How do you balance being firm and being pastoral?
Hey everyone! New pastor here: I'm 27 years old, recently ordained, and have been serving a mainline Protestant congregation as their only full-time pastor for the past 3 months.
My question is really the following: in situations where you have to correct behavior at the level of church leadership, how do you balance being firm and being compassionate and pastoral? Is the image I have in my head of the totally dispassionate, non-anxious pastor inaccurate or fanciful?
This question has been my main area of struggle since I started at this church. It's a small church, and the church council has only 5 other members besides the pastor. The church had been without a full time pastor for years, and hence has a very long history and conflict in their leadership , and the broader congregation. The short of it is that the two most committed people on the council (the president and the treasurer) absolutely despise one another. They are fighting constantly, and it dates back years.
The root of it stems from the fact that the treasurer tries to be the boss of everyone else, order them around, constantly check up on everyone else's responsibilities that don't pertain to his role, etc. They all resent him for it, and it is neverending. This resentment leads to direct confrontations that are heated and personal.
As a result, ive had to have multiple conversations with him, explain to him that he isn't in charge, to stay within his role and responsibility, etc. (He is by no means the only problem on council, but he is by far the most resistant to any kind of change to what he imagined was his "leadership authority".)
I preface every conversation by listening and exploring with him the roots of his anxieties and frustrations in a compassionate way -- at this point, I feel I have a solid grasp of where his habits come from. I also explain to him how I understand that voids in leadership are filled in the absence of a pastor and that this leads to confusion and conflict among council.
However, I have also had to be firm with him, and to tell him bluntly that he is not in charge of other people, that they don't answer to him, etc. These conversations sometimes have been heated. When they become heated, I feel like a failure for not maintaining a neutral, non-adversarial tone.
I've gone through CPE and have a solid foundation in the fundamentals of pastoral care, but this is my first experience of ministering to, and working with, someone who is directly causing conflict.
How do you all assess your pastoral care with people causing trouble at church?
TL;DR - Treasurer keeps stepping out of bounds, and I've found it very hard to remain impartial or dispassionate during these conversations. How do you balance the need to be passionate/pastoral with the need to be firm?