Elders: The Care and Feeding of Elders in a Progressive Congregation: Unresolved Anger with Parents and Former Employers

* Don’t invite former employers and parents into the room

Sometimes a minister carries around gaping wounds from previous elderships. He feels betrayed or abused, and so he has trouble imagining that the new eldership will be any better. Whatever the elders say is filtered through his former experiences. And this is a sure relationship destroyer, because the new elders aren’t even given a chance to be better than the last eldership.

The same problem can come from unresolved problems with parents. Ministers with unresolved problems with their fathers will often transfer their paternal resentments to the fatherly elders — leading to all sorts of problems.

I honestly don’t know how a minister puts those kinds of problems behind him. I don’t. Maybe he needs counseling. Maybe he just needs to frankly admit the problem and work through it. The elders should certainly be gentle and patient. These kinds of issues can be ministry and career killers. The ministers and elders have to work together to overcome the wounds from the past.

To give an example, imagine a youth minister with deeply rooted resentments stemming from a prior job. When he was hired, he was told he could let girls pray in the presence of boys. Some time later, the youth group hosts a joint devotional with another church in town. The elders call the youth minister aside and tell him that he should not let the girls pray around boys during the devo because the other church believes that to be sin. They remind the youth minister that his is a Romans 14 kind of thing.

The youth minister is furious! He says, “I knew you guys were a bunch of legalists. You hid your true feelings on prayer from me, and now that my wife and I have moved here, you’ve ruined my ministry!”

Well, he’s a little nutty, right? He’s looking for a chance to be angry at his new elders because he has unresolved anger against the former elders. And the former elders are, quite understandably, astonished and hurt by his outburst.

I don’t know the cure, but I know there are a lot of ministers carrying around unresolved anger against former employers and parents. And we need to find a way to deal with it. Here are some posts by other people on the issue — but I have no expertise in this myself.

A.N.G.E.R Workout

Healthy Place

I think the wise eldership would help a minister find counseling to overcome these kinds of issues, if the minister is willing to seek professional help. Of course, many people are able to cope well on their own, once they identify the problem and realize how they are acting.

In any event, it’s fair enough for the elders to cry foul whenever a minister discusses a church problem as though his former elders are in the room.

Now, this is a problem that cuts both ways. Some elders are still struggling to cope with anger left over from a former minister who burned them. The current minister should feel free to remind the elders that he is not that guy and shouldn’t have to suffer their anger over someone else’s mistakes. Again, sometimes the key is identify and speak the problem outloud and frankly give the other party permission to call the other on it. If an eldership or minister brings a former minister or eldership (or parent) into the room, the other party has the right to ask that the old nemesis leave.