Talking honestly about a full range of issues

The church is the people of God. As such, within the church there should be open and honest dialogue about tough issues. And the dialogue, though it might still be hard, should still be safe because there's an underlying sense that we are family, forgiven in God's sight, and though still fallible, we're still working toward a common goal of glorifying God -- in part by being able to have really hard discussions and still loving each other through it.

That's the ideal, at least. Instead the discussions within the church are often either surface-level or hit only upon the hard issues with the understood undertone that everyone should agree about the issue and we know it's the heathen who are against us on this. (Any suspicion that someone within our own membership stands with the heathen on a particular issue is so unsettling that the conversation is often quickly changed.) 

On the one hand, it's very hard to have tough conversations together. Very few people look forward to something like that. But on the other hand, having a tough discussion and having it turn out well, where you learn something that you didn't know, or come away with more understanding for a fellow member of the church, is a wonderful thing. If we knew that every hard discussion would come out with such a positive ending, perhaps we'd jump into them much more readily.

John Alexander said that he believes that eating together is a sign of a healthy church. (By the way, I should add that within the church that John was a part of, the entire congregation eats together every Sunday evening. They also eat together in smaller groups several times during the week.) Along the same lines of eating together was being together in general. Not only do many congregations not do much together throughout the week, but within some congregations there is so much turn-over that it's very hard to form a cohesive sense of community within the group. 

Rob and I were members of a church in San Francisco that had about 400 members. Some friends of ours moved away to Kansas but came back for a short visit a few months after they had moved. We saw them after the service and they spoke briefly to us but then excused themselves to go say hi to several other friends. They returned awhile later saying that they were unable to find anyone else they knew! They had only been gone a few months and already the turnover was so great that though they had been in the church for at least a year before leaving, they were unable to find people they had known from when they lived in the area. That astounded me. (I knew there was a high turnover rate, and that I was having a very hard time feeling connected to anyone, but this brought it all home with a very specific example of the problem.) 

John Alexander points out that in a church with such a high turn-over rate, especially if we only see each other once a week on Sunday mornings, it is very unlikely that folks will get to the meaty issues of life. We may hear the pastor preach on something that's a tough issue, but then do we get a chance to talk to others in the body about our own thoughts on that issue or how we're dealing with that problem in our own lives? John asks, Do we, as a church, "talk honestly about a full range of tough issues?" That line particularly got me to thinking. I know that high turn-over rates are a problem. That's one thing that I like about our church is that there are people who have been in the congregation for twenty years, and even many of the "newcomers" have been around for upwards of 3 or 4 years or longer. (We've been members of the church for almost 9 years.) But has that familiarity led to a better ability to work through hard issues together? 

Sometimes I feel like in Sunday School or the gals Bible study we'll hit on a tough issue. And sometimes we really do have good, solid discussions on them. But there are other issues that we seem to skirt around as a congregation. So, while our congregation has the non-transient thing down pretty well, I think we still struggle with the "full range of tough issues" area. Our pastor has brought up some forums in which we might be able to tackle some of the harder discussions, but I can't say that there's been a stampede to dive in. 

And it's certainly not just our congregation. I'm sure this is a problem throughout the world. Which is a shame. God's people, of all folks, should be able to address each other in love and compassion and a thoughtfulness that enables really heavy and deep and hard conversations to take place in such a way that healing and growth and unity can occur. 

Philippians 2:1-4 If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

My interests may not be the same as someone else's. In fact, it's quite possible that my interests conflict with someone else's. But if we are to be a body, to work together as individual bits formed and shaped into one entity, the body of Christ, then shouldn't we take time out to consider the interests of others? To discuss those interests with them and gain a better understanding of where each other is coming from? ... well, of course. And I'm sure we all would even agree on that, though the thought of sitting down and actually doing as much can be a bit daunting. 

Which really gets to the heart of the question, I suppose. What can we do to get more of this "talking honestly about a full range of issues" happening? How can we foster this sort of thing both in the local church as well as the church national or the church global? Have you seen hard discussions talked out in a loving way among believers? What helped to foster that?