Dealing with Church Hurt Part 2: Working Towards Healing

Summary

On this episode of Speaking of Faith, Bishop DeDe discusses the complexities of faith and conflict within church communities. She emphasizes the importance of addressing disagreements directly and with love, using biblical guidance from Matthew 18. The conversation explores how to navigate feelings of being wronged, the significance of reconciliation, and the challenges posed by certain scriptural passages often used to judge others. The episode concludes with practical advice on fostering peaceful environments in parishes amidst societal divisions.

Takeaways

-Conflict in the church is inevitable and should be addressed directly.
-Matthew 18 provides a framework for resolving conflicts.
-Reconciliation is more important than being right.
-Community requires humility, compassion, and forgiveness.
-Scripture should be interpreted in context, not as a tool for judgment.
-Clobber passages in the Bible need careful examination and understanding.
-Creating peaceful spaces in parishes is essential for healing.
-Listening and being heard are crucial in resolving conflicts.
-Faith communities should focus on love and understanding rather than division.

Chapters

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Faith and Conflict in the Church
02:00 Navigating Conflict in Faith Communities
10:01 Understanding Right and Wrong in the Church
18:08 Addressing Clobber Passages in Scripture
25:46 Creating Peaceful Spaces in Parishes

AI Disclosure: To support our staff in their limited time, many of our episode summaries are first generated by AI and then edited by the Communications Director to accurately reflect and preview our podcast episodes.

Transcript

Bishop DeDe (00:07.84)
Hey friends, welcome to the podcast. Today we're going to speak of faith. My name is DeDe Duncan-Probe. I'm the diocesan bishop of Central New York in the Episcopal Church. Our diocese is from Canada to Pennsylvania, Utica to Elmira, and the beautiful places and people in between. I'm joined today by Adam Eichelberger. He is our director of communication. And it is a joy to talk with you and to speak about our faith.

Now the purpose of this podcast is not to answer all questions because I don't know the answer all questions, not that bright. But it is to speak about faith, to have a conversation and to share together about what we think and how we believe and those things about our faith that may be curious to us, challenging to us and so forth. The thing I want to talk about today though,

is about when there is conflict in the church. Now the last couple of weeks we've talked about when we feel convicted by a good sermon that's talking about something where we realize that our opinion is different than the opinion of the preacher. And at first we may want to feel offended and then to pray about it and see if perhaps the reason we're offended is because we're actually convicted. That something about our

selfishness that we like or something we're doing that we kind of harbor, that we're being called to let it go, to change our mind. We've talked about how to seek the gospel. And today I want to talk about when in a community of faith, just like any community of family or whatnot, we're going to have conflicts. We're going to bump into each other. Paul talks about iron sharpening iron.

We're going to have places where we may disagree. And then there are times when we may just really feel harmed by the church. And we spoke about that a little bit last week. But this week I want to focus in on what do we do next? So what do we do about it? In the gospel of Matthew, there's a really wonderful directive that still holds up.

Bishop DeDe (02:27.542)
In 2025, it is still relevant and helpful. So in Matthew chapter 18, beginning at the 15th verse, it says this, if your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If you're a listen to you have regained that one. But if you're not listened to, take one or two others along with you.

so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. And if the person refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Well, that last sentence, I'm not gonna unpack all the Gentile and tax collector language. Let's just say,

then they're not in your community. Now they will physically still be in your community nowadays, but just to say, well, then I'm have to let it go and find my solution somewhere else. But let's start at the top. So if something happens and you feel very offended by a person, to go to them when the two of you are alone, if this is a safe thing to do, I caution with that, this doesn't mean to...

Adam Eichelberger (03:27.569)
Hmm.

Bishop DeDe (03:52.672)
put yourself at risk if someone really has been harmful. But if it's someone that has said something or you feel offended by what they've done or the preacher has preached something and after prayer and serious soul searching, you still feel there's an issue to go to the person alone. And in this case, I would suggest meaning not to gossip about it. We're not going to draw other people in. We're not going to go and talk to the

other folks in the church or the community and say, you won't believe and I'm so offended and on and on. We're going to go to the source and we're going to seek to reconcile together by having conversation. And if that doesn't work, then we bring people with us and say, I'd like to talk with you. And I'm bringing these people as witnesses, not as a fellow people who are going to jump on the bandwagon.

