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Opening prayer
Pauline introduced the current sermon series Everyone with three questions:
Who are we?
What kind of community are we?
What kind of community is God calling us to be?
One of the answers is that we at FCC make up a inclusive community. We aspire to draw the circle wide, just as we sang in this video made for Pink Dot.
In Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth, he described the church as follows,
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.”
Paul used the metaphor of the human body to describe how different parts of the body perform different functions. By working together, honoring, respecting, rejoicing, and suffering together, we love and serve one another and minister to the world. It’s a beautiful description for the community God is calling us to be – inclusive, diverse, and united.
Paul then described more specifically some groups of people who are now included in this new community. The Spirit moved the church to expand its core Jewish identity to include non-Jews. This wasn’t easy. Peter needed a direct vision from God. Multiple testimonies were needed to convince the Jewish Christians that the Gentiles have received the Spirit.
FCC continues the Spirit’s work in our time through our commitment to inclusivity and equality. The inclusion of Gentiles is no longer an issue. We are all Gentiles here. However, FCC fills a niche in Singapore in that it welcomes Christians who are LGBTQ and/or progressive, who may not feel supported in many other Singapore churches. We hope that in time, through our many testimonies, that the larger church will recognize that we, too, have the Spirit of God.
Diversity also created problems for the early church. Paul acknowledged the various differences and did not seek to erase them. When the church began welcoming Gentiles, there was a dispute whether they needed to convert and adopt Jewish customs.
“While Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch of Syria, some men from Judea arrived and began to teach the believers: “Unless you are circumcised as required by the law of Moses, you cannot be saved.” Paul and Barnabas disagreed with them, arguing vehemently.”
The church leadership eventually arrived at a compromise.
Drawing the circle wide doesn’t mean just including more people, but also embracing that diversity, moving with the Spirit and using wisdom, reason, and tradition to guide changes to our beliefs, worship practices, and ethics.
We recently welcomed new members into FCC. One of the ways we welcome new members is by making promises to each other. The one that always struck me was this question:
Will you recognize that their presence and participation will change the shape of the body and help it grow in new ways?
So diversity is something we welcome, but also something that can upset what’s familiar, leading to discomfort and increasing potential for conflict.
Paul acknowledged the challenge of being a diverse community in Ephesians 4:1-2
I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace
Implied in this plea was that the church was struggling to get along. Our desire to be an inclusive, diverse community must be accompanied by tangible efforts to sustain our unity, especially through the practice of making and keeping peace.
As I’ve already established, it is difficult to avoid conflict in a diverse community. One of the ways we strengthen the bonds of peace is by embracing conflicts instead of running from them.
This statement may initially seem like a contradiction. Isn’t it enough to just forgive and forget?
False peace is ignoring difficult issues and hoping that they will go away. Often, unspoken grievances become ticking time bombs, eventually blowing up when people vent their frustration all at once and severing relationships; or surfacing as passive-aggressive words or behaviour. We tip-toe around each other, carrying years of baggage, afraid of saying the wrong things, afraid of making mistakes, questioning each other’s motivations, suspicious and distrustful, polite but insincere, reading into people’s words or behaviour, not able to take things at face value. False peace results in fragile and unsafe relationships.
Real peace takes courage and honesty. When we handle conflicts well, we can be open to change, we can develop greater trust, we can be more vulnerable, we can make mistakes, we can set healthy boundaries, we can appreciate differences, we can be more creative, we can have effective ministries. Real peace results in stable and safe relationships.
I will be using content from the books titled Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Boundaries to help us understand how we can learn to make real peace by facing and not running away from conflicts. Both bookis are written by Christians who embraced concepts from modern psychology that align with the call to love one another.
It’s OK that we are different. As Paul wrote, not all the members of Christ’s body are the same. Our different ideas, skills, abilities, and interests all contribute to enriching and enabling the functioning of a thriving church. However, as we’ve probably all experienced, our differences can also cause discomfort, misunderstandings, and disagreements.
For example,
It seems easier to get along if we are more similar, or if someone powerful can just tell everyone what to think and do.
But I assert that being different is not the problem; it’s our level of emotional maturity.
When we are in conflict, our focus should not be on the differences, but should be directed towards our feelings, thoughts, and behaviours.
Some emotionally immature responses include:
Sometimes we even mistake these behaviours for making peace! When we escalate, we think we’re showing tough love by confronting people. When we withdraw, we think we are being kind by letting other people have their way. When we triangle, we think we are seeking out advice when we’re just venting and wanting the third party on our side.
Or, we could manage our differences in emotionally mature ways.
If we can aspire to and exhibit these behaviours, we can love well as a diverse, inclusive church.
Why is it hard to handle our differences with emotional maturity? I think we all can recognize how we’ve mishandled conflicts by escalating, withdrawing, or triangling.
According to the author of the book, our fundamental problem is that
“I can’t help but experience life with me at the center of my universe. With my eyes I look out on the world. With my ears I hear what is going on. I can only feel, want, and experience what I’m feeling, wanting, and experiencing”
This is a fair description. Being self-centered doesn’t mean that we are selfish. The problem is that we become frustrated that what seems to be evident to ourselves isn’t evident to others. If they can only see things from my perspective, they would see that I am right and reasonable.
