How Do We Get Everyone On the Train?

By Hugh Fraser

There I was, engaged with a church floundering in transition.  A picture of a train came to mind. Their experience was so much like passengers struggling to board a train headed towards the future. Despite sincere effort and good intentions, the leaders could not get everyone to climb on board!

As I reflected and searched for direction in God’s Word, the Spirit led me to Hebrews 12:1-3. It had the feel of this train metaphor and some clues as to what was holding us back. The writer of Hebrews exhorted followers to “…run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Forward motion can be impeded by two barriers – anything that “hinders” or “sin that easily entangles.” 

This congregation had suffered a devastating split in the membership a year earlier. As we partnered in an assessment process, it became clear that unsettled emotion was a primary hindrance for this body.

One Transitional Leader’s Approach to Process Emotion

I asked myself the question, “How do we venture into this complex emotional story and offer possibilities for some level of resolution?”

My general approach to resolve anything in a congregation is to create a new or a missing conversation. I will often ask, “What is the missing conversation that is impeding you?” 

For this church, the missing conversation went like this: “We are stuck in a place of distress because we are not speaking about nor listening to the range of emotions generated by our church breakdown.” 

Alongside the transition team, we went to work constructing a workshop. We called the workshop “An Invitation to Healing…Listening well to each other in transition.” It helped that each of the team members were experiencing a different emotional story from each other. This set them up to be the right people to co-create this workshop.

Let me give you an overview of the components of this facilitated conversation. We used the tools taught in the TLN training along with adaptations.

Workshop Overview 

We used Hebrews 12:1-3 as our foundational Scripture and the invitation to overcome what is hindering us! We asked the question: How can we best move forward together? 

Another Scripture that helped shape our conversation was I Corinthians 12:24-26. This helped prompt the responsibility we had to each other. We recognized that all the parts of the body should have “equal concern for each other.”  “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”  

This pointed us toward empathy and the missing freedom to express emotions.

We learned that we move forward when we allow everyone to vocalize emotion in the safe environment of empathy. 

We prayed together.

Throughout the workshop, we interspersed prayer moments that included worship songs to help create a spiritual environment for the work we needed to do together. 

The teaching slides included the following topics: 

• The William Bridges Transition Diagram – this slide showed how we are all at various places along a trajectory toward a new future. It confirmed all emotions to be valid as we said good-bye to the past and endeavored to welcome a new future.
• The Definition of Conflict Diagram – this slide showed how a “disagreement” or an “offense” escalates emotions if not addressed in a timely manner.
• The Five Levels of Conflict by Speed Leas – this slide illustrates the intensifying damage to a congregation caused by emotion that is left unchecked.
• The Modified Transition Journey Diagram – this slide shows the emotional pathway from the past to the future with a grid of four emotional categories superimposed over the diagram. Each quadrant on the grid listed 25 emotion words that might connect with those participating. Who would have thought there were 100 distinct emotion words in the English language?

The Steps Followed for the Exercise

Step 1: Select an Emotion while seated in the Larger Group

Each participant was invited to select the ONE emotion word that best described themselves currently as a participating member of the congregation. 

Step 2: Process that Emotion in a Smaller Group

Once everyone located themselves within one of the 4 emotional quadrants, they went to one of four rooms with others who also identified with their quadrant and went through a listening exercise hosted by one of the transition team members.  

A handout provided a format to verbalize their emotion words and identify what from their recent church experience had generated this emotion. Each person spoke in turn while the remaining group members listened.

One group member was assigned to echo the emotion word of each speaker and their description of the emotion using this format: “I heard you say that you are feeling [chosen word] and that it was the result of [the experience that generated the emotion]. These phrases were spoken without any commentary or added opinions by the group. 

Step 3: Meet to Reflect in the Larger Group

When the four groups came back together, a time of open sharing was facilitated. There was freedom to reflect on the value of speaking and listening to one another. There was an understandable mixture of tears and joy. Prayers followed to conclude the workshop.

The Outcome and Some Final Thoughts 

Did everything get healed during that one Saturday morning workshop?  Of course not. But it was a significant beginning to the process of allowing people to share at a new level using newly discovered language. Emotional awareness had been elevated.  The missing “equal concern for each other” was practiced. We created new conversations and created new hope.

One of the people I spoke with on Sunday after the workshop gave me this feedback, “At least we are now able to talk about what we have gone through.” I observed a change in his demeanor. He was grateful. We had created space to have the missing necessary conversations. Congregation members were cared for at a new level. 

Paul was right, speaking the truth in love does help us to “grow up into him who is the Head, that is Christ” (Ephesians 4:5). 

As you consider the congregations you are working with, what are the missing conversations they might need to have? If you are trying to get everyone on the train but experiencing blockages to seeing that happen, what can you do to create the conversation necessary to pursue God’s best future together? 

Note: If you are interested in seeing the slides used for the workshop, you can download them by clicking here.