[BBC List] what will they think of next?

[Mike Abendroth]

ICS -- "Irritable Clergy Syndrome" (It's official)


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"Irritable Clergy Syndrome" (It's official) 


Derek
<http://www.reformation21.org/Reformation_21_Blog/Authors/207/vobId__4809/us
erId__9/>  Thomas


12/14/2006


Justin, speaking of pastors and what they are to do, the Archbishop of
Canterbury has weighed in on a report addressing bullying and gossip among
parishioners. In last saturday's The Times, Ruth Gledhil (their religious
correspondent) wrote a piece called, "Evil-minded parishioners making life
hell for clergy" (12/09/06). Churches in idyllic rural settings are
apparently "a 'toxic cocktail' of bullying and terror." 

  _____  

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is among the contributors
to the report, The Future of the Parish System: Shaping the Church of
England for the 21st Century. 

One of the authors, Sara Savage, a psychology and religion researcher at the
University of Cambridge, reports how increasing numbers of ministers are
going down with a new illness, irritable clergy syndrome. 

Priests are being torn by the pressure of having to be nice all the time to
everyone, even when confronted with extremes of nastiness, she says. 

It is worse in the suburbs, where Christians can choose between a variety of
"gathered" churches, all offering different styles, from tambourines to High
Mass with incense. Here, troublemakers indulge in "church hopping", moving
on to the next church once they have had enough of the one they are in. 

The article continues:

"Dr Savage says that these people suffer from neurotic personality disorders
bordering on the psychotic. 

But even where a church has none of these in its congregation, other
problems arise. 

One difficulty is how to motivate the "settled blancmange" of the softly
acquiescent majority, described by Dr Savage as "social loafers". "Bums on
pews are often just that," she reports. 

Dr Savage says one of the problems is that churches are hierarchical
systems, with all the attendant echoes of feudal society. Thus they elicit
bad behaviour such as status seeking, fawning, bullying, passivity, blaming
others and gossiping. 

Clergy soften the impact of this, while at the same time preserving it, by
being "nice", she says. "The norm of Christian niceness is ubiquitous,
despite the portrait the Gospels paint of Jesus as an assertive, sometimes
acerbic personality who readily confronted people in order to pursue their
spiritual welfare." 

She agrees that nastiness is unproductive, but argues that niceness "can tie
churches up in knots". Because lay volunteers, such as churchwardens or
vergers, are unpaid, they do not expect to be confronted by their "nice"
vicar over the way they fulfil their role. 

"Clergy desperately need their lay workers and volunteers, of whom there is
a limited supply. Organists know this," she writes. "I am reliably informed
that one of the most stressful features of ministry is the effort to be nice
to difficult people." 

 

 

Thanks.

 

Charis,

 

Mike Abendroth

 

www.bbcchurch.org

 

2 Tim 1:2b  "Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our
Lord."

 

"After the reading of Scripture, which I strenuously inculcate, and more
than any other ... I recommend that the Commentaries of Calvin be read ...
For I affirm that in the interpretation of the Scriptures Calvin is
incomparable, and that his Commentaries are more to be valued than anything
that is handed down to us in the writings of the Fathers -- so much that I
concede to him a certain spirit of prophecy in which he stands distinguished
above others, above most, indeed, above all."  Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609)

 

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