I once volunteered for a ministry alongside a woman with a bad temper. From time to time she’d feel compelled to lay me out for some infraction. I’d freeze, stunned under a shower of hostile words. Without exception she’d later reach out to apologize just as emotionally, only this time she felt sadness and shame instead of anger. I’d forgive, and we’d move on.
I forgave this woman somewhat easily, knowing a bit about her home environment growing up. The example set by her parents taught her to funnel frustration into tirades. Her core beliefs of “Everything must go my way” and “I’m entitled to my anger” fueled her habit of lambasting coworkers and friends. God impressed me to extend to her the very grace she hadn’t learned to extend to others. And it paid off. Over the long haul of her life, the transforming power of God turned this woman into a different person.
As I mulled over the subject of church EGRs (extra grace required persons), I identified three categories of difficult members—rough members, draining members, and snobby members. All three of these classes need extra grace in different forms. While noting that we all fall into these patterns from time to time, we must also acknowledge that some people come to embody them. I’ll explain each one, along with some biblical wisdom on how to interact with them most constructively. Perhaps you will relate.
Rough Members
An elderly woman needed help climbing the stairs to a church, and a member gladly assisted her.
“Let me walk you in,” he said. “Where would you like to sit?”
“In the front,” she said.
“Don’t sit there,” the man said. “The pastor is very boring.”
“Do you know who I am?” she asked, quickly adding, “I’m the pastor’s mother!”
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“Good.”
Most offenses don’t stay so well hidden. A pastor wanting to illustrate the low social status of fishermen in Bible times said, “They were like, I don’t know . . . truck drivers!” The problem was that his congregation was full of truck drivers. One of them stood up and told him off right then and there in the middle of the sermon.
Most of us have difficulty forming trust bonds with rough people. Just when we start to lower our guard to let them in, they issue another zinger. Up come the walls again, this time thicker and higher than before. Jesus said, “It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him through whom they do come!” (Luke 17:1). Rough people earn a reputation for offending others. Why don’t they stop, given the high social cost?
Very often people with social deficits grew up in a poor home environment. Ellen White explains it like this:
“The reason why there are so many hardhearted men and women in the world is that true affection has been regarded as weakness, and has been discouraged and repressed. The better nature of these persons was stifled in childhood; and unless the light of divine love shall melt away their cold selfishness, their happiness will be forever ruined.”1
When people lack boundaries of their own, we must reinforce ours.
As we grow in Jesus, we become more intelligent in our relational lives. We learn to trust wisely. One of the keys to loving rough people is knowing how to create emotional boundaries. We learn not to absorb their hurtful words for the simple reason that their words reflect more on their harshness of character than anything in us. Or perhaps if there is some truth in what they say, we “eat the meat and leave the bones.” But we learn not to give them the direct access to our souls we would give a more sensitive and trusted friend.
Sometimes a direct conversation will be needed. Tell the rough person how their words hurt. They will likely defend themselves and shift blame but stand firm. It is for the lack of honest feedback, withheld out of fear of their reaction, that rough people lack evidence of their impact. Say something like “I’m not trying to win a court case against you. I’m simply stating what I experienced. Please consider it and pray about it.” “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone” (Matt. 18:15). Direct, frank conversations require courage, but often prove to be highly rewarding.
Draining Members
Listening is a powerful healer. Emotional disclosure, or the ability to admit one’s feelings to another person, predicts posttraumatic growth.2 Emotional openness facilitates bonding.3 But a culture of self-disclosure carries risks, one of them being that some people overtalk and drain those listening.
Compulsive talking is a thing. One talk show host recommends pocketing some ketchup packets so that if one finds themselves stuck with a compulsive talker, they can burst one open and run away, crying, “I’ve been shot!”4 Of course that wouldn’t be honest, but entrapment with a compulsive talker can tempt a person to take extreme measures. In all honesty, which of us hasn’t been tempted to just hang up the phone on an overtalker?
We know the drill. While the compulsive talker carries on, the listener sits frozen, eyes wide but slightly unfocused, and, having lost track of the monologue long ago, longing for escape but seeing none, instead zones out to the tune of their own voice saying, “Uh-huh . . . un-huh . . .”
Or perhaps the draining person doesn’t overtalk so much as focus entirely on themselves. Typically this takes the form of that person processing their woes and sorrows continually, as if human suffering began and ended with them. Yet “all have trials; griefs hard to bear, temptations hard to resist.”5
When people lack boundaries of their own, we must reinforce ours. Loving draining people means setting boundaries and declaring them clearly. This sounds like:
“I have only 10 minutes to talk. Then I simply must go.” Then when the 10 minutes rolls around, interrupt with “I must go now. Thanks for understanding.”
“You’ve been talking about your depression symptoms a lot. I’d like to encourage you to find a professional. Can I help you with that?”
“You’ve already shared three times with the class. I’m going to call on a person who hasn’t shared anything yet.”
And so on. I know, it sounds easy. But note that setting boundaries with a draining person always feels off. We may be tempted to think we’ve been rude, heartless, or cold. But false guilt must be deflected if we are to successfully maintain our limits.
Better-than-you members
I once sat across from a friend of a family member at his yacht club luncheon. He explained that he wished the club could go back to the days when the law allowed them to exclude everyone but white people. I never went back to his club.
Exclusivity, whether based on race, status, wealth, or other factors, should be foreign to the faith of Jesus. He has made of one blood all nations (Acts 17:26). Yet these things defy regulation. When the spirit of superiority seeps into the heart, even professed Christians can become arrogant. Paul encountered this problem when a group of Jewish converts to Christianity began requiring circumcision of Gentile converts. He called Peter out publicly for refusing to eat with Gentiles (see Gal. 2:11-16).
We cannot assume that only the strict, conservative types engage in religious arrogance. People form social cliques around any number of things, whether demographics, practices, or ideologies. Conservative snobs exist, but so do liberal snobs. And some people simply have cold, standoffish personalities.
Of all the types of EGRs, snobby EGRs require the most grace simply because our first impulse is to hurt them back. It can be helpful to remember that well-hidden insecurities lead some people to appear arrogant. Many experts believe that narcissistic personality disorder begins with deep, unresolved shame. Social anxiety can make a person appear rejecting when in fact they are terrified of rejection. A healthy sense of our inability to read hearts will soften our own hearts toward people who seem to have hard hearts.
Our patience toward EGRs will pay off in rich dividends of grace abounding toward us. We should remember that “there but by the grace of God go I” and that as we pray for extra grace to love EGRs, someone is praying for extra grace to love us.
1 Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1898, 1940), p. 516.
2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3525957/
3 Link
4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHrpFrjEXCQ.
5 Ellen G. White, Steps to Christ (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1956), p. 119.
