This is related to a post I put up a few weeks back on part of my journey with bullying when I worked for the Church of England. About ten years ago I decided to share some of this story of abuse with a Christian leader at a conference who was offering to talk and pray with people over exactly these kinds of stories.

When I mustered up the courage to go and talk to him, I felt so overcome that all I could get out was that I had worked previously for a church, and that they didn’t treat me very well. He did pray for me, very briefly and generically, and then said something before running off abruptly at the end which now on reflection, I realised was really not helpful at all.

He said, ‘Tim, I don’t think anyone is holding on to this now accept you.’

At first I tried to find that liberating. I tried to think that it gave me the power to fix it all by myself. Like my pain was in my hands. This is only a half-truth though. In reality, because of where I was in my journey, it just ended up making me feel even more isolated and alone. It made me feel like I was just being silly; that I must have been hanging on to the pain out of spite, and that I was over-victimising myself. I started to imagine just how ‘over it’ everyone else was and how little effect it had had on those who had hurt me. The worst of it was when it turned out that I couldn’t just let go, move on, or ‘fix it’, it just left me feeling more powerless, defensive, and afraid.

And that was the last time I ever asked for prayer for healing on this issue.

How we respond to stories like these matters. Empathy, active listening, compassion are all essential tools – and none of them take a degree in theology. We don’t have to have clever prophetic-sounding answers, just ears that listen and a heart that cares. When someone shares a story with us we should feel responsible not important.

This post is just to gently say take care in how you respond to people’s stories. They are precious things and often offered with great vulnerability.

 

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“Its political correctness gone mad!” he said. “You can’t say anything without offending anyone these days. Generation of sissy-ass snowflakes!”

Hmmmm.

We could look at this idea from the point of view of ‘rights vs responsivities’ (spoiler, you don’t get to pick one for yourself and the other for everyone else). Or we could look this from the perspective of the amorphous concept of ‘freedom’ (or as it’s often understood, my God-given right to do whatever I feel like regardless of others). Nope, this isn’t either of those posts – this is a post about James 3 and ‘the tongue.’

The tongue is a pretty wacky thing to start off with. Did you know that the tongue is not a muscle, it’s eight muscles! That the little bumps aren’t actually tastebuds – they contain them. How about the fact that there are almost as many tongues in the world as there are people? I know, right! Mind blown.

The tongue has also been demonstrably the biggest natural disaster known to humankind. More death and destruction have followed words than any action in history. In our day, the internet has provided a monstrous amplifier to the common tongue. Words steer the world.

This would be why James 3:3 likens the tongue to the control of a horse, and v.4 to the guiding of a ship, and v.5 to the spark that begins a forest fire.

The tongue is immensely powerful.

It needs to be turned (v.3), steered (v.4), and tamed (vv. 7-8). All these metaphors assume training, difficulty, effort, time, and struggle. They need help, guidance, and growing maturity. There’s no sense of ‘say what you want and let other people’s ears do the hard work.’

And there’s the problem: We too easily shift the responsibility from our tongues to others’ ears. From our words to their interpretations. From our ‘rights’ to their ‘just deal with it.’ From which part of James 3 did we get this? And at what point did we decide that the call to serve others in love – even to extreme measures and personal discomforts – doesn’t apply to what we say?

You have a right to remain silent

Let’s shift this a step further by looking at the beginning of James 3.

There seems to be an view that if one has an opinion (however ill-informed, fresh, infantile, broken, or offensive – I could even add racist, sexist, abusive, disruptive, or destructive), then one has a responsibility to verbalise that opinion. It’s seen as boldness and honesty to share, and censorship, or a removal of freedoms to not.

Why?

Freedom is the ability to do something, not the necessity. And freedom to do whatever we want, we would do well to remember, is exactly what Christ laid aside – along with His life – for the good of others. As of course did Peter, Paul, and many throughout history.

It’s almost like Paul knew we would struggle with this when in Gal. 5 he says our freedom should be used to serve one another in love (v.13-15).

James 3 begins with a stern warning to teachers – that they will be judged more strictly because of the immense power that words have. The word teacher here means to train and instruct verbally. In ancient Greek texts beyond the New Testament, it was used for those who demonstrate ideas through informed, educated, well-presented oratory, drama and poetry.

It’s not just that not many should be teachers (v.1), but not many can be. Teaching comes with the element of passing on information, sure, but it also comes with a second element. That is to lovingly serve, guide, and protect those who hear.

Teachers are called to lovingly serve, guide, and protect those who hear – not just from others, but from their own tongue.

It’s this second point that I think we miss. Teachers need to develop huge amounts of compassion, empathy, self-awareness, and care. Not many should be teachers.

