Losing to Gain.
We’re at the time of year when people are trying to lose the holiday pounds they put on. Oddly enough, with our bodies less weight generally is more health. Because we are Christians (translated too many times nice rather than truthful or courageous) in churches we assume that losing someone could never mean better health. But that’s not true. Many an organization has had a low skill and low attitude person drag down the whole staff and adversely effect sales. Tougher is the high skill and low attitude person. He or she may bring in lots of sales but create a lot of yuck among good people in the ranks. (Sometimes the ranks can be filled with complainers but let’s, for this example, say that this is not that way.) The boss of that company keeps the employee on but the morale goes down. While that difficult employee may have good numbers, the net output of the whole team eventually goes down. So if rehabilitation of the difficult employee doesn’t work, losing him or her is gaining. And that can be true in a church as well.
Unfortunately, what mostly happens in churches is that the good people leave because the bads one won’t or don’t. I’m not talking about employees but members too. They just continue to rub and rub and rub people the wrong way. Nobody says, “Knock it off or move along.” If you are a steward of the whole, letting one hurt the whole or the whole’s potential is serious. It isn’t very loving.
It isn’t very loving is what we say that puts us in the place of continuing to tolerate off-putting behavior. But continuing to deal with it isn’t very good for the person doing it or for the rest of the church.
Some of our problem in this matter is that we know what egregious, criminal behavior is and we won’t abide that. But when someone is just glib and glares while telling someone to get out of their pew, that’s just being ornery. We know we should eject criminal behavior but we are not sure if we should ornery behavior.
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