for the church today is the same one He had for the church in the first century. We’ll start to unpack that model soon. But suffice it to say that He did not set up a complex system of policies or programs in order for us to love one another or to tell the Good News to the world. He gave us a few principles that are easy to understand, but sometimes hard to live by. His means of changing the world is through relationships, not policies or programs. May the church today rediscover those principles and live by them!

MYTH #7: A church grows best when people have a lot in common. So target your church for a narrow demographic group of people who share the same affinity.

Groups of people with common backgrounds and common interests grow more quickly, and the people in them naturally “hit it off.” We naturally find ways to create time and energy for one another, because we do similar work, or we have similar backgrounds, or we have similar family relationships. In the New Testament we find a Synagogue of the Freedmen, which apparently was a synagogue started by men who were freed slaves. Since the early church was structured similarly to synagogues, maybe the New Testament churches similarly shared common interests or backgrounds. However . . .

TRUTH: The healthiest way to build a church is by learning to love each other through our differences.

No doubt the fastest or easiest way to build a church is through affinity groups. But I believe the Lord purposely places people who are very different into the same Body in order to demonstrate long-term, supernatural love. Jesus said that even the pagans love those who love them.[i] But God loved us when we were His enemies.[ii] His church should be a place where there is better love than the world can find; supernatural love, not love that is natural because everyone shares common interests.

And as for that matter of the Synagogue of the Freedmen: They were an unregenerate group who opposed the Gospel, not a New Testament church![iii] A better biblical example would be the leadership team in Antioch . They had prophets and teachers from different ethnic groups and educations.[iv] Or, look at the background of the disciples. They were all from Galilee , so they had geographic and ethnic commonality, but one was a government employee and another was an anti-government zealot. One was nicknamed “Bighearted,” while two brothers were “Sons of Thunder.”

If you are different than me, it is not a failed experiment in trying to be me. Perhaps the greatest commandment in Scripture is for us to love one another. Whatever our relationship with each other, it should be colored with love.

 love from top to bottom

You might categorize all relationships in three ways: those who are over us, those who are level with us, and those whom we are over. In other words, there are owners, masters, bosses, parents, elders, or other authorities; there are brothers and sisters, friends, and peers; and there are children, students, employees, servants, and helpers. Whatever our comparative level with one another, we are to love.

If we are slaves or children, we are commanded to have submissive love. Of course, we show our love and respect by obeying. We subsume our own wishes to fulfill those of our authority. Our submission is not to be with internal resistance. We are not only to submit, but to love, and to try to please the one who is over us. Jesus had this kind of love toward his Father. Our goal is to make the person who is over us shine. Whatever our agenda might have been, we willingly and lovingly give it up for the sake of our spiritual parent.

If we are peers with one another, we are also commanded to love. The Bible has some special terms for that kind of love: Kindly affectionate brotherly love (phileo-storge). When we are team members, or spiritual siblings, we show it by having kind affections toward one another. This goes beyond merely working cooperatively, or even tolerating one another. When we view someone through the eyes of love, we put up with and even embrace our differences and our quirks. As someone has said, if we don’t love someone, even just the way they hold their fork can irritate us. But if we love them, they can spill their soup on us and we instantly forgive.

In some circumstances, we are the authority, or the owner. We love our animals or pets, and take care of them, but we clearly are in control of them. Parents love their children, but they dictate certain details of their lives. Masters tell servants what to do, and today we have coaches, teachers, bosses, or supervisors who do the same. Yet, the commandment is still clear: love one another. Who had more authority than Jesus? (He has ALL authority, according to Matt. 28:18) Yet He laid down His life for us. So He told us not to lord it over those that are under our authority, but rather to give up our rights and sacrifice for those under us.[v] That sounds a lot like submissive love, doesn’t it? Indeed, we are told to submit to one another; husbands submit to wives, as Christ subsumes his will for the church.[vi] Even the authority submits.

Maybe you have heard it said, or even thought it yourself: “I love the church. It’s the people there that I don’t like.” Of course, that is impossible, because the church is the people! For that matter, the church is the very body of Christ! John reminded us that we can’t say that we love God, whom we can’t see, and hate people, whom we can see.[vii]

The Bible commands us to love one another, so it must be possible to do it. Jesus even said to love your enemies, and that we are in grave danger when we hate someone, or call him fool. Even family members can sometimes be enemies. But we are never given an excuse not to love. So, little children, let us love one another, that the world may know that we are his disciples.

 love in the family

There were divisions within the church, even in those idealistic days of the first generation. People are people wherever they are, and there are problems whenever multiple people from different backgrounds try to come together in unity. Sometimes there are sins to be confronted boldly, and sometimes there are misunderstandings or disagreements between brothers. Either way, we are called to deal with relationships in a godly manner.

We can struggle in the flesh, and that does not necessarily make us a failure in the Spirit. However, God does not want us to dwell with the load of interpersonal troubles. God, I think, purposely puts us with people we don’t naturally like so that we can model love and be a witness to the world of how we have overcome our differences, not how we were all so naturally alike. Jesus said that by our love all men will know that we are His disciples.

Would you have been close friends with Simon Peter, for example? Peter was too quick to speak, impetuous, judgmental, and he often spoke off the top of his head. Maybe Peter was ADHD, forgetting to think before he acted. Remember how he messed up about the transfiguration, how he denied Jesus three times, how Jesus called him Satan and told him to get behind Him? Yet, Jesus loved Peter, and our Lord chose him for the inner circle, invested special time with him, gave him a positive nickname, and told Mary to tell “Peter and the others” about His resurrection, asked him three times if Peter loved him, and more.

What’s more, our Lord called people with strongly differing individual personalities to be His followers. Even the Gospel writers were very different in their style and purpose. John wrote in circular fashion, Luke was methodical historian and a physician, Matthew was a Jewish tax collector, Mark was timid and young. Yet, they each wrote a Gospel.

Maybe the Old Testament prophet Elisha would have worn plaid pants and jacket, and been a loud, arrogant, charismatic televangelist who spoke death to youth who called him “baldy.” Yet God never spoke a word against him. Sometimes I might see some trait as sinful weakness worth confronting in order to make someone more like, well, me. But it could be the very thing that the Lord allows or even encourages. Is it sin, or is it God-given personality?

The church is called the family of God, the household of faith, God’s field, God’s temple. Families are all about relationships, commitment, communication, conflict resolution, love, and acceptance. We accept one another and put up with quirks because we are family together, and we understand.

In a healthy family, we work through disagreement because quitting on our relationships is not an option. Jesus said that God puts a man and a woman together, and man must not separate what God has joined.[viii]  The church should be viewed as equally unbreakable. Paul says if anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.[ix] Division is simply not a good option, either in marriage or in a church. So if we approach all conflict through the lens of life-long mutual commitment, we might find ourselves in a much healthier place.