The Integrity of the Body of Christ

Boundary Keeping as Shared Responsibility

Arden Mahlberg, Craig L. Nessan

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781498235372
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Systematic Theology & Ethics

For religious communities to have integrity and credibility they must flourish as places of love and respect. Every aspect of church life is defined and protected by essential boundaries: boundaries around space, time, thought, speech, will, emotion, and behavior--both for clergy and church members. Lack of awareness and attention to boundary keeping diminishes the integrity of the church and harms its mission, whereas insight and vigilance about best practices lend freedom and energy to the calling of the church to care for others and to reach out to the world. In a flourishing Christian community, a wide array of boundaries must be recognized, celebrated, and navigated--from the boundaries that define and protect us as individual persons to role boundaries and the boundaries that define essential communal functions, such as worship.This book is no conventional account of boundaries. It takes a comprehensive approach to the challenge of understanding and creating healthy boundaries. It applies the lessons from the emerging field of behavioral ethics to the rich and rewarding complexity of boundaries in church life, helping us to be more loving and responsible in how we think, speak, and act, so that the church can be true to its identity and mission.

Part 1

Defining and Protecting Integrity through Boundaries

1

The Necessity of Boundaries for Creating and Sustaining Identity and Effective Mission

Scenario One: Pastor A and Pastor B

Early in her ministry at Grace Church, Pastor B. began to visit members who were unable to attend church. She was the new Associate Pastor and was eager to meet everyone. The pastor rang the doorbell at one of her first calls. A frail yet spirited elderly woman came to the door. “Are you Dottie?” Pastor B asked politely. She introduced herself and asked to come in. When they sat down, she said: “Everyone has told me, ‘You will enjoy getting to know Dottie.’”

“Actually, Pastor, my name is Dorothy. I’ve always loved that name. It was my grandmother’s name, but everyone calls me Dottie.”

“Well,” replied Pastor B, “Dorothy is a beautiful name. And, actually, I prefer to be called ‘Pastor Blanchard, if you don’t mind.”

Pastor B. realized that she was in the same boat as Dorothy. Her name was Susan Blanchard. When the call committee decided to extend her the call to be Grace Church’s first Associate Pastor to work with Pastor Alvez, a member of the committee declared excitedly, “Now we have a ‘Pastor A’ and a ‘Pastor B!’” Everyone laughed. But the names stuck! When Pastor Blanchard raised her disquiet in private with Pastor Alvez, he brushed it off. He thought it was cute. She, however, felt uneasy, like she was not in control of her own identity. Should she assert herself over this issue with her new colleague and congregation? “Pastor B,” in contrast to “Pastor A,” was by definition second-best. It was not that she needed to be first, but according to her understanding this was supposed to be a nonhierarchical copastorate.

Pastor Blanchard came to discover that many of the members of Grace and also many members of the local community had been given nicknames by others, like “Stub,” “Baldy,” “Skinny,” and “Nutsy.” When she began to inquire in private, many of them did not like their nicknames but nonetheless had resigned themselves to them.

“She’ll always be Dottie to me,” the church secretary said when Pastor Blanchard told her about Dorothy’s preference. Names convey messages and communicate images. “Dorothy” does not evoke the same meanings and images as “Dottie.” Pastor Blanchard did not like the implications of being labeled “Pastor B.”

Who has the right to decide what one is called? This is a boundary issue of great significance. The question about who has the right to define one’s core identity in life leads us into the central theme of this book: the myriad boundaries questions we encounter in Christian community. Naming others can be a form of domination. Conquering cultures routinely rename those they have come to dominate, instead of using the native people’s own names for themselves. Cult leaders often rename their members as part of asserting their control. Bullies engage in name-calling to intimidate their victims. One of the first steps leading to dehumanization and violence is stealing the name of another person or group and substituting a degrading epithet (for example, “cockroach” or “vermin”) for their valued name.

As Pastor Blanchard considered the issue of naming more fully, she became disturbed by the realization that she, Pastor Alvez, and their clergy colleagues had been educated, trained, and socialized to label parishioners. As Pastor Alvez was orienting Pastor Blanchard, he said: “We do have three alligators in the congregation and one clergy wannabe.” He proceeded to identify the people he felt had a history of criticizing their pastors in ways that did not seem could ever be satisfied except by their removal; he also talked about those members who sometimes could be satisfied with specific things but who were preoccupied with figuring out how they could always get what they wanted. This type of labeling (alligators, clergy killers, and clergy wannabes) reduces ambiguity and complexity. It makes us feel like we have got the person figured out. But once we have categorized another, we see and relate to the label and lose site of the person in all of their rich complexity. Therefore, labeling is a violation of a person’s identity boundary.

Boundaries, Boundaries Everywhere!

Boundaries are fundamental structures that establish and preserve identity. Boundaries protect the essential nature of things, while also contributing to their definition.10 A guiding question for respecting boundaries is, who does this belong to? The Ten Commandments begin with an identity boundary. We are commanded to know and acknowledge who God is, as well as to remain clear about who God is not. It is God alone who defines God’s nature, not us. We are neither to construct our own image of God nor to behave as if anything other than God is God. We are not to use the name of God in ways that diminish God’s being or identity. We are to use God’s name to preserve God’s being and identity for us and for others. God’s identity belongs to God, not us.

