The moment they hear it, they feel the “cringe factor” throughout their body. Even as the first few words are spoken, the recipient feels his or her emotions plummeting. It is the one sentence that is uniformly dreaded by pastors and church staff. It typically begins with these words:
“People are saying that . . . “
The full sentence could say; “People are saying that you don’t visit enough.” Another example is: “People are saying that our student ministry is not doing well.” Or one more example is: “People are saying that you don’t have good office hours.”
The sentence might specify a group while maintaining anonymity for the individuals: “Some elders are not happy with you” or “A lot of the staff are unhappy.”
You get the point. It could be phrased a number of ways, but the meaning is still similar. “People” is never defined. The true complainer is never identified. It is one of the most frustrating and demoralizing sentences pastors and staff will hear. Here are some reasons for the frustration:
- The complainer lacks the courage to speak for himself or herself. So he or she hides behind the deceitful veil of “people are saying.” Leaders in churches know that when complainers lack courage to speak for themselves, or when they have to hide behind anonymous complainers, they are trouble in the making.
- The leader has no recourse or action to take. These complainers never identify the source or sources. So the pastor or staff person cannot follow up and speak directly to the dissidents. He or she is left with a complaint that cannot be resolved due to anonymity.
- The leader immediately questions the motive of the complainer. The moment the ministry leader hears those words, “People are saying . . . “, he or she doubts the credibility and the heart of the complainer. The approach is cowardly; it thus is always seen through the lens of doubt and frustration.
- This approach is a double frustration for the ministry leader. First, he or she has heard yet another criticism. Most ministry leaders have to deal with criticisms too often. Second, the ambiguity of the complaint and the source of the complaint can leave a leader wondering if the problem is really bigger than reality. He or she can waste a lot of emotional energy on something that really may not be such a big deal.
- Indirect criticisms can be the most painful criticisms. Most ministry leaders deal better with someone who is direct and precise in his or her concerns. But indirect criticisms such as “People are saying . . . “ or “I love you pastor, but . . . “ hurt more because cowardly actions and duplicitous behavior are added to the criticism itself.
As a leader in a local church and in other places, I got to the point where I did not entertain such veiled criticisms. I tried to be polite and say, “I am sorry, but I cannot listen to you further because you will not give me the specific sources of the concerns. If you are willing to name those people specifically or, even better, get them to speak to me directly, I will be happy to hear the concerns.”
Has my approached worked? Frankly, I don’t recall any of these critics being happy with my response. But I have had to learn that there are certain people in churches and other organizations who have the spiritual gift of complaining. And they will exercise that gift frequently and with vigor.
I have to move on to those who have positive and encouraging solutions. Life is too short to deal with cowardly complainers.
Let me know what you think about this issue.
Posted on December 17, 2014
With nearly 40 years of ministry experience, Thom Rainer has spent a lifetime committed to the growth and health of local churches across North America.
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343 Comments
Hi there
It’s funny seeing this pop up on Facebook today, as we were talking about this very issue during staff lunch yesterday!! We’re reading through ‘A Dangerous Calling’ in staff meetings, and we were talking about how it’s a two way thing – the minister needs to be approachable (so that people with concerns feel that they can go to him), and humble enough to take genuine criticism, but at the same time, people in the church need to care for their minister and staff!
Thanks for the post!
Pippa
Thank you as well, Pippa.
How much of the problem has to do with leadership not the minister? I have thought for a long time that in many churches, the minister was a puppet and leadership pulled the strings. Even if leadership did not write the sermon, they had a hand in the topics and did not think that their topics had no relevance to many people. I think a lot of problems are with leadership but they can hide behind the minister and not ever have to be responsible.
Why don’t churches have an open Q&A session every quarter and allow for questions to be asked of leadership and the clergy? There is so little transparency in most churches and that allows some minor issues to fester up and then boil over without warning. Also, do not answer a woman’s question differently than if a man asked it.
A Q&A session to answer questions on theology, philosophy, and ministry would be fine, but not a time to air out concerns or “complaints.” When the floor is given to emotionally charged church people, things could potentially get ugly. Church splits happen in “business meetings.” The church I now pastor blew up that way.
When you are fortunate enough to land another job (preferably outside of church work) on your last Sunday, tell the church you’ve created a video just for them. As the video plays, gather your family together, walk out arm-in-arm and get into your car. The video should have a prelude of Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” followed immediately with PowerPoint of you and your family loving each other, laughing, smiling and play their other song “We are the Champions”. The final picture should be of the family standing together with a bubble that reads “Someone has been telling us this church sucks at taking care of their staff”. We agree and we are outta here!
