This morning, my dog and I crossed the road at a four-way stop crosswalk. There were cars at all four corners of the intersection. I waited until all four who had been waiting went and then I started across. It was 7:50, which probably meant some of the drivers waiting for me were almost late for work. That’s the setup for a situation you have already guessed at.

I was halfway across, when the driver right beside me honked the horn. Neither I or my dog was going slowly. As that happened, the car opposite just screeched her tires and ran through, missing me by about four feet. Inexplicably, she gave me the finger.

Yesterday, the Interstate by my house was closed for several hours. At 4 am two men had an incident of road rage. They stopped by the side of the road to argue some more. One of the men beat the other to death with a blunt instrument. Then he walked away from it and while he walked up the freeway, he was hit and killed by a car going by.

Another friend barely escaped an incident in Portland two weeks ago when white supremacists and anti-fascist groups were protesting *something* and my friend came out of a brunch engagement into the middle of it. She told me she had never seen anger like that.

This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of the abominable show of anger and vitriol at Charlottesville, Virginia. Who can get those angry images out of the head?

In the January 5, 2016 issue of Time Magazine, one of the editorials had the title “Why Are Americans So Angry About Everything”. This was two and a half years ago, and they reported that every year for the past decade, people in this country have gotten angrier than the year before. They presented some fairly plausible reasons for this surge of indignation, but they proposed no real solution.

Since I seem to have a regular front row seat for other people’s anger, I am curious as to the reasons myself. Is it the same as it has always been? Perhaps. But I think our obsession with telling the rest of the world our opinion and the means to truly get it out to everyone (television and Internet) has coalesced together into a firestorm of anger.

For the spiritual woman or man, this anger feels like a degenerative disease. Though we have to admit that few things change without someone getting angry, the anger of Today does not seem constructive in any shape. Destruction exists at the core of most anger these days.

What is fueling it? There are many reasons, maybe as many as there are people. But there are some psychological trends which show up a lot.

1. Entitlement. Nothing fuels anger quicker than that sense you are not getting treated the way you are entitled. If someone cuts you off in traffic, doesn’t represent you in government, doesn’t give you a raise, won’t listen to you, this brings out that sense of indignation.

2. Deficit. We do not like to feel we are falling behind others on no account of our own. We do not want to hear the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. This sense of deficit I believe is what caused the person to honk their horn at me and the woman to almost run me down. I had let four cars go before walking through–but I had made them wait. Abraham Lincoln was asked one time why his boys were fighting. “They have this world’s disease” he answered. “I have three cookies and they both want two.”

3. Threatened. Many times, anger is fueled by fear. We are afraid and need to protect ourselves. The Amygdala in our brain is designed to respond to fear with a countering burst of angry emotion. This emotion may be what spawned the fatal road rage incident near my house. It certainly creates the attack/counter-attack scenarios associated with many public protests.

4. Status. We do not want to lose ground in life. The most common “game” interaction between humans is called the Zero Sum Game. That is, if one person is perceived to win in a situation, the other person is perceived to have lost. Because so much of American culture is built around the Zero Sum Game, we don’t even see it any more. We no longer see the Cooperative Principle which states “unless we all win, we all lose”. When we believe we are losing in any relationship, our natural reaction is anger.

5. Intimidation. Building on the concepts of Status and Entitlement, the idea that only the strongest survive also fuels our anger. From the child who throws a tantrum even before entering the grocery store, to the gang member who brandishes his weapon the first time he meets a new gang member, many people feel the need to stake out their territory before it is taken from them or challenged. The best way to indicate this is anger. It is our way of saying to someone, “be wary, I’m watching your every move”.

You may be able to see that all of these are incompatible with the life lived following Jesus. He cared nothing for Status. He could have intimidated others, but instead washed their feet. He felt no need to threaten anyone, and even when he could have called down angels from heaven, he refused to. He warned his disciples to ignore the deficit they felt inside toward each other and to serve each other instead. And he did not feel he was entitled to hold onto his status as God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.

As goes the Master, so go the servants.

It is time we looked at our anger to see if we are being angry in a godly way. “Be angry and sin not” the book of Ephesians says.

Is that your anger?

By Katie Richardson, Kathy Phillips, and numerous other women in ministry.

Edited by Mike Phillips

A “micro-aggression” is a term first used by Chester Pierce of Harvard to describe small but significant ways certain racial groups are treated with disdain and prejudice. Most often, it describes the treatment of African-Americans and Hispanic immigrants. But increasingly, it is used to describe behavior toward any traditionally dominated group in our society.

