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Chapter 5
The Care of the Clinging Vine
or Dependent Person
You are greeting people after the morning
service and it happens again. One particular person stops and
engages you in a long conversation while other people wait
... and wait, until they finally give up and leave by another
door.
Or just before a congregational gathering,
this same person stops you and asks for advice on something
you feel a person as old as he could decide for himself. Finally
you have to break off the discussion to get the meeting started
on time.
Then this person calls you at home more
and more often to ask your advice or help in making a decision.
Again you think a person "of a certain age" could
decide this without your input. Besides, these telephone calls
interrupt your private time with your family (or colleagues,
as in the case of a celibate pastor). You begin to resent this
person as a nuisance, a pest, a bother. You wish this parishioner
would go away and leave you alone.
Your impatience seeps through into your
conversations with this person. Your tone of voice becomes
shrill. Then your anger gets the best of you, and you blast
out: "Why do you have to call me so much at inopportune
times?"
Then the person takes up another routine:
writing you notes of apology, giving gifts to you or members
of your family. She wants to do things for you that you would
rather do for yourself. This routine taxes your patience until
you lose patience again.
In response to this, the person blows up
at you: "After all I have done for you, you treat me this
way! I was only trying to be helpful!" It is a temper
tantrum. Some dependent types, instead of having temper tantrums,
will become depressed, withdrawn, and even threaten suicidein
a note written to you. That will get your "help" when
nothing else will.
What on earth is going on here? You have
become the object of the dependent member's need for someone
else to make his or her decisions. If you as pastor lose patience
with him, or he with you, he soon will shift the dependency
to another individual or couple. A lay leader and spouse whose
children are grown and out of the house (or if the couple has
lost a child by death) may actually enjoy this dependency.
(Know that the lay leader's opinion of you as a pastor may
become colored by the accounts given by this dependent person.)
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