When the Violence Comes Inside

In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, host Todd Rhoades discusses how church leaders should navigate the aftermath of significant societal events, such as the recent incident at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Rhoades emphasizes the importance of not ignoring such events while also maintaining a non-political stance when addressing them. He proposes a balanced approach for pastors to pastorally support their congregations without taking political sides. • Incident at the White House Correspondents' Dinner has shaken churchgoers. • Pastoral response should acknowledge the event without political bias. • Discusses the role of the church and pastors in guiding congregations through societal events. • Proposes a 'third way' for pastoral leadership that focuses on unity and healing. • Upcoming series on handling politically mixed congregations and defining the pulpit's role.

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Transcript

A Shocking Weekend And A Tense Room

SPEAKER_00 0:08

It seemed like just another Saturday night in America. But all of a sudden there were gunshots in Washington, D.C. at the White House correspondence day. The presidents rushed out, the room actually literally hit the floor. And less than 12 hours later, everybody starts showing up at your church. Some people had no idea what happened. Other people in your church had been following it and didn't get much sleep the night before. Everybody thinks something different. And the temperature is just not normal anymore. And that's what we're going to be talking about today and this week here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name's Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders over at Chemistry Staffing. And I'm so glad that you're here today on this late release today for me because I wanted to take some time and actually think through what I wanted to say today because I did want to address this. Let me start here, okay? This is not an episode about politics. I don't do politics on this show, and I'm not going to start now. But here's the thing: something happened this weekend, and you can't pretend that it didn't happen. And the people in your church felt it in five different directions. Some are scared, some are angry, some are quietly, they would never say this, but some somehow satisfied. Some think it was staged, others are just numb and they've just had enough. And all of them were sitting in your room yesterday, and all of them are going to be back again this Sunday sitting in your room. And you don't get to ignore that, but you don't have to address it either, necessarily. We're going to talk about that today, okay? So again, this is not about politics. Hopefully, you won't get my political view out of this. Do I have political views? Sure, I do. Everybody, everybody has thoughts. But here's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about how I see pastors and their role and the church's role, and maybe some of the things that I've seen some pastors do really right in these kind of situations. And sometimes some of the things I think pastors have been doing wrong in this in these types of situations. And this, these situations, the temperature is totally different now. And these situations seem like they pop up with more regularity. We've had at least a few of them in the past year. And I think there are some options. Okay, when let me talk about just two of them right here today. You've got option, let's call it option A and option B. Okay, here's option A if you're the preaching person that's preaching on a Sunday after an event like this happens. Option A is you just pretend it didn't happen. You don't even mention it. You preach Colossians 3, just like nothing's going on. That's option A. Okay. Option B, you address it head on from the pulpit and you make it the message, right? You drop the Colossians 3, or maybe you mention a verse, but you somehow try to tie it into what just happened. I think both could be possibly mistakes. We just went through, let me give you a couple of examples. We just went through about six years ago a big pandemic. And I tell you what, we work with that in our work at chemistry staffing, we work with candidates in churches all day, every day. And I tell you, the number of pastors that were either fired or needed to leave their church because of the way they led through COVID was incredible. Pastors could not do the right thing. Mask, no mask, meat, no meat. All those any kind of decision a pastor or church leaders made during that time isolated half their congregation. We saw it not too long ago, another instance, kind of like Saturday night, was the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Pastors either either meet at the message or they didn't mention it at all, and whatever they did seemed wrong in some churches. So this is something that that I think this is a timely message. I don't hear really a lot of people talking about. So when these things happen, what's the church's role? What's the pastor's role? What is the leader's role? So that's what I'm going to try and talk about here a little bit. I realize I'm getting into some thorny areas here, and I realize not everybody's going to agree with me, but I want to give you a non-political, hopefully a biblical and sensical type of approach. If you pretend that these things don't happen, that's going to send a message that that your church really isn't real. And if you address it head on, it sends a message that this church has a take on this. But what I want to talk about is maybe a third way, and it's a harder way. Okay. Let