I loved it. I am taking the freedom to translate and pubish in my blog. http://aahollas.blogspot.com/
I use the 7% rule. Years ago I read an article that stated that within any organization there will always be up to 7% who will be unhappy. It could be the IBM Company, your Bowling League, Scout Troop, Rotary or in our case, our Church. Understand that no matter what you do, there will always be up to 7% who will never be happy. They are just “unhappy” people and you can rarely fix them.
My experience has been (32 years in the pastorate) that almost always, the “people are saying…” are maybe three or four people. If your church is running 200 attendees on Sunday, this equates to about 2%….. not a real problem in my book. If it gets up to 10% – 15% now you may have a real problem. By then your Deacons/Elders will be aware of it and you would be wise to fix it.
To vaccinate the congregation I would do some in depth expository teaching on Matthew 18 on how to handle conflict and Ephesians 5:18-21 on what a Spirit filled life looks like emphasizing that Spirit filled people are characterized by “thankfulness”.
Also, maybe about three or four times a year in the course of my preaching, I remind our people that there is no such thing as a perfect Church or a perfect Pastor. And if you are ever so blessed to find a perfect Church, don’t join it. You will mess it up because you are imperfect like the rest of us.
Sometimes I think folks don’t want to betray something they think was said to them in confidence. I understand this, but I still think the healthy, and more biblical, response is to encourage the complainer to go and talk to the pastor or whoever it happens to be that they have their beef with rather than going as their “representative.”
For all the members and laypeople, here’s how you do it. I am not a pastor, nor an elder or deacon or board member of my church. Recently my wife and I heard something from the pulpit that concerned us quite a bit. We mulled it over between each other for a few days. Then we discussed our concerns with some trusted friends just to see if we were way off base. Then, after getting the sense that our concerns might have some weight to them, we decided to write our pastor a brief email saying that we had some concerns in a specific area and that we’d like to talk to him. We set up a meeting with him, spoke our peace about our concerns, found that he was open to listening to us, and then we went on and talked about a few other things.
Don’t run around to everyone in the congregation whining about this or that. Don’t put your pastor or your church programs down in public just because you are annoyed. Don’t harbor your concerns; think about them carefully to see if they are valid or if they might be self-serving. If you have real concerns or specific and helpful input, then go to your pastor face-to-face.
We expect our pastors to be clear and honest with us, not duplicitous. We should do the same for them.
Bravo!
Tough issue all around…. I think that it is inappropriate to ask for names—then you are doing what the complainer is doing—that is, acting on 2nd hand information. (could that then be participating in — gossip?)
I like CJ’s and Rojelio’s response. “How did you respond?” or “How do you feel on this issue?” You may be dealing right then with the ‘people’. You may also be able to turn the tide by suggesting that there was another side to the story.
While I can appreciate the sentiment, having a policy or making a statement that “I don’t deal/respond/think about issues unless they have a name attached ” is precisely when that leader and policy will isolate the leader from ever hearing something he might actually need to hear. It is essentially intended to innoculate oneself from hearing criticism and intimidates the bear of the ‘other people’ statement and anyone else that they relate the conversation to. And they will relate the conversation to others!
Keeping oneself approachable and interested in the concern of the individual in front of them should be the priority. It is a teachable moment about gossip, about Matt 18, about specificity and about openness and not relaying 2nd hand information. It is an opportunity to recruit an advocate as well.
Just saying you can’t be a part of it without a name will only guarantee that it will fester until one day it joins other festering wounds and the result won’t be pretty. You also must assume that where there is smoke, there’s fire–at the very least, or maybe at the most, standing right there in front of you.
Definitely two sides to this. I was a part of church leadership with a lead pastor who was defensive, abusive, and self-righteous. After one session with him most people wouldn’t make the same mistake again. Those who felt committed to the larger church mission found themselves in a quandry. And the more approachable, humble hearted staff took the brunt of the complaints (which were often valid). Most people would eventually leave. Ever hear the name “Mars Hill?”
It’s called “Triangulation” and I usually respond by saying “I understand, and if you are talking to that person (those people) let them know that I’d be happy to talk about it when they speak to me directly.”
If you are unhappy with the leadership in the church and can see that nothing is going to change, just leave. You need not whine and complain to others, just move on.