Religiously Speaking
Frances Stebbins

Men and women aspiring to serve Churches of the Brethren in the Southern Shenandoah Valley as well as some pastors upgrading their own education heard earlier this month that “Conflict, pain and anxiety are part of a pastor’s diet.”

A seasoned woman minister, the Rev. Beth Jarrett of First Church of the Brethren in Harrisonburg, offered this assertion at the annual Christian Growth Institute day held at the Summerdean Church at Hollins. She and another pastor/counselor, Bryan Harness of Lynchburg, were attempting to help ministers in turn help their parishioners.

Certainly, not only Brethren clergy face these issues. In fact, for any active in a religious community the need to understand others’ troubles and to try to help the fearful and diffuse anger arises often.

The growth institute was for active pastors in the Virlina and Shenandoah Districts who were attending to gain continuing education credits and was required for men and women working to qualify to serve small congregations which abound in Virginia’s rural areas.

Jarrett’s topic was “Addressing Difficult Issues in Pastoral Care.” She interspersed her remarks with brief times when the learners in the fellowship hall shared in small groups and later voluntarily offered observations to the larger group of about 40.

She related how she and her young husband nearly 30 years ago learned how important it is for pastors of a congregation to find a way to diffuse conflict when something unexpected occurs.

Beth and her husband Harry were missionaries of the Mennonite Church in Virginia and were serving in Palermo, Sicily, in the early 1990s; they had two small children. After a furlough home, they returned to the mission church to find “no one speaking to each other.”

It seemed an auto accident had occurred in which a member of the congregation was clearly at fault. But, Jarrett recalled, as was common in the Italian country at the time, some of the participants lied to investigating police. As word spread, other members favored coming clean about the incident.

Two women leaders led the factions, and soon the church was known to the whole area to be in an uproar. People were leaving, and no one wanted to get involved.

Meanwhile, the young missionary mother wanted to be home in Pennsylvania with her dying father.  Out of the troubled times, she remembers now, she began to learn to deal with her own feelings rather than be drawn into taking sides.  Eventually, the Jarretts had to leave Palermo after 10 years because of national conflicts relating to illegal immigrants.

Seminary-educated and with graduate training in church music leadership, Jarrett has served both Mennonite and Church of the Brethren congregations; she has been at her current church for nearly five years, lives on a family farm in Rockingham County and has three adult children and two grandchildren.

Her Sicilian tale, she pointed out, shows how important it is for church leaders to face their own feelings of anger, guilt, sorrow and frustration over conflicts in the groups they serve. Denying problems and trying to keep them secret compounds trouble in a church as in political and national life, she said.

“At the heart of every conflict is anxiety…apprehension over an anticipated ill. It represents a threat to who we are.”

In many churches opposition to different kinds of music or inclusion of unfamiliar persons are frequent triggers of anxiety especially in long-time members whose loss of leadership status has come with increasing age, Jarrett noted.

It may help, the speaker said after hearing feedback from the small groups, for the pastor to fully explain the situation, perhaps at a special meeting. Depending on the denomination, an administrator such as a staff counselor, often can clarify the problem.  But before taking that action, the one in charge must wrestle with God and seek guidance.

Somehow congregations survive upheavals, and- rarely these days- they keep their minister for a lifetime. Jarrett, like most clergy today, has worked in several churches and their related ministries.