Chaplain's Corner

You may be familiar with the Barna Group, or maybe not. According it its website the Barna Group is considered to be the leading research group focusing on the intersection between faith and culture. Like many research groups they do a lot of polling and recently they did a study they titled “Five factors Changing Women’s Relationship with Churches”. There was one piece of that study that caught my attention. The question was, “To what extent do you feel you receive emotional support from people at your church or synagogue?”

Emotional support? It’s true, that is one of the things we look for from our church experience isn’t it? Only 17% of women surveyed said they feel “very” supported emotionally at their church; 23% said they feel “somewhat” supported, another 17% indicated that they feel “not too” supported and a whopping 43% said they do” not at all” feel emotional support from their church at all. Sixty percent of women do not feel supported emotionally by their church. I can guarantee that that number is even greater if men had been the subject of the study.

One of the significant aspects of our spirituality is the longing to be connected with ourselves, others, the natural world and God. Feeling connected with others is largely about “emotional connection”. Many of us spend a large amount of our time with other people:  We live in families, we go to work where other people work with us, we attend social functions with other people, go to sporting events, concerts, and many of us  go to church with other people  with some regularity. But being together with other people doesn’t necessarily mean emotional connection.

You have heard the phrase “alone in a crowd”.  Many of us feel that way at church. Maybe your experience is much like mine, you go to church, say “hi” to a few folks on the way in, find your seat, the service begins, after the service you get up and leave, say “hi” to a few people on the way out and that’s that: little or no emotional connection.

Why does that happen? There are many reasons, but one of the primary reasons the church is not a place we find emotional support is that we don’t feel that our emotions will be handled with care by the people we worship with. This is not a new problem. You have seen what happens when people are too emotional at church. Either they are left to deal with their emotions alone, or some brave but unequipped soul will come and put an arm around the shoulder and utter a few pious platitudes into your emotional turmoil, and that’s that.

Even in churches that hold a high value on “community” this often happens. If you are well put together, have few needs, you deal with them yourself and have lots to offer – you’re welcomed. If you are broken, weakened by a life that has beat you up pretty bad and come needy; you may get a bit of pity but no one will really want to take much time to spend the kind of time and energy it takes to support you emotionally.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not picking on the church, it is this way everywhere, this is our western culture 2015, this is the way our society works and the church simply is reflecting that reality. There is no program that will change this, nor is there a curriculum that we can bring into the church to alter this reality. The only thing that can change this is you and me making a decision to draw people into our hearts and show compassion instead of keeping them at arm’s length. The hurting heart is the most compassionate, so don’t wait for someone to emotionally support you, reach out and support someone today.