In all of this passage and in this in the scripture, what we're searching for and commanded to do is to love one another, to care for one another, to be community together. That means we're not always going to agree. If we're looking for a place where we agree, I think we'll eventually end up in a room by ourself and then probably have to leave it because we eventually will even fight with ourselves. Humans are pretty good at that. We have conflict, conflict, conflict.

But when we have conflict in the church, this direction from Matthew is helpful, that we start by speaking to one another. And not to try to, in this passage, one thing I would suggest we step away from a little bit is this idea that the other person is wrong and they need to change. It may be we both are wrong and right in certain ways. We may have an understanding where we're valid in what we're understanding.

And we may be wrong about how we're feeling about it. And so what we're seeking in community is that we both are transformed by the love of Jesus, that we both are living into our vows to love God with our heart, mind, soul and strength. And then like unto it, to love our neighbor as ourselves. In community, whether it's a family, a church or any other...

Bishop DeDe (06:14.414)
community you want to name, there's no such thing as winners and losers, only in a sport. Because the thing is, if in a community one person wins outright, zero-sum gain here, and one person loses or is humiliated, then the community has lost. Because we no longer have the fellowship of all God's beloved people and community, if I say it here,

Once, please hear it a hundred times, community is hard work. It takes forgiveness, it takes compassion, it takes humility and curiosity, a willingness to learn together, and especially a willingness that everyone wins, that we all can save face and then we can be stronger together. So when we have conflict together and we come together to talk with someone, we're not just talking to them,

as this passage might suggest. We're sharing our concerns with them and then listening to hear their concerns as well. I find it is helpful sometimes, especially if the two people are very much at odds to start with prayer and especially to start in silence. God, you have called us together in this space to be your people, to be your community. And we have this disagreement that has come between us.

and we hold it before you for your care and keeping, for your redemption and your transformation. We don't want to be right, we want to be in right standing. And those are very different things. We want to be right about God, but not right in our own opinion or get our own way. Part of community means we're always seeking to repent and seeking to offer forgiveness.

As soon as I insist that my way is the only way and that person needs to do it like I want, I have stepped out of the spiritual community of God's beloved community. I have stepped into a place where I am supplanting what God wants with what I want. I don't like that hymn, don't ever play it again. Not that anyone says that in a church, I just wanna say maybe that's an erroneous suggestion, but.

Bishop DeDe (08:38.208)
But I have heard of other churches, not necessarily in Central New York, where that could happen, where somebody might insist on a particular hymn and then also it being played. So when we have conflict with each other in community, it is a serious thing. This is why gossip is so hard. When we start talking to other people about something that is broken, it can really destroy a community.

What we're seeking is that when we come into a church as God's people worshiping God, that we feel that all around the world people are worshiping and fellowshiping with God. We're not here to agree. In fact, in some ways we're here to disagree. Because when I hear someone else talk about how much they love a particular ministry that is not my skill, not my interest, it inspires my faith because I hear a different perspective. Or when someone has a different perspective for me,

about political things, and maybe partisanship too. Maybe they're from a different political party, maybe they have a different viewpoint. When I listen, seeking to understand, I may find Jesus in a way that I hadn't realized. I may actually find that I'm wrong. And to have the humility to be wrong is much more like Jesus than to demand that everyone agree with me.

So I've said a lot here, Adam, and this is a tough topic in churches and in any community because we often are afraid of conflict and don't know how to handle conflict and we feel badly about conflict. It is a new thing for many of us to see a conflict as an invitation to be in a deeper relationship. In fact, and I started to invite Adam into this and I'm keeping talking because I have something else I want to add before I invite Adam in. In a relationship,

It has been said over and over that a relationship is not real until the first argument. And I think that's kind of true because anybody can get along when it's all nice, nice and everybody's liking their best behavior and you're going along and you're acting like you're super generous when maybe you're not. And then you have that first disagreement and the truth of our nature comes out. And then when we seek,

Bishop DeDe (10:58.752)
to reconcile with one another when we seek to understand the other person, when we're changed by the other person and realize that maybe we were wrong, or when we're emboldened by speaking with another person and say, no, you know, my feelings are hurt because this was hurtful. This should be taken seriously. When we have those moments of conflict and we work through them to where there's forgiveness and restoration,

and reunification of the two of us as friends, then we know Jesus in that moment. There's such a powerful healing that happens deep in our souls. And so when we have conflict, what we're seeking is reconciliation. Jesus reconciles us to God. We are to be reconciled one to another. And in how we deal with one another, we should go first to the person alone. If we're not listened to,

not agreed with, but listened to, then we take someone with us to bear witness that we want to be heard. And then still, if we're not heard, that's when we talk with the priest or the vestry or the people of the church and say, there's a situation here that's really harming me, and I need to be heard in this. Now, Adam, I'm going to invite you into this conversation.

