No one can tell you what you should do. I offer just a couple of thoughts.
The members of a particular church may be members of the larger body of Christ, but they are also members of a human community, subject to all the problems of any human community. When people actually hurt each other, that may call for healing the body, but when they engage in power struggles or can't agree, that has to do with human community.
Churches today do have businesslike aspects. There's no way around it. If a church can't take in enough money to keep up the physical plant, to pay the employees, to run the programs, the church closes. And a large part of bringing in that money is pleasing the members.
Churches have always had personal conflicts and power struggles. These were kept to a minimum in the Roman Catholic churches I grew up in, because there was an unchallengeable hieracrchy: the pastor was the ultimate authority, the other priests were next, then the mother superior of the school, then the other sisters, then the lay teachers, then the adults of the parish, then the kids. But from my friends who grew up in Protestant churches I know that power struggles were not uncommon there. Wherever there are people who have power and people who don't, there will be some kind of power struggle. (Yes, even in the Catholic churches of my childhood, though it was usually subtle.)
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Date: 2004-09-12 06:58 am (UTC)The members of a particular church may be members of the larger body of Christ, but they are also members of a human community, subject to all the problems of any human community. When people actually hurt each other, that may call for healing the body, but when they engage in power struggles or can't agree, that has to do with human community.
Churches today do have businesslike aspects. There's no way around it. If a church can't take in enough money to keep up the physical plant, to pay the employees, to run the programs, the church closes. And a large part of bringing in that money is pleasing the members.
Churches have always had personal conflicts and power struggles. These were kept to a minimum in the Roman Catholic churches I grew up in, because there was an unchallengeable hieracrchy: the pastor was the ultimate authority, the other priests were next, then the mother superior of the school, then the other sisters, then the lay teachers, then the adults of the parish, then the kids. But from my friends who grew up in Protestant churches I know that power struggles were not uncommon there. Wherever there are people who have power and people who don't, there will be some kind of power struggle. (Yes, even in the Catholic churches of my childhood, though it was usually subtle.)