Recently, with recognition of the #metoo and #churchtoo movements, women chronicle how they are treated with micro-aggressions as well as the better known aggressive, violent behaviors. Victims and “casual” sufferers alike are calling attention to these subtle behaviors which attack the core of female identity and calling.

One oft-overlooked subset are those women serving in full-time pastoral positions in churches, church organizations, and church institutions (such as seminaries). Though women in general are certainly treated unfairly and badly on the whole in America, female pastors are an especially maligned group.

This article is compiled by two people with an unfortunate history concerning this subject. Kathy Phillips (the wife of the owner of this blog) served as a licensed, full-time pastoral staff in several of the same churches as Mike.

She has the same degree as Mike, and often does the same work in churches. She has served as Children’s Ministry Pastor, Assistant Pastor, Teaching Pastor, Parish Nurse, and School Director. But Mike and Kathy have been treated much differently during that time by both the men and the women of the church.

Katie has served in many capacities in churches and missionary organizations. She has served on pastoral staffs for over 20 years. She has been a pastor for middle schoolers, missionary with Youth For Christ, full-time worker with Youth With A Mission, camp director, assistant youth pastor and children’s ministry pastor, and Co-Founder of “His Heart My Voice” mission to Kenya. Katie often worked side-by-side with her husband who was paid staff. Katie also did the same amount and type of work, but was so rarely paid or received the same recognition. Indeed, her first paid position happened only after her marital separation. She currently serves at a local church as Volunteer Coordinator and Outreach Director.

Mike Phillips is the editor and compiler of this article. He is part of several organizations which support the Egalitarian biblical viewpoint, and groups where female pastors are common. He asked all of them if they had any insight into micro aggressions against female Christian workers. And if they had any insights, could they share a few stories with us.

We received well over 200 responses Continue reading “Aggressions Toward Women in Ministry” →

When I teach occasionally on marriage and the pitfalls of two people living that closely with each other, the subject of Husband Points invariably comes up. That’s because I bring the subject up, fairly often. So, in the interest of education and boredom, allow me to elucidate on this important subject that may save the life of some men and the sanity of many women.

Husband Points are similar to Airline Credit Card points except Husband Points are both acquired and spent much differently. Rather than try and define Husband Points, I will describe some example point accruals and this will help get the point across.

Examine this picture and interchange: In the picture, the boy (let’s say it is the Husband for the sake of this demonstration), will be awarded 80 Husband Points by our impartial jury (made up of men who just watched 27 Dresses for the third time and women who have returned from a wine-tasting trip).  The point breakdown goes as follows:

• 2 points for the obvious and welcome compliment
• 2 points for getting the girls’ attention off her looks
• 2 points for using humor
• 2 points for mentioning pregnancy with compassion and empathy
• 72 points for NOT mentioning PMS, the huge zit on her chin, how she finished an entire bag of chocolates, that last visit from her successful sorority sister, the magazine she’s reading, the inaccuracy of the bathroom scale, or the name of a local gym.

I sat with my wife at our assigned table for the graduation reception with other students and professors of the nursing faculty. I quickly learned I was the only spouse in this group, and therefore the only “civilian” in medical terms. Graciously, they ignored me, knowing I had little to add to their discussions and plans. They spoke of going on to Masters, Doctorates and Post-doctorates, the profs trying to convince the students to continue on at the Alma Mater. I threw in a comment occasionally, content to let my wife carry the conversation .

Then she left to run an errand. At that moment, they all noticed me simultaneously. One asked what I did for a living. Since I do several things, I mentioned all of them. When I said “writer” no one responded. To academics, a writer is simply an opinionator without credentials. Then I tried “Pastor”. They smiled politely at that. None of them were interested in religious types. But when I said “counselor” they all seemed to perk up as a group. One gregarious young Master of Nursing Administration graduate piped in: “Oh you mean an MFT” (Marriage and Family Therapy). I politely told her no…I don’t do marriage counseling.

“Why not?” she summarily accused.

Not only was our table looking at me, but several members of the next table were deserting their conversations to listen in. I had a ready audience. So I plunged ahead.

“I don’t think marriage counseling works. In fact, I know it doesn’t. The statistics prove it.” I threw in that last sentence to get them all off the track. Just minutes before, they had all been saying how Statistics was their least favorite college course. I hoped they would get sidetracked on that discussion again and ignore me. No they didn’t.

