I had a few root canals, and they were not too painful and a lot more productive than confronting my staunchest critic. Last summer we had the showdown and despite witnesses and evidence, the critic denied everything. That’s more painful than physical pain. It doesn’t go away (though he finally did) and the root canal, after the pain stopped, has been a much better thing. Come to think of it, the critic leaving was a great blessing as much growth has happened after he left.

I guess I would agree with homer and say root canal. It solves the problem and has less of a chance to come back and effect others. I confronted (in private)a founding member of the church who publically did a character assianation against my wife to the children she had been ministring to for the past 6 months. The result, the board publically attacked me ( the pastor) for criticizing a founding member.  Oh , how far from Christlike have we come. Backbitting and crictizing has become the norm in churches today.

I would rather have the confrontation. it’s much more fun and less painful. Badmouthing is bad, no matter what the circumstances. People who badmouth must be confronted in a way which ensures that they never do it again. It brings down the integrity of the relationships. I am doubly lucky if the boss or pastor is upright and just and doesn’t fire me for setting a good example.

i would rather have a root canal, i have had a few bad experances in church. once the women in the church wanted to have a saturday meetings just for women, it was oked by the pastor , the ladies wanted me and another lady to teach them, so we agreed, it was going very good for a few weeks, we encouraged the younger christians to try their wings , some wanted to teach, some to preach, some to pray for people, well it got around that the ladies was learning more from us than from the pastor, and all hell broke loose, three of the men from church went to the womens husbands and fathers and told them it was wrong for a woman to teach, and not to let them go back to the meeting, june and i went to church on that saturday and no one showed up, we waited for an hour and decided that somthing had to be very wrong , we finally found out what had happen, i went to the pastor and the other two men to confront them about it, they just told me it was none of my buisness what they do, and if i did not like it to just leave the church. well i did not say any more and i did not leave the church. but those people tried to ruin myself and the other lady, they told all kind of ungodely things about us to try to run us from the church. we finally left ,the church was in a mess people were leaving, it was no love there what so ever. it broke my heart but i could say nothing, the pastop blamed it all on me and the other lady, all of it started when someone said they was learning more from us than they was the pastor, what was so bad about that.

The older I get, the better I’m handling confrontation, but my tolerance for pain seems to have decreased.  So, give me confrontation any day!

I’m not sure if this is the proper place to leave this comment...but I think you all should know that there’s an ad in “Church Staffing” that has been in for about two weeks. The ad is for a worship minister position and the church is “Jesus Metropolitan Community Church” in Indianapolis Indiana. They are part of the “Metropolitan Community Church”...denomination (I guess you call it a denomination). They are openly gay/lesbian and proudly push the gay agenda. On their website they have sidebars such as “Same sex relationships in the Bible” etc. I’ve written a couple of times to Church staffing..but the ad is still in there. I keep thinking.."Whoever applies for this job and gets the interview is going to be soooooo surprised.” The ad sounds good....

All you have to do is look at the website..and then go look at the website for the bigger group of Metropolitan churches.

Oooh… can I have nitrous oxide and choose confrontation?

I’d rather confront the critic-in doing so I may be able to contribute to their growth by dealing with a chronic problem or at least enlighten them in areas of ministry of which they have little or no understanding.

There’s always the possiblility, as well, of gaining insight as to why staff are being criticised allowing for improvement in relationships between staff and congregation.

kent you made a funny, but not a bad idea.  lol

I don’t have a lot of critics (yet) at the Church I am currently serving—but have had some pretty nasty ones in the past.  I think I’ll go with confronting a critic —there is the potential for helping the church grow.

I’ll take confrontation any day, especially if I can have nitrous oxide during it.  It makes you smile and really causes the person your confronting to get nervous.

I don’t mind the confrontation if I feel I’m on firm, if not the “high gound.”
The problem?  What if my critic is right?
OUCH!