Musings on Spiritual Matters

An emotional cut off is when someone cuts off a relationship with another person.  There is some conflict that is never resolved because the person distances himself or herself from the opposing party.  Instead of going to the person, the angry party leaves the relationship as is.  You see this happen in a congregation sometimes.  People will become upset with the church or the leadership of the church or, yes, even the preacher of the church, and will leave the congregation.  The person does not resolve differences, but simply exists the fellowship of the congregation.  The shocking part of this is the reaction of the leaving party.  People have expectations of congregation.  People are sometimes neurotic about these expectations.

Sometimes people will leave the congregation because of being mad.  Ev eryone knows that the person leaving is mad.  Everyone knows that there is serious conflict with this family or person, but the leaving party will take off.  Often the leaving party will do something to try to hurt the congregation as it leaves out the door.  The person will contact people to air thier problems, create a nasty rumor to cause pain, and try to take as many people with them as possible.  This is more of a pride issue, the more people that leave, the more right the person feels.

But the most shocking aspect is that the mad party have every expectation that people in the church will come running to them to talk to them about coming back to the church.  The mad party will say, “only one person came to me.”  Yes, the bible talks about coming to the brother who is fallen away, but the mad party does not feel this way.  The mad party feels they have acted on behalf of God.  There is no sense of having the conversation about them returning because of sin, the congregation has sinned in the mad party’s mind.  The mad party does not realize that if you do an emotional cut off from the church, you get what you want.  People in the congregation feel uneasy around the mad person, and the congregation gives the gift of separation which the mad person wants.  Maybe the mad party will not realize the reason that the congregation does not go to them is because the church is happy that they are gone.  Finally, these mad people are gone and the church is happy about this.

This is not to be mean, but emotional cut offs have this effect on people and churches.  The mad party gets what they wanted, cut off, but in reality the mad party expects the people to go to them to beg for their return.

Related posts:

1. The Four Emotional Reactions to Church–Church is Pointless
2. The Four Emotional Reactions to Church–Church is Perfect
3. Four Emotional Reactions to Church-Church is Purposeful
4. Four Emotional Reactions to Church-Church is Problematic
5. Big Happy Churches

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This entry was posted by Matthew on Friday, June 4th, 2010 at 8:19 am and is filed under Church News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.