This week, we’re continuing our Havruta series on how to most faithfully engage with and learn from those who push back on, doubt, and detract from your ideas. These can be volunteers, lay leaders, parents of young people you work with, investors, etc. Anyone who has ever tried to do something new (particularly in the context of an existing institution) has faced the uncomfortable reality of someone being pretty sure its a terrible idea. The name comes from a form of Talmudic study that happens in pairs and groups, in which the concept is that the wisdom of God emerges in the space between two people, both trying their best to be faithful. 

Last week, we talked about ‘The Fighter,’ or a person who actively and openly resists your idea. These intense personalities can be some of the hardest to face, but can also be some of our most honest teachers. 

This week, we’ll meet a doubter who should be very familiar to any of us who have ever worked with a church board, leadership council, or committee: The Worrier. 

The Worrier won’t reject your idea outright, they may even tell you they like it, they just have a lot of questions that need to be answered first. At first, this is fine, and doesn’t even really feel like push-back, they’re often perfectly valid questions. 

But as you answer them, there seem to be just more and more questions. They’re satisfied enough in one meeting, but the next meeting, when you try to move forward, they just want to jump back to one more thing, and they’re not really sure if we considered this element, and they’ve heard from ambiguous “people” that they’re not sure about this other part… 

Does this sound familiar? 

Let me tell you about a Worrier I met recently. I was working with a congregational leader who asked me to also meet with a member of her lay leadership team who wanted to meet me. As I first met the woman (we’ll call her “Joanne”), she seemed excited, organized, and committed, I was glad to be linking up with her. Joanne had a lot of questions for me, asking for my input on all kinds of risks that they faced as a congregation. I applauded her deep engagement with her community to be so well aware of all these potential pitfalls. 

She told me how they had entirely too many different programs going on, and how volunteers felt burnt out by the idea of trying something new, and how we should be careful of starting anything because they could lose the volunteers they had. When I suggested strategies for pulling in a broader base of volunteers, however, she was unmoved, insisting that there were just not enough people in their community to build up the pool I was talking about. I suggested if that was really true, and volunteers were feeling stretched, then maybe they needed to look at consolidating their programs and maybe sunsetting some. She rejected that idea outright, saying there was no way these teams would give up on something, they’re all too committed to what they’re doing. 

I was tempted to look at her and say, “So you don’t want to start anything new, or stop anything you’re currently doing? Why am I here, then?” 

I didn’t. Because I had heard these kinds of worries before. 

In June 2021, I was leading a middle school mission trip for around 40 rising 7th and 8th graders. We slept on socially-distanced air mattresses across the floor of a basketball court, and I spent half the time chasing after kids to put their masks back on while we were inside, and to wear sunscreen when we were outside. It was our first overnight event in 18 months.

A small group of the teenagers kept obsessively asking me about the schedule. “What time are we leaving for the worksite?” “What time will we come back?” “Will I have time to change when we come back?” “When are we having dinner?” “What time is worship?” 

The schedule was posted, we went through it at morning prayer every day, and I patiently answered questions the first 20 times. But, at some point, I realized that the same girl had asked me the same question three times over the course of an hour and a half. Just when I was about to snap at her to write it on her forehead, the thought occurred to me: if she is still asking the question, it’s because she doesn’t know the answer. If the answer she is getting doesn’t answer her question, then the question I am answering is not the question she is really asking. 

What she was asking was what kind of shoes she needed for the worksite (tennis shoes are fine, for the 10th time), or how long the drive was (5 minutes), or what we would do when we got there (depends on your team), but what she really wanted to know was, “Am I going to be ok?” “Is it going to be hard?” “What will happen?” and no matter how many times I told her when the bus was leaving, I wasn’t answering that question. 

It was our first overnight youth event in 18 months, it was their first overnight youth event ever. I was annoyed; they were terrified. 

What if what “Joanne” was worried about wasn’t really volunteers or maintaining the room or security of A/V equipment? What if she was afraid? When Joanne told me they couldn’t possibly get more volunteers, no one would ever show up, and they couldn’t possibly drop any programs, people were too invested, I could hear the echo of that fear. I could hear the question under the question: are we going to be ok? 

This is not meant to be dismissive. Your worriers serve a full and holy purpose on your team, and their worries need to be heard. They can often highlight real needs that need to be considered, and gaps that are left unmet. They can make our ideas more robust, more grounded, and more responsive to our community. 

But its also important to note that they can also be canaries of the anxiety that might exist in your community. If they are afraid, then others are probably afraid too. So what do we do?

Let them borrow your confidence. 

Meet them where they are, pastorally, offering a word of compassion towards the anxieties this triggers, how you maybe even share some yourself, and yet.

And yet you believe this is where God is calling your community.

And yet you have seen in scripture where God has used an anxious, unprepared, unready group of people for God’s work over and over again. 

And yet you know this team is capable of so much more than they have given themselves permission to try. 

Pointing your worriers towards the stories in scripture of how God has used communities like yours, or even stories in your own community’s history can help anchor them in the reality that they are more than capable of uncomfortable change and uncertainty. There are uncharted waters ahead, but there is also grace abundant, and the presence of God in new ways, and that’s just worth taking a risk for. 

Next week, we wrap up this series, but if you ever want a partner to wade through all of this with, give us a call, and we’ll lend you some confidence of our own.