Adam Eichelberger (12:19.281)
So we have a couple of questions Bishop that we got asked and somebody obviously you guys were actually paying attention last week and we got a really great question from a listener named John and John wants to know how do I know when I'm wrong or the church these quotes for the church and I think John is a

Bishop DeDe (12:31.896)
huh. I love that.

Bishop DeDe (12:37.974)
Bye Joe.

Adam Eichelberger (12:48.315)
talking about the larger entity or maybe their parish priest, how do I know when I'm wrong or the church is wrong? And unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot more context for that question. And I don't want to speculate as to what John's reasoning is for that, but this is a good question, I think in light of what you're talking about is how do we, because the beginning of that passage in Matthew 18, I think one of the things that I hear Bishop, when I hear you share that is I need to discern.

Bishop DeDe (12:49.782)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (13:02.026)
Hmm

Bishop DeDe (13:10.614)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (13:17.369)
what's going on here and I need to take this to prayer and I need to not just jump to a conclusion right away or automatically get mad and just start a fight and I think John asks a really good question in light of that's okay how do I know who's in the wrong here am I wrong am I being sensitive did I do something or is the church wrong and again we don't have the answers for everything but these are good discussions for us to have so how do we navigate who's

Bishop DeDe (13:17.686)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (13:24.041)
Right.

Bishop DeDe (13:33.716)
Right.

Bishop DeDe (13:42.194)
Exactly. Well, yeah. I think, know, John, I really want to thank you because one, you're asking the right question because the question is, you we're all searching for truth. And so when you ask, you know, am I wrong or the church, you know, we also know that when we're talking about things like sin or, you know, we, we by nature are wrong. We're from a place of sinfulness. We like

You know, we like selfishness, we're pretty good at division, hatreds in our wheelhouse. What we have a hard time grasping at times is patience or the virtues or what love really is. I think always for me, the place I turn to when I'm trying to look is what does the love of Jesus look like in this situation? We can feel that we are very right.

And then as we listen with a humble heart and a willingness to recognize and repent of our own sinfulness, our own brokenness, we may come to realize, I was totally wrong. I am so sorry. I thought I was right, but I'm wrong. Now when you're talking about the church in quotation marks there, John, you know the church down through the ages has gotten a lot wrong. Crusades.

Not our best moment. Slavery, nope. Very few churches got slavery, know, ham and all that. I'm talking about Hebrew scriptures and things. We have not done well in the church with LBGTQ+. We have much to repent of. Women in ministry, you know, I'm an exemplar of that. So sometimes the church gets it wrong because of habit or tradition or we just have gotten accustomed to something and like it that way.

But when we turn to the gospel of Jesus, we see that God convicts us and guides us, the work of the Holy Spirit. And when Paul tells us, you'll know the Spirit because the Spirit has these fruits. So we look for self-control, we look for patience, we look for kindness, we look for these qualities, and we say, where is that in this situation? And does it matter more to me to be in right standing with God?

Bishop DeDe (16:01.652)
than to be right. And that is a place where we all have to do some discernment. And sometimes even after we do all that discernment, it's not clear. So kind of like Merton's prayer, we offer it to God and say, Lord, my desire to please you pleases you. I want to do the right thing. I'm seeking to do the right thing. You died and were resurrected because of our sinful nature as humans.

And so I offer it to you on that, at that place of crucifixion that make me whole and heal me. And so we can't always know, but what we do know is the love of Jesus and what we can return to each time is an open heart, ready to receive the love of God and to offer it. I think when we seek to forgive, we can often know if we're getting close or not. I don't know if that's helpful, John, but write in and.

Share with me what how you what are the things you use? I tend to use scripture tradition and reason and then when in doubt I just hold it before God and ask for forgiveness and and seek to be repentant

Adam Eichelberger (17:15.793)
He's a barking dog. Okay, I think he's done. That's a great point. And just as a reminder.

Bishop DeDe (17:24.242)
Not my house. Just saying. That's all right.

Adam Eichelberger (17:25.165)
I know. I'm the bad guy.

Bishop DeDe (17:30.74)
He just wants to get in. He's trying to tell us. probably knows more about this than we do.