me say it like this. Pastoring is not the same as publishing. Okay? Now listen, the pulpit is not a cable news desk. Your job this week is not to explain what happened. Your job is to pastor people who are processing what just happened. That's a different job. Let me say that again. Your job, your pulpit is not a cable news desk. Your job this week is not to try to explain what happened, not even to put it in a cultural context. Your job this week is to pastor people who are processing it. And that's a totally, totally different job. It happens in hallway conversations, it's going to happen in the lobby after the service. It's going to happen in a text message to a small group leader that you know is rattled. It happens in your prayers from the stage that name the country without naming the team. It happens when you remind people that we lift up Jesus above any of this that's going on. So here's what this week is really about. And this is the truth. This week is not about what happened at the correspondence dinner. It's not about the shooting. It's not about the suspect. It's not about your political ideals that you bring into however you feel about that. The all of that, the shooting, everything is just a symptom. The disease is a country that has lost our ability to disagree without the ability without dehumanizing other people. Okay. Let me repeat that again, because again, these I think they're these are important. If you're just driving down the road, I don't want you to miss this. The shooting, everything happened is really a symptom. The disease is a country that's lost the ability to disagree without without dehumanizing. And the church, the big sea church, and this is why I'm talking about it. The big sea church has caught that disease. Not in every congregation, but in enough churches across America. We talk to churches, like I said, all day, every day in our business of chemistry, not in every congregation, but in enough of them that you can start to feel it. Feel like we need to talk about it. Your job this week is not to cure the country. That's not your job. Your job is to make sure that this disease, this whole losing the ability to disagree without dehumanizing, you need to make sure that disease doesn't take root in your room or in your church. Here's the bottom line for today. You can't pastor a temperature that you won't acknowledge. And you also can't pastor a moment by chasing after it. You do need to name what's happening. Don't take aside, lift up Jesus. That's it. That's the assignment this week. So what do you do with that, Todd? I mean, how do you balance this? You probably have a staff meeting, and a lot of them are you know it's probably, I'm guessing, not on your agenda to talk about, but you know what? All of your staff is talking about it. Acknowledge what happened this weekend. Not in political tones, not to take sides, but tell them tell your staff, and maybe you need to tell yourself this, what you need to have them show up with this week. It needs to look calm, it needs to be present, and it needs to be pastoral. I know we already passed Sunday, but one other way, and I've seen some churches do this really well, and this is where pastors get in trouble, right, is what they say, and equally what they don't say. This could be as simple as adding one sentence to a pastoral prayer on a Sunday. Not a take, not coming down on political sides, a prayer for the country, for leaders on every side, and for the church, for your church, to be a refuge. That could be as simple as what it needs to be. Now, we're gonna be talking about all this week. I've planned out this morning, I wrote out a five-part series that we're gonna be talking about this week. And we're gonna talk about how to lead a politically mixed church. We're gonna talk about what the pulpit is and what the pulpit isn't for. We're gonna talk about how to make your church safe without making your church soft. And we're gonna talk about how to pastor people who don't trust each other anymore. Okay? Again, I don't want this to be political, but I think this is what we're all living right now. This is the church in America that we are charged to lead. And I don't expect that you're gonna agree with me on everything, although this will not be political. But I do hope that it will speak into your thought process and at least get you to start to thinking, because the temperature it's changed. And if you're a pastor or staff leader navigating this kind of week and want to talk through it, send me an email. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Podcast at chemistry staffing.com. And when your church is in transition or you need any kind of help with healthy staff related things, contact me, podcast at chemistry staffing, or just check us out over at chemistry staffing.com. All right, that's it for today. A little bit longer podcast, but I wanted to take some time to kind of set where we're headed this week on the podcast. If you'd some additional thoughts, I look over probably 50 different sources every morning. I'm a kind of a connoisseur, a church nerd of information, and I just started a brand new email newsletter. It's absolutely free. That'll give you my top three things that I think every church staff member should be reading. We don't have time to go into that here on the podcast every day. But if you would like that free email newsletter, you can just head over to Church Leadership Radar. Churchleadershipradar.com and just give your first name, your email address absolutely free, and you'll start getting that tomorrow. All right, that's it. I hope you'll join us back here tomorrow on bighubbychurch.com.