This is a guest post by Kate Vosburg. She has been on IV staff for almost 15 years, on 6 different campuses. She loves serving alongside her husband, Dave, who is a professor on the campus where she serves. With him as a faculty, on the inside of campus, there have been some amazing opportunities to share the gospel. Kate is an evangelist who loves to be on the front-lines with her students, finding ways into unreached communities and sharing the Gospel. Dave and Kate have 3 kids (Nate 6, Isabella 4, Diego 4) who keep Kate on her toes and laughing at their creative, crazy antics. On a personal note, Kate was the very first InterVarsity Staff worker I (Beau) met with after becoming a Christian in college! I look up to her so much.
Ever felt like your ministry has been attacked—by someone on the inside? That cranky person who seems to just complain and complain about some situation? Maybe you realized the situation and didn’t know what to do about it? Maybe you were blind-sided by the person’s complaint?
How do you respond to cranky, complaining people?
Using Aikido
For me, it’s tempting to snap into defensive mode and dismiss or minimize their complaints. Or try to make it their fault by pointing out what they’ve done to exacerbate the situation. Or pacify them by promising to take action and fix things, without having really thought through the situation. Or feel guilty and depressed and express my helplessness in the situation. Anything to make their complaining stop!
However, in my better (more Spirit-led) moments, I respond with a bit of Aikido.
What is Aikido? According to Wikipedia, Aikido is a martial art that…
“is performed by blending with the motion of the attacker and redirecting the force of the attack rather than opposing it head-on.”
Aikido can be the right response, especially when a young APE is bringing the complaint. I think often times many of those cranky complainers are young APE’s. They have vision to see that there is more possible than what is happening. They want to see change and are impatient at the slow pace leaders seem to move. They have ideas. But they lack skills or authority to bring them into reality. Young APE’s can become cranky in the daily ups and downs of ministry, and if unattended, they can leave to start something more to their liking or simply drift away from community.
A wise person once pointed out to me that someone who’s willing to complain is invested enough (1) to see something is wrong (vision) and (2) to bring it up (initiative). Those are two qualities of an APE. Underneath that complaining exterior might be an APE in the making.
So when you suspect a young APE might be bringing the complaint, respond with Aikido.
1) Don’t oppose what he or she is saying. Rather, work with them to see the underlying legitimate issues. I’ve found that there’s often something of importance to their complaints, if I spend the time to sift through the griping.
2) Redirect the force of their complaint against you into working against the problem as your partner. Affirm them for what they saw and for bringing it up. Ask them to serve with you to address the problem.
3) Ask them for their perspective on the situation and their ideas for how to proceed. If they have good ones, give them the resources and authority to start taking some action, with whatever support you need to offer. If their ideas are off, work with them to come up with something better and offer them the chance to help make change happen.
If indeed a young APE is behind the complaint, you’ve just taken the first step in developing him or her as a ministry partner.
Using Aikido on a Prophetic Student
Here’s a recent example from my ministry. A freshman student in our fellowship was dissatisfied with the lack of charismatic prayer going on. He felt like our ministry structures were too stifling for the Spirit to move. While there is some truth to that, it’s not easily changed since young leaders lead many of our structures with little or no charismatic background. We could have argued that we could not quickly change our structures and how doing so might alienate people in the community and how he was new to the community so he should observe more before he piped up with half-baked complaints.
Thank God, we had the sense not to respond in any of those ways. Rather, we acknowledged that we did want places for that kind of charismatic prayer and were open to opportunities but lacking leadership. Soon after, this freshman asked if he could bring in a missionary he knew who could lead a charismatic prayer meeting. We blessed this freshman to plan this event in a way that he thought would work well. It was not “officially” our event, but we cleared out other ministry events that day and encouraged our members to go to this prayer meeting.
Many people did go. And I’m so thankful, because God showed up in power! Our community is better off now because of what God did through this freshman’s efforts.
And this freshman has had a good experience in leading something that, while not being “officially” part of our ministry, was a great blessing to the community. He saw God work in power and was obedient to God’s leading. He’s also tired from all the planning and appreciates a bit more what it takes to lead. He feels affirmed and supported by our leadership, and he would like to work with us for future events. As you might guess, we’ll be inviting him into leadership in a few months. He’s a young APE of some sort, maybe a prophet who sensed God’s desire to challenge our skepticism of the supernatural?
With this freshman and others, we will need to continue to leave space in our plans for them to innovate and lead as they see needs and have ideas and are led by the Spirit. I certainly don’t have the energy to personally innovate and lead in response to all the complaints that they and others bring. But I can redirect the energy of their complaint by leading them into serving because I know Aikido.
So tell us, have you ever used Aikido in a ministry context? We would love to hear your story!
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Did y’all catch that the woman is doing the throw? Props to Beau for finding a picture that supports the APE saying that “Females are APEs, too.”