What would you say to those church leaders with a drive to achieve whose instinct is to bury grief rather than journey through it?
With grief, my definition is honoring what comes up when change shows up. And what I realized was I hadn’t spent time honoring all the unique changes that had come up in my story. I just went to where I found favor, which was in teaching and leading. I could really wrestle with some of the pain and trauma in my story, or I could go preach good news. I wanted to do the good news.
But what I came to realize was that whether or not the crisis at Willow was happening, there was a crisis that was going to happen within me if I did not learn how to have structures in my life where I could honor the change and the feelings that came with that. It’s hard to say that feels as compelling as building a new building in a church leader’s mind. But what I realized was when Paul says we ought to be the kind of people who rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn (Romans 12:15), the only way we’ll be able to do that is if we experience that for ourselves. That takes time and opening your life to therapists and spiritual directors.
How do you think your experiences with the grief process have helped you to better counsel others?
Before all of this, I was good at skimming the surface, maybe asking you a question about your faith, or your life or what you’re into. But when it got to a deeper level, I could feel myself checking out. The benefit of learning to do this in my own life was that I didn’t feel myself trying to escape the depths; I found myself wanting to go deeper with other people.
What I found was that when you actually do what Romans 5 says—boasting in your sufferings because it produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope; and hope will not be put to shame when you do that—that process allows you to be able to meet people in their Friday or their Saturday or their Sunday. That was the surprising benefit of the “grieve, breathe, receive” process for me. It did something in me so much so that it transformed how I pastor and how I see people in ministry, inside the church, outside the church, in their joy and in their pain.
What can the church do to incorporate grief and lament into our liturgy and/or teaching?
We do Good Friday services in most churches, and then Easter begins on Saturday for us because of the crowds. So basically, we jump from Friday to Sunday, and we’ve not taught people how to wander in the desert, in the silence of Saturday, in the uncertainty and unknown.
So this past Easter, we did a Silent Saturday service for anyone who felt like they were in between grief and hope, Friday and Sunday. About 150 people came out. There were people who had lost a spouse, or who were in the midst of chemo or a divorce. It was one of the most meaningful things we’ve done in the past year. You can’t just jump from suffering to hope. You’ve got to talk about the character and the perseverance.
In lots of nondenominational churches that don’t have a liturgy, we don’t have a moment of confession. So I think it gets hard for us to admit when we’re wrong or living a little off base, because we confess once and don’t have to confess again. At the church I’m at now, we have a classic service built around the liturgy, and every service there’s a silent confession, and then there is this absolution of our sins. Those moments of corporate confession where we read some things together, have a silent confession, and then are reminded that we’re forgiven, really begin to prepare you for the Fridays and Saturdays. And the deeper we go with that, the more we long for the hope and excitement of Sunday.
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