Treating people as adults is not treating people as experts. It’s assuming that if you start at the beginning and go at an appropriate pace, you can reach almost anywhere.

I fear that, without really intending to, churches have a habit of infantilising people. We should treat people like adults.

My new staff team tells me this is something I say a lot.

In my experience, the vast majority of people act like they are treated. If we expect people to act in disciplined, orderly ways, then most people will do so. Of course, in one sense, what I’m saying is naïve. There certainly are people who need to be taught how to behave in disciplined, orderly ways. There are other people whose life circumstances make it much more difficult for them to do so. There are also ‘disciplined, orderly ways’ that actually amount to English middle-classed culture, such that expecting it of people of other English cultures and from other parts of the world is not reasonable.

In my experience, this plays out in church life in two directions. The first is whether or not we hound people when we are concerned that they are making a poor decision.

Do we chase the person who is on a rota when we suspect they’ve told us they aren’t available in conversation, but they haven’t swapped or done whatever the expectation is? In my opinion, no, we assume that they simply haven’t done it yet. If the person has form, you might behave differently, but it is better that they either do the right thing themselves without being chased—and they will more than half the time—or if they don’t follow through then you have an opportunity for both the team leader to develop their leadership skills as they speak with the person and for the person to understand why these administrative tasks matter as they result in letting other people down.

Equally, in the same vein, do we send lots of reminders for events? This can be a little harder to discern because good communication requires saying something multiple times in multiple media, but we try not to send unnecessary reminders. We tend to assume that people can manage their time and are choosing not to attend an event. This can be difficult for leaders, especially because leadership anxiety is a real and pernicious experience; lots of Pastors will feel a range of deeply personal things when an important event is poorly attended. As a result, they try hard to mitigate this feeling by what can amount to badgering people into attending. It can be effective, but it’s a rod made for your back as you’ll have to do this perpetually. I’ve seen this play out in strange ways in other churches, where people have to justify why they hadn’t signed up for a particular thing; that way heavy shepherding lies. Plan an appropriate range of communication, don’t use ‘reminders’ for everything you do—as the power lies in their rarity—and assume that if people don’t attend there is a reason.

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