Church & Community
There is someone at my church who tries to control everything and everyone tiptoes around it. How do I respond without causing a rift?
“Only by pride cometh contention: but with the well advised is wisdom.”
Proverbs traces conflict back to its root more often than to its occasion. Here the root is pride, and the alternative offered is not passivity but being well advised, which describes a person who genuinely takes counsel from others. The controlling person in a church is usually receiving counsel from nobody. Naming that helps you see the problem accurately, and it also keeps you from slowly becoming a mirror image of it.
“I wrote unto the church: but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receiveth us not.”
John writes a short personal letter and names a man in a congregation who loved being first and would not receive the apostle's own messengers. It is one of the New Testament's plainest acknowledgments that a single domineering member can set the atmosphere of a whole church. John does not tell everybody to leave, and he does not pretend it is fine. He names it and says he intends to address it.
A path forward
Write down the specific behaviors rather than the general impression, with dates. Vague complaints about a difficult person go nowhere; three concrete examples are something a leader can act on.
Take it to a leader once, calmly, as information rather than an ultimatum. If several people are tiptoeing, the leaders may be hearing it only from you and have no idea of the scale.
Pray for this person before every meeting you share with them, and ask God to keep your own heart from hardening. The second half of that prayer is the part that protects you.
Closing verse
“Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.”
- Philippians 2:3
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