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Why do we squelch the passionate?

squelch-blog This was a question Francis Chan asked at #Orange09 and I would love to weigh in on it because it's true for a lot of places. (Not all but a lot.) The Church has a history of wanting extremely passionate high capacity people to be involved in their ministries yet the moment they get in the door all of their passion, energy, insights, and influence gets sidelined by insecure leadership who are afraid of losing "their" influence.  So it seems they resort to squelching the passion or only asking for what they want/need out of those individuals. Thus sending some of the most passionate people out to find other places to use their gifting and unfortunately sometimes that place is outside of the church.  

I've learned from Mark Beeson that one of the most helpful things we can do for people, while constantly giving them Jesus, is help them find a place to plug in (whether relationally in a group or a serving opportunity) so they can take their next step.  He's also shown me that far too often the church is the only place in certain peoples lives where they have no influence.  Some of these people you can put in ANY other environment and they are highly influential, helpful, a true gem to The Cause, but put that same person in MOST churches and they would ONLY be asked to hand out a bulletin or pour coffee.  I find that interesting.

It seems that insecurities in leadership is what causes some people to not allow these passionate individuals to thrive in churches.  The underlying thought of "they might be more influential than me", "they might rock the boat", "they might take all of my followers", "they might turn the ship" seems to feed that insecurity so in order for that to NOT happen people try to squelch them or shut them up.  So Francis, I think one reason "the passionate" are squelched is because of insecure leadership.

Why do you think "the passionate" are squelched? 

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