In many churches, you’ll find these personalities. They are often masters at knocking you off course. Your ability to identify their shadow mission and stand firm in your stated mission will determine your faithfulness to be a God-pleaser and not a man-pleaser. Keep in mind that they are important to God. They will cause you to grow in your faith, if they don’t cause you to lose your mind.
Ira the Ice Man: Ira resists change, no matter how small and he has lots of friends in Baptist churches. He loves the status quo.
Perhaps he got the message long ago that change is bad so he fights change in church and because Ira’s faith is very important to him he fights with even more vigor. The tough thing about Ira is that he doesn’t express his feelings openly and many times he sends coded messages such as rolling eyes and long sighs which sometimes can make a greater impact on the joy of the church than mere words.
Butch the Bulldozer expresses his negativity by running over churchmembers and ministers. He (or she) can be very hostile and instinctually takes out frustrations on others. It’s my way or the highway!
Betty the Blamer refuses to take responsibility for her own actions or provide solutions to church challenges Betty has a tendency to simply respond to crisis by looking for someone to blame.This most frequestly occurs when the Blamer is in a bad mood.
Her favorite saying when things go bad is “Don’t look at me. Jerry is the problem.”
Martin the Martyer is the bleeding heart of the church. He comes early is usually the last one to leave the church. He bend over backwards but will later complain about how much he is responsible for and how little others actually do. Martin’s attitude toward his brothers and sister’s in Christ is that he feels unappreciated. When this occurs, his favorite saying is “I’ve slaved for years at this church and nobody really cares.”
Bert the Busybody takes out his negativity toward work by spreading rumors. He pushes his power of information to the limit by seeming to have the latest scoop on the trial and temptations of others. Bert loves to add comentary to his information saying, let me tell you what is REALLY going on here. This gives Bert a sense of control and importance but it is a malignant blight on the health of the church.
Percy Perfect and when it comes to continual dissatisfaction we can always count on Percy Perfect! If something is not perfect, the Percy becomes negative. His standards for proper results and behavior are not realistic, and even excellent ministry that is blessed and applauded by others leaves Percy with a sour taste in his mouth and a frown on his face. For instant Percy helped coordinate an evangelistic event where 15 students accepted Christ but he couldn’t help but ask who left a scuff mark on the gym floor.
Know them, recognize them, love them, but don’t quit because of them. Your job as a leader is important.
This work by Matt Tullos is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International