Damn Sinners

Disclaimer: I'm just bitching.

I realize that the church is, among other things, a gathering of sinners. And sinners tend to sin. And sometimes their sin gets in the way of being community. I have never been deceived about this, and I have never been overly romantic about the church; a lifetime of being in the church will teach you otherwise. So I get all that. But still...

Why don't people just freaking talk to you when they have a problem? Why do they sit on their concerns and get madder and madder, and fume silently - or complain to fifty other people - but never actually come to you and say, "hey pastor, I have a problem, let's talk about it"? Am I that unapproachable? Is the council, or the committee in question here, full of people that intimidating?

A certain person in my congregation feels that some changes in staff positions were not adequately explained to her. She has dealt with this by: 1.) Acting as if everything was fine when I talked to her, then 2.) Expressing her anger at me and the council to a few others who 3.) sort of indicated to me that she was a little upset but then 4.) she stopped talking to me altogether and now 5.) has left the congregation without ever saying what the problem was and 6.) has just written a letter that arrived on my desk this morning (hence this post) in which she complains that the church did not communicate directly with her.

First, I acknowledge that mistakes were made. I made some of them. But there were so many times when she could have said something to me. I talked to her, she said everything was fine. Believe it or not, "mindreading" is not a class offered in seminary. If you have a problem, you have to come and talk to me or I may never know about it. And then, when I don't act on it, it may not be because I am the queen bitch of all time - it may be because I don't freaking know about it.

It occurs to me that other organizations have similar problems, but that the church is a uniquely shitty place in which to deal with them. And today is one of the days when that is particularly true.

Yuck. I feel like I need an exorcism of these feelings. Perhaps this post will help; a whole lot of prayer is going to be the next thing I do.

What do you do when people are so deceptive? Because the other problem for me right now is that several times over the past two years, I've had what I believed to be private, pastoral conversations with people, in which I understood what they told me to be confidential. And then they went out and completely misrepresented what I said, or twisted it, or inaccurately reported it. So now I don't really trust being able to talk to people one-on-one about this stuff. I've been burned too many times, and frankly, that is a really uncomfortable feeling. Anyone have suggestions?