Adam Eichelberger (17:38.585)
of course. Okay, here we go. We'll see what happens. And that's a great reminder to all of us, all of you listeners, if there is ever a question that you want to ask and or a comment you want to make on whatever podcast platform you listen to, please feel free to drop it in the comments or the reviews. And also if you go to cnyepiscopal.org, there's a button for the podcast right on the homepage and you can leave your comments and questions there. We have two more that I wanted to ask you.

Bishop DeDe (17:54.378)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (18:08.361)
Okay.

Adam Eichelberger (18:08.689)
Bishop who did submit through our website. This one is from a listener named Riley and Riley has a question It's not exactly on topic But I feel like some of these things that Riley's asking about in their question Can kind of creep their way into as we talked about in the last episode this one church hurt Riley has a question about what are commonly called the clobber passages How do we deal with the parts of the Bible that get used to attack people?

Bishop DeDe (18:32.046)
Aha!

Adam Eichelberger (18:38.351)
or get weaponized to put people down.

Bishop DeDe (18:41.864)
Riley, great question. That is a great question. And I have to say, the first thing we do from my point of view, again, this is, you know, speaking about this, my point of view is we start by realizing that scripture was meant to convict us, to show us the right way to be. Scripture is not some sort of shame and blame book. I mean, at the heart of scripture is God's love for us, God's redemption for us, God's call for us.

God is seeking to restore us. So these clobber passages, in my estimation, I look at them to see what they're saying in the totality of the other scriptures around them. Like if you talk about Leviticus Deuteronomy, you look at these passages and you say, in these passages, taking one of those, what does a holy person look like? Okay, so.

right away things like mixed clothing, wool and cotton or shellfish or some of these other things, selling people into slavery. Some of these things, it's talking about something bigger than a particular moment or act or situation. And so to look at that and say, well, the scripture was written not to tell it to be a to-do manual. Scripture was written

to tell us about truth. And so for instance, I used to say to people, so the truth is that I'm sitting, you know, where I'm in front of a microphone at this time of day. And so we think of truth as fact. And that is a very post-Copernican perspective. Those of you out there who like intellectual pursuits, you'll be thrilled to hear about Copernicus. Post-Copernicus,

Adam Eichelberger (20:37.028)
you

Bishop DeDe (20:38.322)
We tend to look at truth as fact, time of day, what were they wearing, where were they walking. Pre-Copernicus, truth was all about those things that are beyond our knowing. There was not an assumption of being able to know. The wind blows where it will. A meteorologist today would say, well, that's because of pressures, you know, forecast. But in scripture, it's meant to be talking about truth. And so with scripture,

for us to read it more accurately is to recognize that the truth of scripture isn't very interested in what time of day we're walking anywhere. Not terribly interested in this particular thing. It's more interested in our relationship with the world around us. So I think we make a mistake with the clobber passages when we try to make them a to do. I think we make a mistake when we read them in English. The word homosexuality, for instance, wasn't coined until, I think it was 1954, 1945.

Check my date on this, but the American Psychological Association actually constructed the word homosexual. In scripture, porno, there's other words that are used in the texts. What those words actually reference can be different and is specific and needs to be understood. So for instance, Romans 1, Paul is talking about temple practices. Paul is talking about something very specific. It is very different and totally removed from what we would call homosexuality.

and yet in our new translations they've put this word on it. And so that can be confusing. So I think first we look at the real text, we look at it in its original form, we look at what scripture's talking about, looking at the other passages around it. And then a thing that I like to point to a lot is if you're talking about clobber passages, know, there's six, sometimes people wanna sort of make eight out of them. But when you look at the number of passages about lying,

or the number of passages about how we use money, or the number of passages about how we speak to each other, just by sheer volume, they far outweigh these six passages. It's over 300 for some of these things. Lying is like super big in scripture. Jesus talks about lying all the time. Jesus never references homosexuality. Jesus talks about divorce, and yet we're pretty compassionate about divorce.

Adam Eichelberger (22:38.992)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (23:05.896)
So we can't cherry pick with scripture. And when someone starts talking to me about Leviticus or some other Romans one or some other passage, then I start to talk about, well, do you know what word that is in the Hebrew? Do you know what word that is in the Greek? Do you know that coordinate Greek was only spoken for about 250 years and was a, it was a tonal language just like ours is. If I say I'm going outside, you know I'm angry.

