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Beware of Miggy Moments!
As discussed in Interruptions #214: after a Miggy Moment you say or think, “I shouldn’t have done that. Why did I do that? I’m not like that! What happened?”
During a Miggy Moment you lose empathy, self-control, and often explode with words, thoughts, and actions with later regret.
Your brain contains an amygdala that focuses all your energy, eliminating rational thought and fine motor control, so that you can fight or flee an emergency. Great for war but not for solving conflict at home.
You can live in the Miggy – always on edge and often irrational. Your best friend might claim that you are losing it. Consider the destruction of a motor in full throttle for years and then imagine your heart, blood pressure, and nervous system.
Uggghhhhggg!
Miggies aren’t just individual, they can become organizational. A church can have a Miggy Moment – as can all charitable organizations and businesses.
Some churches/organizations function permanently in the Miggy, just waiting to fly apart!
Let’s focus on a really bad decision by an otherwise healthy church. (Same thing can happen with a business, but I’m a pastor.) A church can have great Christians making poor choices! It can become a culture.
Have you witnessed a church with good leaders make a bad decision? When a Miggy gets started, it gets bigger: a tornado fueled by bad decisions, negative reactions, more bad decisions, more negative reactions – swirling around – fueled by the heat of self-umbrage, unyielding, everyone accusing others!
Destruction.
A community watches and considers, “What happened? Is this how Christians act?” Observing Miggies, I consider Ephesians 4:29:
Maintaining humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, being diligent to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
A Miggy Moment often begins by a sectarian spirit – a sense of prideful comparison with other churches, arrogance in leaders, frustration in the congregation, and having never developed scriptural decision-making processes.
Booom!
Something happens and the tinder-like fragments of bitterness, often lying between the pews for years, get ignited. Spark! Something inconsequential – to a small flame, to an increasing larger flame, difficult to extinguish, and half the members, most of the staff, and a high percentage of other leaders – all of them gone!
There is a church in the Northwest United States. Over 10,000 members when the Pastor made a very bad decision through his e-communications. Accusations, Pastor suspended, church upended, pastor gone, leaders gone, building sold… all in a few months.
Miggy Moments can be avoided by a scriptural decision-making process.
Throw in humility and accountability with serving love, and Miggies go away. Not easy, but with the Spirit empowering, the most difficult moments can become the moments when God came, sat in the pew, brought conviction, and then healing.
The church becomes the church Christ intended – His body healthy.
2020 is a year causing Miggies and God allows this judgment to cleanse and prepare.
A revival in 2021!