CDM - Listen and learn

Listen and learn

The CDM is probably serving as a bellwether for deeper cultural currents within the church.

CDM both represents and exacerbates trends that undermine the capacity of everyone to feel safe within the institution. To do our best work as human beings we need to feel sufficiently safe. We need to sense that the institution ‘has our back’, especially when times are tough. Frontline ministry is frequently both tough and lonely.

Attending to CDM will not be sufficient in itself. We need to research and invest in ways of being that make for doing healthy ministry together. Individual approaches such as therapy and resilience training have their place. However, if taken alone they risk reinforcing a narrative of individual pathology or weakness. This, in turn, fails to address wider cultural issues within the church where pernicious weeds of conflict and bullying can grow, smothering more healthy collegial and communal modes of being.

We do not have a prescription or even a plan in this 4th area, but the project would be incomplete if we did not at least articulate that this is part of the story and think about CDM within this context.