One of the multi-doctorate professors said, “You’ll have to explain yourself young man”. I instantly liked her. I hadn’t been called a young man since … well, around the time I was one.

“Researchers have found” (always good to start a comment to academics with this phrase) that more people will get divorced if they go to marriage counseling than if they don’t. ”

One of the grads asked, “why do you think that is?”

“Part of the problem lies in the standard format for Marriage Counseling. Traditional three-way counseling involves two people with marriage problems meeting with a counselor they hope will have solutions. Only, that is not why they are there and that is not what happens. What happens is the two of them spend most sessions convincing the counselor they are the righteous party, the injured party or the misunderstood one. And no matter how the counselor wants to claim they don’t take sides, no human being can help believing one person over the other. ” These learned scholars and their teachers were in rapt attention (or comatose) so I took that as a sign to continue.

“The counseling continues until one of the marriage partners deduces they are being identified as the one most to blame. They then drop out and the other marriage partner goes to a few more sessions alone. After that, they usually separate.”

“So is it hopeless?” asked another prof.

“Not if you take a different approach.” My wife returned at that moment, and I decided to include all of them in on the discussion. “Can you imagine if all of you were working in a hospital and realized that a particular procedure was making patients worse instead of better. What would you do?” They discussed the options for a moment as my wife looked at me quizzically. I winked at her and remained quiet until I realized they had come to a consensus.

“We would probably seek to change the way we were doing the procedure until it worked” said the nursing prof who considered me a young man. God bless her.

“That’s what a number of counselors have done. They realized the real difficulty is that no two people have the same marriage story. Even a married couple who come to counseling have different stories about seemingly the same marriage. And for the most part, there is no way to make their stories sync with each other. It is as if they experienced a different marriage. There’s a good reason for this: they have!”

I saved my best line for last: “The truth is, marriages aren’t in trouble – People are. The best a counselor can do is work with them on the details of their story and facilitate them coming to a place of health and it will bring aspects of their marriage into a healthier place.”

We then talked a little about a subject I like to talk a lot on. Most people have hidden motives for going to a marriage counselor. Once they discover in one-on-one counseling what their hidden motives are, they usually are much  more open to solving the systemic problems in the relationship.

In the next article, I will go through the hidden motives themselves. But I was pleased to have several of the profs and students tell me at the end how glad they were to have heard what I had to say. The gregarious red-headed student even said at the end, “You’ve ruined me now…you know that.”

In the late 70s and early 80s a group of well-meaning Christian leaders formed an ad hoc accountability group. Bob Mumford, Derek Prince, Charles Simpson, and Don Basham, along with Ern Baxter met regularly to hold each other to certain ethical and moral standards. They were independent church pastors and yearned for the accountability of denominational allegiance.

More and more pastors from around the country joined with them and each of these men helped their “lines” to form these groups. Soon however, these groups went beyond accountability and eventually they devolved into control. Shepherding went from the pastoral level to the congregational level. Church leaders were soon given authority to tell people exactly how to live their lives.

They could direct how much they gave to the church, where they could live, who they could associate with, and even who they could marry. Some groups went even further, and abuse situations were common. Cults were even formed as groups like Community Chapel ruined the lives of many.

At the same time, many evangelicals continued to practice strict authoritarian methodologies at the local church level, even if they didn’t resort to the extremes of the Shepherding movement. Over the years, I have been involved with holding churches and individual accountable for how they abused their authority over their members. Continue reading “Types of Misused Authority in Churches – Part 2” →

22 months into my first assignment as a pastor and I was smacked in the head with a horrible story of pastoral sin. I had no idea what to do with it.

I had been hired as an assistant pastor of a 100 year old church in Canada. The senior pastor believed this old church could use some young blood as we moved out of the old downtown location to a brand new one on the edge of the suburbs. I had no idea I was to be cast as the new lead pastor within two years of coming on staff.

After he announced his resignation, one morning he came into my office and slapped down a two-inch thick folder on my desk. “You need to read this before agreeing to take on this job” he told me. He voiced it in such an ominous way, I was afraid to crack the cover.

After I had read the contents thoroughly three days later, I was very sorry I had done so.

This folder contained just a summary of the events scattered over three years. This had happened over 20 years previous, but the repercussions were still being felt by that congregation. Here is the summary.

The pastor of the church was an internationally-known speaker and writer. The church had over 1500 members, qualifying it as a mega-church in its day. One of the older ladies, a widow, had asked the pastor to help her with putting together the details of her will. About six months later, she passed away. Continue reading “Types of Misused Authority in Churches – Part 1” →