The solution to our problem is learning to discover and respect the “otherness” of a partner, friend, boss, child, coworker, church member as separate, unique human beings who have just as much a right to their feelings, wants, experiences, and perspectives, as I do.
I’m not content to just tell you to love each other without teaching you how.
The rest of today’s sermon will go over five skills that we can practice this very week
As these skills become habits, we will grow in emotional maturity and become better able to handle the small conflicts before they become big ones.
The five skills are:
The first skill is to identify your emotional allergies. An emotional allergy is an intense reaction to something in the present that reminds us of an event from our history. We treat the person we are currently in a relationship with as if they were someone from our past.
Recently I was on a rock climbing trip with a new friend. When we were ordering dessert, he started yelling at the service staff for various grievances. I realized that it made me really uncomfortable because I was the target of verbal abuse when I was young. Witnessing the situation reminded me of how it felt to be powerless and belittled. My natural response when I was the target was to keep quiet and try to appease the aggressor. It really affected how I saw this person and I couldn’t feel safe anymore in that friendship.
So next time you experience tension or conflict, reflect on whether it triggered an emotional allergy. Becoming aware of these can help us separate the past from the person in front of me. It creates space for a more appropriate response.
Work these questions alone or with a trusted friend.
The second skill is to listen and speak well.
First realize that we are separate selves. I can only see, feel, hear, experience from my perspective. I cannot presume to know yours.
We need to meet in between and invite God to be with us as we seek to understand and be understood
We do this primarily through listening and speaking.
Let’s start with listening.
Next is speaking.
Initiating a difficult conversation takes courage. Check that your motivation is not to vent your anger but to strengthen the bond of peace by clearing the air instead of sweeping things under the rug.
Speak in private and not over text. If it’s difficult to talk while physically together, then even a video call is preferable because you can see the person face to face.
As the speaker:
Whether you’re the listener or the speaker, you have the right to courteous and honourable treatment.
If the conversation turns ugly, such as one person becoming accusatory or the other person getting overly defensive, either side can call for a time-out. Say, “I am feeling uncomfortable with how this conversation is going right now. Let’s take a break and schedule another time to continue.” Please don’t just walk out or hang up.
Pray. Try again. Don’t give up too quickly. If it’s easy, Paul wouldn’t need to tell us to make every effort.
Be careful about discussing the situation with someone else if all you want is for that person to tell you that you’re right.
If you do need to bring in an external party, invite someone who can mediate fairly
Number 3: Check Assumptions
An assumption is a mental creation of what I believe someone else thinks or feels
Every time I make an assumption about someone who has hurt or disappointed me without confirming it, I am believing my representation of that person, which may not be true
Not only is it possible that I am believing something untrue, it is also likely that I will pass that false assumption to others.
Here are some concrete steps for checking assumptions.
The good thing about checking assumptions is that often what we imagine is worse than what the person reports were their thoughts, feelings, or intentions. Expressing genuine interest in the other person’s truth is also a sign of respect and good will.
Number 4: Clarify expectations.
We expect other people to know what we want without us saying it.
For example, we may have these unspoken thoughts:
Invalid expectations are
For expectations to be valid, they should be:
An exercise to do this week is to be review your expectations of one important relationship in your life or you can do this next time you experience disappointment because someone failed to meet your expectations.
Think of an expectation you have of a partner, friend, co-worker, family member, ministry volunteer, etc. Am I conscious of it? Is it realistic? Has it been spoken? Have they also agreed to this? Talk to the person.
Think of a person who may have an unconscious, unrealistic, unspoken, and un-agreed upon expectation of you. Talk to them and come to an agreement.
Expectations are not bad per se. When they are valid, they are expressions of love and commitment.
#5 Boundaries
We have healthy boundaries when we can be emotionally attached to others without losing our freedom to be apart.
When we have healthy boundaries, we are able to say appropriate yes’s and no’s
Miak preached a sermon on boundaries earlier this year in July, so please revisit that video for more on this topic.
To strengthen the bonds of peace, we need to set healthy boundaries.
First, it means identifying problematic patterns of behaviours. The chart names four types of behaviours that come from:
Those who can’t say no or who can’t hear no have very thin boundaries between themselves and others
People with thin boundaries tend to cling to others.
Those can’t say yes or who can’t hear yes have very thick boundaries between themselves and others
People with thick boundaries tend to push others away
We exhibit different behaviours in different relationships. For instance, we may exhibit compliant behaviour to a parent or boss, but controlling behaviour with a partner or child.
Unhealthy boundaries can cause tension and conflict in relationships.
Unhealthy boundaries weaken and fracture bonds of peace.
If you suspect that you’re in a relationship where the boundaries are either too thin or too thick, use these questions to troubleshoot:
To summarize the key takeaways from today.
Who are we? We are a diverse community united as Christ’s body.
Since conflicts are a normal consequence of our differences, we need to learn to manage conflicts with emotional maturity
There are five skills we can practice to love well:
So just one menti question for you to reflect on as we close today’s message.
Which skill will you practice this week? In what situation or with whom (no names)?
Closing prayer