By assuming our opinion needs by right to be voiced to others, regardless of the consequences, is assuming we are called to be a teacher. Then it’s assuming that the second part of classical teaching – that’s the duty of care over the listener – simply doesn’t apply to us.

That’s pretty arrogant right?

As someone who feels called to be a teacher, and has spent more than half my life working hard on it, and by God’s grace have made some small progress, I feel huge amounts of resentment at those who just dive in with some assumed right to do so. This is especially true when the duty of care for others is so causally tossed aside.

But, but… the snowflakes?

I don’t buy into this idea that this generation gets more easily offended than others. Honestly, I find that silly. I work with a lot of young people, and I have for the last fifteen years. I have been much more likely to offend older than younger people, and I don’t think that says anything either.

This is certainly a more amplified and visible generation, but that doesn’t mean they get hurt more or more easily. In fact, there’s quite a few reasons to see this as a surprisingly resilient generation, but maybe we’ll save that for another time.

James 3 ends with the writer importing us to use wisdom for the good of others. To lead a good life known through its humility (v.13). It’s this wisdom that is pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy, good fruit, impartial and sincere (v.17). This is all other-people focused.

Is your freedom to speak important? Sure – use it to build one another up in love (1 Thess. 5:11). Should you speak with boldness? Yea – to share the gospel (Acts 4:24-30), fight injustice (Is. 1:17), and stand for those who can’t stand for themselves (Ps. 82:3).

The call is to build up, not tear down. To edify, not demonise. To help people walk, not just insist that they drag themselves up by their bootstraps while we’re simultaneously stepping on them.

Don’t be so easily offended by those who are offended. Approach them in love. Ask to hear their story. Lead with compassion, selflessness, and mercy, and then ask the Holy Spirit to inhabit your words to them.

We’ll all be better off.

 

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Editors can be weird. Really weird. I thought I’d share a couple of “those” stories today.

If you’re reading this, then you’ll probably know me as a Christian blogger. What you might not know, however, is that I spent several years freelancing as a copywriter for some high-profile clients. I’ve written for large tech blogs, newspapers, financial services, celebrity bakers, and fashion brands.

Each contract required me to write to a very specific brief, within a tight timeframe, in a bespoke tone, and sometimes in imitation of another’s voice. It’s all very specific and immensely demanding. I gave this up when my first book was accepted for publication.

I think that by writing in both the ‘secular’ and ‘Christian’ worlds, I have gained some insight into the differences that exist between the two. Spoiler alert, I’ve had by far the most difficult experiences with professional editors in the Christian world.

Before I go on, I’d like to say that I have met some incredibly talented and professional Christian editors. My book Rebooted, for instance, was edited by IVP with great skill and care. I’m not saying, therefore, that all Christian editors are poorer at their jobs than their non-Christian counterparts, as I’m sure I’d be wrong.

What I am going to do is tell three stories, each with a different editing oddity that I’ve experienced uniquely with Christian editors.

Amputating voice

I was commissioned to write a piece for a large American site on the topic of theological education. There were issues from the beginning.

As a large group, the site had multiple editors, and the commissioning editor was not the editor that was chosen to work with me. This second editor showed very little interest in the idea and took weeks (and sometimes months) to respond to my messages. This meant the piece took half a year to publish which, even on larger platforms in the digital world, is a very long time.

The biggest problem, however, was when I received the final draft back every single piece of personality or ‘voice’ was edited out of the piece. It was almost completely rewritten to be tone-deaf. Every single joke or lightly toned line, every carefully placed anecdote, and even every metaphor, was unceremoniously removed from the piece. One word for this would be ‘bland’ but it’s actually worse than that.

When I write an article that I know could be easily misunderstood or contentious, I work hard to flow in and out of concepts and suggestions both lightly and deliberately. Articles like this are composed, not just written. Tone is a specific tool that’s honed by a writer to move through paragraphs with rhythms and colour that serve the content. By removing these textures you create far more room for misunderstanding and end up with a much more polarising piece.

The result was a Frankenstein’s monster of what I’d written. It was completely without nuance, personality, or flow. As a result, it came across as aggressive and divisive.

If you need to change the tone that dramatically from the author you have chosen to voice the piece, then you need to go back to the author for a rewrite with a clearer brief. That, or you need to find a different author. Personally, I’d much rather an article is just rejected than published badly.

Click-bait

Online Christian media over the last decade has become increasingly funnel-shaped. The idea is to get as many hits onto an article as possible in the hope that some of them will read it, some of them will engage with it, some of them will share it, and some of that will result in revenue. It’s an awkward business really.

