A New Metric For Churches: How they repair ruptures

What if we started evaluating churches not on whether they are nice and friendly, not on if they are powerful and effective, not on whether they are growing and vibrant, but on whether or not they can effectively repair relational ruptures?

We need to stop judging the health of a church on whether it has relational ruptures, and start looking at how leaders and churches repair ruptures.

Ruptures are normal.
Repair is the gospel.

I often say that the church should be the best in the world at repairing ruptures. But sadly, that often is not the case.

Pastors and churches don’t really think of that as their calling or role. They are often focused on preaching, teaching, serving, and ministering. Working on sermons, preparing worship services, visiting the sick, and caring for the poor.

But alongside all these things, we have been given the ministry of reconciliation.

18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. 19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. 20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” (2 Corinthians 5:18-20 NLT)

Moving through all the levels of repairing ruptures (physical, relational, and spiritual), and all that this “ministry of reconciliation” is is too big a task for this post.

So I just want to lay the groundwork for all that (and one day, I really would like to develop a metric for churches).

To begin with, I’m using rupture in a broad sense.

This includes physical, relational, or spiritual distress—of any kind—that breaks through our window of tolerance and prompts some level of emotional dysregulation. This could be being too hungry or too tired. This could be a miscommunication with a spouse or staff member, or the feeling of God’s absence. And this could also be a major moral failure or betrayal. Ruptures with oneself, others, and God could be as simple as the mixing up of expectations to major moral transgressions.

On the whole, relationships are out of sync 70% of the time, requiring regular relational repair of some kind (for more on that, see The Power of Discord: why the ups and downs of relationships are the secret to building intimacy, resilience, and trust).

The goal—and this is the important part— is not to try to shrink this 70% down to 50% or 0%! That is impossible.

Trying to avoid or ignore ruptures leads to exhaustion, control, and insecure attachment landscapes like the Desert of Avoidance or the Jungle of Anxiety.

The goal is getting really good at repairing these inevitable relational ruptures, which becomes the foundation of building secure attachment—with God, self, and others.

FREE Webinar—Regulating Rupture & Repair: The Mechanisms of Attachment and Growth (May 27th). Register NOW.

We often think a good relationship— or a good church, or a good pastor—is one without ruptures (and again, that is impossible).

The regular experience of repairing ruptures—not the absence of ruptures—is what builds a relationship and leads to growth and health.

Why?

• Nervous System Training: Repeatedly moving from rupture to repair trains the nervous system to expect that distress is temporary, that repair is possible, and that connection can be maintained.

• Trusting the History: Repeatedly moving from rupture to repair builds a catalogue of “relational data” proving that connection is stronger than conflict, proving that this relationship can overcome the rupture.

Never having ruptures probably means one of two things: either you haven’t really gotten to the level of real vulnerability (you’re still hiding yourself), or you are hiding the ruptures that are regularly happening (which means, technically, you are lying to yourself and others).

Share

When people join a church, it is always so nice at the beginning. Everyone is so friendly. Everyone gets along. The people are new, interesting, and fun. Surely I have found a church without ruptures, we think.

But then after a couple of months, a year at most, the newness fades, and the old ruptures begin to reappear. Then the new person wonders if this church isn’t really as great as they thought. People still flake out and disappoint. The children’s workers still raise their voices at the kids. Or the pastor didn’t respond quickly enough to a problem. Or the small group feels like a waste of time.

The honeymoon is over.

But in a good enough church where people repair ruptures (among the staff, in teams, in small groups, and just hanging out between people), a person will learn that

• when they are the cause of a rupture, that it is not overly distressing or fatal to the relationship because people graciously repair the relationship.

• and when they are on the receiving side of a rupture, they learn not to hide or dismiss it, but learn to repair it with the same grace they received.

Over time, in a church that effectively repairs ruptures, people will experience the community as not just nice (which can be a veneer covering over unrepaired ruptures), but authentic, kind, and full of grace and truth.

More could be said about forgiveness, self-forgiveness, and reconciliation, and moving through all the levels of rupture and repair. But that will be for another time.

So as I said to start: Let’s start evaluating churches not on whether they are nice and friendly, not on whether they are powerful and effective, not on whether they are growing and vibrant, but on whether they can effectively repair relational ruptures.

Share