I fear that, without really intending to, churches have a habit of infantilising people. We should treat people like adults.
My new staff team tells me this is something I say a lot.
In my experience, the vast majority of people act like they are treated. If we expect people to act in disciplined, orderly ways, then most people will do so. Of course, in one sense, what I’m saying is naïve. There certainly are people who need to be taught how to behave in disciplined, orderly ways. There are other people whose life circumstances make it much more difficult for them to do so. There are also ‘disciplined, orderly ways’ that actually amount to English middle-classed culture, such that expecting it of people of other English cultures and from other parts of the world is not reasonable.
In my experience, this plays out in church life in two directions. The first is whether or not we hound people when we are concerned that they are making a poor decision.
Do we chase the person who is on a rota when we suspect they’ve told us they aren’t available in conversation, but they haven’t swapped or done whatever the expectation is? In my opinion, no, we assume that they simply haven’t done it yet. If the person has form, you might behave differently, but it is better that they either do the right thing themselves without being chased—and they will more than half the time—or if they don’t follow through then you have an opportunity for both the team leader to develop their leadership skills as they speak with the person and for the person to understand why these administrative tasks matter as they result in letting other people down.
Equally, in the same vein, do we send lots of reminders for events? This can be a little harder to discern because good communication requires saying something multiple times in multiple media, but we try not to send unnecessary reminders. We tend to assume that people can manage their time and are choosing not to attend an event. This can be difficult for leaders, especially because leadership anxiety is a real and pernicious experience; lots of Pastors will feel a range of deeply personal things when an important event is poorly attended. As a result, they try hard to mitigate this feeling by what can amount to badgering people into attending. It can be effective, but it’s a rod made for your back as you’ll have to do this perpetually. I’ve seen this play out in strange ways in other churches, where people have to justify why they hadn’t signed up for a particular thing; that way heavy shepherding lies. Plan an appropriate range of communication, don’t use ‘reminders’ for everything you do—as the power lies in their rarity—and assume that if people don’t attend there is a reason.
Of course, we need to find out what that reason is, probably by asking some curious questions of people who didn’t come. We might learn that our comms or scheduling isn’t as good as it could be, but we might have done everything right and they still won’t attend. They’re adults, that’s OK.
This also comes into play in simple office tasks like how quickly you chase someone that you’re waiting for something from. This applies pretty much anywhere I’ve ever worked; in my experience unless you’re hitting the task being genuinely urgent then chasers are annoying rather than helpful. They imply that you couldn’t manage your workflow. Chasing once a deadline is past (or is imminent, perhaps) is reasonable, chasing when there are still five days to go and you don’t have a reason for thinking they haven’t yet done anything with it maybe isn’t. Nine times out of ten people will come through if you give them time to do so. This does require that you’re clear about when you need something by; sometimes when I want to chase, I realise it’s because we have mismatched expectations about when the task would be completed. Most of the time when I want to chase, but think it might be too early, I pray and ask the Lord to prompt the response instead. You are allowed to do that, even in your office job. It is surprisingly effective.
The other angle is in how we teach people, particularly in our preaching on a Sunday. Do we dumb down or do we treat people like adults? People are in a variety of places in your congregation. Someone has just walked off the street with no knowledge of Christianity and someone else has been a Christian for seventy years and knows their Bible forwards and backwards. How do you speak to them both?
In my experience, it is Christians who want things dumbed down and made easy to digest. Those who are exploring the faith do not have an expectation that they will know what you are talking about all the time. We need to provide on-ramps, handholds to grab in our speaking every now and again so that they can follow again when they’re lost. When you go deep, you should go shallow again afterwards so that people who couldn’t come all the way with you can join back in. Newcomers to the faith don’t expect to understand everything. It’s Christians that have been fed a diet that was aimed to be simple for newcomers who get grumpy if they don’t quite follow something. It’s ok to stretch people, though you do need to keep providing that shallow opportunity again for people to catch their breath.
We can treat people like adults. We can expect them to take some responsibility for their faith. We can make clear that we expect this in how we posture and describe things. Most people will, slowly, rise to the challenge. Most of those who won’t naturally manage this can do so if they’re coached into doing so by friends. Men, particularly, thrive in environments where there is genuine challenge that requires something of us to grasp it.
Treating people as adults is not treating people as experts. It’s assuming that if you start at the beginning and go at an appropriate pace, you can reach almost anywhere. Let’s not stop at the beginning.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
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