This often means that titles don’t always clearly flow from the piece but are designed to draw people in regardless of the content. I’ve had several debates with editors about titles to my pieces, but I’ve had a couple which changed the meaning entirely – and were published without checking with me first.

In one, I had phrased a title with an abstract question, which was instead changed into a blunt, definitive statement. One which I didn’t believe, and that the article didn’t say. In another, I had a description of a person from within the piece taken out of its context, and then starkly made into the entire title. Both rewritten titles were aggressive, volatile, combative, and deeply polarising – which I guess was the point, as they were clearly click-bait.

I did manage to get both changed back (somewhat), but this was after they were published, and some of the damage had already been done.

In a similar story, a friend wrote a 1000-word article about relativism in youth ministry in which Game of Thrones was mentioned just briefly, once, as one of several examples. The editor then retitled the piece something like ‘why Christians shouldn’t watch Game of Thrones’ even though the article had nothing to do with it. This provoked a huge social media backlash that wrongly tainted the author’s reputation and resulted in a very poor ‘response’ piece– which was then published by the original editor! If you’re interested, you can read my response to that response here.

When an editor uses an author’s piece to push readers into the funnel by using click-bait, they are showing enormous disregard for the author’s hard work and ongoing reputation – and it shows that they value the effect of a post far more than its content.

Pointless changes

This is an odd one, but probably the most pervasive. In many of my articles there has been something changed that absolutely didn’t need to be changed. This isn’t me just being a diva (although that can happen), it’s genuinely editors making completely unnecessary corrections, additions, deletions and significant voice changes without any discernible grammar, flow, audience, or content reasons why.

This can be quite innocent, like making sentences a little longer or shorter by changing punctuation. Sometimes this is necessary, but I’m talking about times that it makes genuinely no difference to the flow or sense of a piece. More frequently though its changes to metaphors or ideas that totally did not need the change. The one that sticks out mostly in my memory is changing my example ‘half a banana’ to ‘half a red bull.’ Why?

This, I believe, comes down to working with an editor who doesn’t have much experience developing somebody else’s voice other than their own. They might have done plenty of writing, but editing truly is a different skill set. This means that they read while subconsciously overlaying their own style and making changes through that personal lens. Unaware to them they read with a ‘how would I say this’ approach, rather than ‘is it good, does it work’ approach.

If you’re going to suggest a content change to an author, first suggest it and give them chance to address it, don’t just do it. Second, give a reason why you think it serves the point, the piece, or the platform better than what they had put.

A little suggestion

I’ll end with a little suggestion to editors: Work with your authors not just with your products.

Editing a piece for your platform while forgetting about the fingers than penned it, or the heart that sowed it, or the mind that formed it, is blatantly disrespectful. Almost all of my issues with editors have come from this sense of passive disregard that I have felt from them.

Because I’ve written professionally for paying clients I expect changes, disagreements, and critique. I want my piece to genuinely serve your readers. Working with an editor, then, should be a dialogue between two people and two audiences, not just a ‘platform’ and an ‘article.’

I know authors can be a pain too. I certainly can be. So, let’s do better together.

 

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

 

This is not a topic I usually address publicly, and rarely privately either – at least not in detail. However, many recent posts on institutional bullying in the church has made me want to say something about my own story.

My wife and I have been on the receiving end of institutional bullying inside the Church of England. This was over a decade ago. It’s a situation that I still haven’t much clear language for, and – if I’m honest – I still don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about it. Mostly today, I just don’t think about it. I don’t ‘remember’ these events, I ‘relive’ them which is, frankly, traumatic, so I’d rather not give them space. On the rare occasions that I give them mental room, I have a complicated mix of deep rage, shame, fear, and humiliation. Writing this post has been horrible.

I have had some professional counselling and spoken at length with a very small group of friends and family. This is not something I want to spill over into my online spaces, so it’s not something I write about.

I will say that the situation lasted across four years while employed by a church, which coincided with our first four years of marriage. It gave us a very difficult start to our life together as a couple.

Also, it was not all done with malicious intent. Some of it was purely misguided good-intentions or critique that was executed badly. The unfortunate thing is that the inexpert, mixed with the uncaring, mixed with the obtuse, mixed the truly venomous all compounded into one abusive whole. As these things were never addressed adequately by the leadership, they all morphed into one experience. We just didn’t have the proper care, protection, or resolution from those entrusted to look after us professionally and pastorally.

The impact almost resulted in me leaving ministry completely and it has – for both my wife and I – permanently damaged our trust in churches. At the end of those years, I was receiving medical treatment for stress and was advised to quit – which I did. I was also advised to seek legal action – which I didn’t.

What did it look like?