Similarly, we are also commanded to respect the identity of others. Bearing false witness is one form of creating a false image of the other. This includes saying a person’s name with a negative inflection. We are also enjoined to respect our own identity as a person created in God’s image.11 Jesus encouraged each one of us, “Let your light shine!” In the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids, when the women who let their lamps go out came to join the party, they were told, “Truly I tell you, I do not know you” (Matt 25:12). Attitudes and practices that protect and nurture our core identities are essential to living as Christ calls us to live.

One of our deepest longings is to express who we are: to be known, understood, and accepted just as we are. When other people project their own images upon us and have agendas for who they want us to be, we feel unsafe and withhold who we really are. By adolescence, most children who are still creating stories or artwork as a form of self-expression have stopped showing them to anyone else. It is so easy to form our own images of others and to justify them to fulfill our own agendas. For example, a pastor might peg a young person as a future pastor and become overinvested in that outcome. The young person would not want to disappoint such an influential person in his or her life. When others act like they are authorities about who we are, on some level we feel we are unsafe, even if their image of us is flattering: “I can tell that you are the kind of girl who will make a man very happy.” On the other hand, when others criticize us, they attack our very being. One’s identity is unsafe in either case. Who does one’s identity belong to?

While we are quick to form impressions and to set agendas for others, a part of us longs to know others deeply for who they are. Allowing the self to be “self” and the other to be “other” establishes the delightful conditions for the meeting of an I and a Thou. How we treat a stranger respectfully becomes the model for how we treat each and every person, since here we approach the other without presuming already to know who they are. We ask their name and invite them to tell us about themselves. We err in such encounters, however, if we too quickly form an impression, thereby creating a false image, one based upon our own construction. Exploring who others are in deliberate conversation by listening to them gives us the benefit of an entirely different way of seeing things, something wholly “other” from our own hasty perceptions. While the impulse of the anxious mind is to reject what is foreign and different, the secure and open mind responds to differences with respect, fascination, and curiosity.

Respecting boundaries is so essential to the spiritual life that it is a key part of the prayer Jesus taught his followers: “and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.” This is territorial language, the language of boundaries and borders. While the translation can be “sins,” “debts,” or “trespasses,” we note that the major thrust of the Ten Commandments has to do with disturbing or violating established boundaries, which the word “trespass” reflects.

Various types of boundaries are associated with different parts of our being, as we will explore in the chapters ahead. We have a physical boundary that protects our health, which, if violated, will result in death. We are commanded not to kill. Life does not belong to us—it belongs to God. It is not ours to take. We are not to take from others their possessions or their loved ones. We are even commanded not to steal with our imaginations—not to covet or desire what others have. Does it not feel like a kind of theft when we have something precious and sense that someone else wants to possess it instead of being happy for us? “Do not commit adultery!” Again hear the warning about a boundary violation. With marital infidelity, you are not just going where you do not belong (even if invited); you are stealing from your own marriage what rightly belongs to it—vital energy whose absence damages the marriage, even if the partner is not consciously aware.12 We are also commanded to protect the boundary around sacred time—to keep the Sabbath holy, uncontaminated by thoughts about work, outside responsibilities, or the secular values of the dominant culture that distract us from the sacred values of the culture of God.13

The commandments have to do with respecting boundaries. So they tell us what not to do instead of telling us what to do. Thereby, they delineate boundaries in ways that would not be as clear, if the same content were merely put in positive terms. For example, “Do not covet what belongs to your neighbor,” clarifies a boundary. Taking the same content and putting it positively could translate as: “Be grateful for what you have.” This may communicate somewhat the same idea but misses the lesson about boundaries: To whom does this belong? Put even more positively, God could have commanded us to be happy for our neighbor for the good things they have to enjoy. Again this surely is a part of what it means to fully love our neighbor, but it misses the truth about boundaries.

Beyond the discipline of boundary keeping, translating the commandments positively as did Jesus builds bridges across boundaries that would not be possible without first respecting the boundaries for what they are. The commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30) builds a bridge to God; God is accessible and can be totally engaged. To “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31) reveals the bridge not only between people, but between us and Christ. To recognize that how we treat the least important person (Matt 25:40) is the same as how we treat Christ requires both a boundary and a bridge. Boundaries beget bridges. Respecting the boundaries defined in the Ten Commandments, while adding love, strengthens each person’s uniqueness, their capacity to love, serve, celebrate, and create, giving us the conditions ripe for spiritual community.

Spiritual community depends on bridges between and among us. Paul taught the followers of Jesus to understand themselves as a mystical body, the very body of Christ. Each one has a unique and important function that when linked to others is like the complex organism of the human body.14 To live as members of Christ’s body requires both the ability to be a unique person, on the one hand, and the capacity to unite with others without damaging them, on the other. The standards are high and the challenge significant.

We all know what it feels like to ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1: Defining and Protecting Integrity through Boundaries
• Part 2: Integrity of Community
• Part 3: Integrity of Persons
• Guide for Reflection and Discussion
• Bibliography