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I was reminded last night that “story-telling” and emotional vulnerability doesn’t always create connection with others, but can actually serve to alienate others and create distance.
I opened up to a group of folks from the church about some dark emotional seasons of my life. I didn’t go into great detail or anything. But just said that I’ve known a few prolonged seasons of deep and scary darkness.
I thought, reading the room in the moment, that maybe my vulnerability would help others to feel comfortable to share. But I’m not sure how to interpret the silence I was met with and I’ve been a bit unsettled since.
There are multiple possible factors at play, but I can’t shake the feeling that I messed up, that it wasn’t the right time or place, that I’ve damaged my ability to pastor them.
I try, in my pastoral life, to risk openness with my congregation.
I know there are appropriate circles of vulnerability, and appropriate times and circumstances.
I know there are appropriate circles of vulnerability, and appropriate times and circumstances.
But there have been times I have felt called to demonstrate the kind of vulnerability and openness that Christian communities so often lack, but which, I believe, they so desperately need.
We need to be known to be loved, to be held accountable, to be encouraged and called back to the fold. How do we bear with one another honestly, truly, if we do not know each other?
How do we share in each others joys and sorrows, rejoicing and mourning together, if we do not tell one another where it is that we are, where it is that we have been?
But I also know that as a pastor, my relationship to the congregation makes my sharing different. I’m already viewed as “other”.
It is so hard because you don’t know how your weaknesses, your wounds, your doubts, your sins, those raw and tender places, will be received, or rejected, or turned into weapons to be used against you.
I’ve had my vulnerability used as a weapon against me before and it hurts. And so I’ve been in a sort of weird place since last night. I know it’s probably not as bad as I fear. But I can’t make myself believe that right now.