This kind of abuse comes with two voices: the loud, aggressive, obnoxious – and the continual, silent, manipulative. It’s the tandem of these two that makes it all-pervasive, and that keeps you in a constant state of adrenalin-soaked high alert. This state of being is very bad for a body, and by the end of four years I wasn’t sleeping, had lost significant amounts of weight, and had a constant tension headache at the base of my skull. I also had very uncomfortable Pavlovian-like responses to internet and phone tones; which is one of the reasons I rarely turn my phone off vibrate, and why all notifications are turned off on my laptop – nearly fifteen years later.

I’m only going to give one example story from those four years.

I was a full-time Youth and Children’s Minister and had run my first large holiday club. It was very difficult, and I was coming up against a lot of big personalities with strong opinions about how it should be done – and of course, how it had ‘always been done before’. However, after pushing through, we had a very successful week-long event. I was exhausted but, on the whole, very pleased.

Two of these strong personalities, who had senior voluntary positions in the church, had been making my life particularly difficult. Some of this was overt – aggressively challenging me in meetings, through rash phone calls, or long emails. A lot of it, however, was covert – gossiping with other team members, whispering with a small group of peers, passing notes and emails, and lobbying the church leaders behind my back.

After the week, these two leaders took it upon themselves to conduct a ‘detailed review’ of how the event had gone. Without telling me, they circulated a questionnaire to the entire group of volunteers (about forty people). They then compiled the results of that questionnaire into a summary document, and circulated this document back to the team, the church wardens, the Sunday School leaders, the PCC, and the vicars. Everybody but myself – I had no idea that any of this was happening.

The document that was circulated began with three or four very small bullet points headed ‘what had gone well.’ That whole section was less than fifty words. The rest was several double-sided pages of long paragraphs personally attacking and berating me. My character, abilities, leadership, age, personality, and suitability were all held up to the spotlight along with every mistake they had perceived I’d made. Page and pages of it – in great detail. It was all written in the same language and had clearly come from the same source.

I first heard of this document a week or so after it had been distributed. A young teenager who was a helper for the week had received a copy. They were very distressed, told me they didn’t agree with any of it, that their feedback wasn’t included, and said that they never wanted to help in church again.

At this I approached the two vicars so we could talk about it.

It transpired that what had actually happened was the feedback forms were collected but then discarded. They were used as a ruse. We were able to get hold of several of the original questionnaires, which showed that the feedback – which was largely very positive – was ignored almost completely. Instead, the circulated summary was a complete fabrication; an amplified collection of opinions from just the two people who organised the review. They used it as a platform to share their personal – and very negative – opinions of me.

So, having evidence that these two team members had gone way beyond their remits, organised a private review, ignored and doctored the feedback, and circulated a very personal and detailed attack – in secret – what do you think happened?

Nothing happened. I had two meetings with the vicars to discuss what, if any truth, was in the summary where I was made to feel two inches tall. Then I was told it would be “handled”. Nothing was handled. There was no addressing, no corrections, no repercussions, nothing. It just hung over, and they had gotten away with it.

This set the tone for these things to keep happening. Which they did, until I eventually quit.

It’s not ok

This is simply not ok. Leadership structures exist for a reason. Accountability exists for a reason.

I’ve been involved in church leadership now my whole adult life. When I used to look back on this, I thought it must have been my fault. It must have been me. My lack of experience, my inability, my soft nature. But I know better now (at least I think I do). I was twenty-one when that happened – just a kid. I couldn’t compute what was happening to me.

But it was abusive, it was bullying, and it was not ok.

I’m angry at the people who did that – and the people who did other things too over those four years – but mostly I just feel deeply let down by the leadership that was put in place to protect me which just didn’t. I think I have forgiven people, but if I’m honest I don’t know. I’m not sure what that should feel like, and it’s so mixed up and messy. I understand in abstract how these things should work technically. I know the right answers if someone was to come to me looking for advice for instance. But it actually happened, and the memories of it are like clanging cymbals.

I’m grateful today to have good friends, good churches, a good pastor, and a really good marriage. I’m blessed to still be in ministry, and I’m incredibly grateful that God’s grace is all-sufficient for all my needs. That said, I spend an inordinate amount of time pretending to myself all that stuff in my first four years of ministry didn’t happen. My memory lane skips right from Bible College straight to where I am now. I like to think I’m all better, that I’m not wounded, that all that has scarred over, and that time heals all, but it’s not there yet.

I’m a white bloke, a trained church leader, and I’m still in ministry. Conventional wisdom says I’m not supposed to be a victim of this kind of abuse, but this stuff – and a lot more besides – really did happen. And that’s just not ok.

 

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