“Challenge Me” and other Church Principles for a Disruptive Era

It’s a challenging time to lead a church. Truthfully, I don’t know that there has ever been an easy time to lead a church. Because churches are populated by, run by, and seek to serve people in God’s name. And people are wondrously, perplexingly, and exasperatingly complicated. As is talking about God. History, human psychology, holy Scripture, and the news of the day all clearly bear this out. Even so, these are especially fraught times for church leaders.

Fraught. But, also, fertile.

How do we seek to understand—not characterize or judge—people both within and beyond our congregations whom we sense (or know) hold views or theologies different from our own?

An obvious facet of the overall challenge—arguably the most symptomatic one—is the political landscape. America is literally and painfully split down the middle (emphasis on split). With no signs that the balance of the two sides or the intensity of the differences will soon or easily shift.

Neither All Red nor All Blue

My guess is that most churches in America are not split as evenly as the American body politic. No doubt some churches are overwhelmingly “one-sided” in their composition—with memberships that are all “red” or all “blue” or near to it, according to our apparently indispensable (!) color-coded political parlance. As people seek further relief from the tensions of the current political schism, and seek to gather among like-minded folks—including among like-minded pastors and parishioners who will offer them a ready and frictionless “Amen!”—it’s likely the number of “either/or” churches (either all blue or all red) will grow. (I, for one, do not feel that would be a good thing.)

But churches are seldom 100/0. Or, for that matter, 50/50. My sense is that a meaningful percentage of congregations will continue to fall somewhere in between. 

In such times, and in such churches (including the one I’m blessed to currently serve), the questions are: How, then, is a pastor to lead? How does a pastor witness both to what Christ gives to us and to what Christ asks of us? (A better word than “asks” might be “demands.” But Yankees, of which I’m one, and Americans in general bristle at demands. So I’ll stick with “asks”!) How do we lead and preach and teach in a way that is true to Christ’s teachings and ensures that the message is received, pondered, and taken to heart and to mind by the widest swath of listeners?

Is the Message Getting Through?

How do we seek to understand—not characterize or judge—people both within and beyond our congregations whom we sense (or know) hold views or theologies different from our own? How can we avoid political trigger words or slogans that distract, derail, or diminish our gospel witness, and fruitfully convey what we humbly believe is Christ’s message?

These questions command my attention. Perhaps they resonate with readers, too, as we seek to navigate these times. And perhaps the answers we find will, indeed, reveal these times as not just fraught but, also, fertile.

As I seek in my congregation to translate all this into daily practical terms (which is ever the rub, of course!), I am trying to stand in, and to point to, Jesus’ incarnate Word of love, yet in a way that does not predetermine or prescribe what people need to think, say, or do. I’m trying to point to the questions that Jesus’ life and teaching unavoidably raise about how to live in relationship with God, Creation, and our fellow humanity, while resisting the temptation to impose the answers.

Four Boundaries 

In the congregation I served previously, I remember a period in which four principles for preaching came clear. These principles guided and empowered me both before and during the pandemic. And they feel equally apropos in these embattled times. These four principles are not merely a list of distinct, conceptual ideas. They are fused. Together, they form four boundaries that frame a space—a fraught-yet-fertile and sort of Council-of-Nicaea-esque sandbox—for my attempts to speak of God’s Word and of Christ’s love to a congregation or community that is theologically and politically “both/and,” not “either/or.” Each of these came to me as if spoken by my congregation. Thus the quotation marks.

To the left, one boundary principle declares: “Preach God’s Word.” To the right: “Relate it to our lives.” (In these two, one can detect obvious echoes of Karl Barth’s admonition to preach with the Bible in one hand and the daily news in the other.) Across the bottom, we see and hear: “Challenge me.” And, finally, across the top, the final boundary: “But, don’t tell me what to think.” (There’s that American backbone and push-back again, one that ripples, no less, through countless Bible stories.)

I do not presume that this one frame, this one sermonic and leadership sandbox defined by these four boundaries, is the solution to everything that makes our current times so agitated, so distressed. Nevertheless, it has helped me to try to root my preaching and my leadership firmly in Christ’s principles in a way that presses and empowers individuals to wrestle with what these principles ask of each of us and of all of us. 

Sacred Moments at Hand

It might be easier to serve an “either/or” church. Serving a monochromatic congregation (an all “blue” or all “red” or all “whatever” church) and being personally aligned with the views of said congregation would likely make leading and preaching less challenging. But would that make it better and healthier? Would that make for better discipleship? Would that serve to spread the very Word we’re called to spread? Or would it simply reinforce a theological and ideological echo chamber?

Surely the division that our country and so many of our churches are currently experiencing is part of an overarching contemporary period of disruption and reckoning. But it is also—albeit in a strange, often discomforting way—part of the sacred opportunity. An opportunity that calls us to respond with humility, curiosity, compassion, courage, and grace so that we can realize a common and mutually humanizing sense of hope. However hard this will be, it is an opportunity worth embracing.

The Rev. Jeffrey D. Braun ’04 M.Div. is senior minister of The Congregational Church in South Glastonbury, an Open and Affirming member of the United Church of Christ, located in South Glastonbury, Conn. From 1991 through 2001, he worked in advertising and strategic marketing. As a YDS student, he received the Henry Hallam Tweedy Prize for exceptional promise in pastoral leadership. A member of the YDS Dean’s Advisory Council, he has also helped teach the “Introduction to Pastoral Care” course as an adjunct member of the Divinity faculty.