If I say, I'm going outside, you know I'm not sure about where I'm going, I have a question. And if I say, I'm gonna go outside, you know I'm just gonna go outside. We cannot know, but we know that God creates us and God blesses us. We know that we wake up in the morning and we wrestle with selfishness. And so I trust God with how we're made, that when we're loving other people, that love is sacred.

And so what we do with clobber passages is we hold them before God, we do our work in an understanding them, and then we recognize that love is sacred. Seeking the well-being of other people as our first commandment and all the rest weighs on that.

Adam Eichelberger (24:22.321)
important for me to remember a lot that scripture without context is just pretext. And if I don't understand the context in which something is being written, I totally miss it. And it's a great point that you bring up things like a tonal language because the sentence, I'm ready to eat Uncle Mike is very different based on where you put a comma.

Bishop DeDe (24:26.709)
Yeah.

Bishop DeDe (24:30.603)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (24:40.694)
It really is. You can get thrown pretty quick with that one. But you know, yeah. Well, and then, you know, we have to recognize that we want to read scripture and make it say that those people we're mad at are wrong. We just do. And we need to be more repentant.

Adam Eichelberger (24:45.935)
I'm ready to eat, Uncle Mike is a very different sentence from I'm ready to eat Uncle Mike. So.

Bishop DeDe (25:08.126)
By that I mean we need to be more interested in how God's commanding us than in what we feel like we like. So what's that other question?

Adam Eichelberger (25:16.347)
Well, we've actually got several that are gonna be in the hopper. They're gonna be asked in some upcoming episodes and listeners, also, we're planning on in our programming schedule, adding a listener question week. So make sure that if you have questions that you get them in and if you don't hear your answer in the next week or two, know that it's going to be coming up. And I've got a do-is-even one for you in an upcoming episode of Bishop. But this one I think is pretty important based on things that we're feeling around us.

And this one comes from a listener named Dana. Dana asks, how can our parishes be a place of peace and comfort when there seems to be so much difficulty and division all around us?

Bishop DeDe (25:58.472)
Such a good question, Dana. think, you from my perspective, have our, parishes can be places of comfort and peace and these things, when we ourselves are in much the same way as we find our peace in our own selves in this time. That when we have a disagreement, we forgive each other, we talk about the things that bother us. I mean, one of the places that I think people aren't realizing that there's so much bad feeling about

is feeling silented or feeling like you can't be heard, that when you're not heard, and in that passage from Matthew, if you don't feel like you were listened to, if you don't feel like you were heard. So a lot of the time our feeling about society at large is we feel like we're muted, like nobody can hear us, like nobody's listening to us, and that anxiety rises in our communities of faith to talk to each other.

to be curious, to learn from each other. And then sometimes to change the subject. I sometimes that's a very good practice to say, you know what, let's not talk about all the stuff out there. Let's have some contemplative prayer together. Let's have silence together. Let's create a space at our church that during this part of the service, it's all about silence and God. I think putting silences into the liturgy, where we're not just rushing from one thing to the next in the liturgy.

but to allow space for there to be peacefulness. We need space right now. Everything's crushing in on us. So silence is golden in this time, but also being heard is healing. And so I think one way we create those safe spaces is for it to be safe, to know that in this space, we will not be harming each other. If we disagree, we're going to use our words well, not calling each other names or being harsh or.

having sarcastic undertones, but we're gonna say, know, you and I disagree, but I love you so much. And so in this space, we're gonna be quiet and calm together. So I think the same, and those things go for our homes or for our inner life, quietness, calmness, and to never forget that God is the source of our strength and in God we trust. So those are the places we go to.

Bishop DeDe (28:23.87)
So dear listeners, it's been great to talk with you a little bit about when there's conflict in the church. If you've been feeling kind of hurt by somebody to go to them and say, you know, I want to reconcile with you. want to talk this through and I want to do this by honoring both of our dignity. If you don't feel heard or the person that's not receptive to it to take a trusted friend or person with you and say, you know, I want to speak with you again.

and to have, you know, maybe help us reconcile with this or to talk with your priest or your vestry. In this next week, we will be continuing the conversation around how we live in this time, how we speak of our faith. So, dear listener, may you be well and know that God loves you. May you be blessed and be a blessing. And I look forward to speaking with you about faith very soon.

Adam Eichelberger (29:22.296)
and we're out.

Bishop DeDe (29:23.582)
All right. I think it was okay. I don't know.