“The sin of empathy” is a phrase attributed to family systems psychologist Dr Edwin Friedman.  Matt Waldock of Manchester City Church explores why empathy is unhelpful in ministry and compassion is a better way of thinking.

  • Compassion is suffering with someone
  • Empathy is feeling the pain that they feel
  • But you cannot help someone if you are in pain yourself
  • The person with the most anxiety often has the most power
  • We need to pay attention to how other people’s anxiety effects our own
  • It is not our job to shrink other people’s pain

TOOLBOX:

City Church Manchester

Coaching Leaders to Multiply

Matt’s Talk Notes

Lauren Errington’s Seminar on Ministry

311: How can my help get in the way of my caring

Leadership Anxiety by Steve Cuss

CREDITS:
This Episode was brought to you by EA Insurance

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TRANSCRIPT

The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

Good day.I’m Scott Sanders.Welcome to The One Thing, a podcast designer give you one solid practical tip for gospel centre ministry every week.Now The One Thing is brought to you by Reach Australia.We want to see thousands of healthy evangelistic multiplying churches.And so you’re probably going to be listening to this podcast thinking, why have we got an English person on this podcast?

Aren’t you guys about reaching Australia?Well, as a network, we want to be a network that actually learns and we think we can learn from people overseas, even people from the UK.So I’m really excited about our guest on today’s podcast, and I’m going to introduce him to you in a moment.But for now, you press play on another episode of The One thing the Sin of Empathy.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by EA Insurance.Need insurance for your church or charity?Contact EA Insurance.For best cover and a competitive price, head over to WWW DOT.EA.Insurance.com dot AU and now back to the podcast.

Now, Matt, welcome to the one thing.Thanks for having me.Really good to be here.Good to good to join you again Scott.I thought you were going to What’s the word pom?Do you not?No, I wasn’t gonna No.Look, I, I, I don’t use that because it’s pejorative and that’s, I don’t want to get cancelled.

We don’t use that.Word anymore.I appreciate your cultural sensitivity.That’s nice, that’s good.I feel very welcomed, warm and safe.But let me for those who don’t know who I’m talking to, I’m talking to Matt Wardock who is lead pastor of City Church Manchester.

He’s also got other things, but I I just want to lead into that briefly because it’s interesting.You have two lead pastors and you know, and I’ve, I worked, I, I met Matt last year.We did a concert with, with his wonderful, great church in, in the City of Manchester.And I had a wonderful time with, with he and Ralph, the lead pastors and his water team.

But it was interesting.You guys are both lead pastors and you both planted a church together.And I called it a bit of a Unicorn experience because I haven’t seen that work well, but you guys have been doing that well for 10 plus years.Yeah, yeah, it’s I, I think it’s a bit of a Unicorn experience as well.

And I would never say to guys, oh, you must find a Co pastor or go out there and find someone to kind of share the responsibility with with total parity like that.But I would say if the Lord is generous and happens to put you in a context with someone who you can work with like that, then it’s great and it’s been a great 10 years.

It’s not necessarily been straightforward, but the longer we’ve worked together, actually the more we appreciate each other’s differences and each other’s strengths.And I think our combination in Manchester means actually, I think we achieve more together than we would apart, certainly for this season of of ministry.

So yeah, very grateful.And I, I just love how you summarise it beautifully.His strengths, you know, his weaknesses, your strengths, your weaknesses and they and they work together.It were it, you know, I was able to see that.And it is a, it is a wonderful thing.Now, Matt, the other role that you have is as the UK Gospel coaching director.

Tell us a little bit about that and why it’s so passionate.Yeah, really passionate about gospel coaching.For us here in the UK, gospel coaching is restoring leadership clarity, one gospel shaped conversation at a time.We connect men and women who are in ministry leadership positions with gospel coaches so that they might thrive and be healthy, have a sustainable ministry.

We’ve been doing it for about four and a half, five years.We’ve trained around about 105 coaches and they’ve gone on to coach over 120 different men and women in leadership positions across the UK.And we’re in an environment, I think right now, which is incredibly hostile to those in leadership positions.

It’s very difficult to see the wood for the trees.It’s very difficult to retain clarity and perspective.We’re seeing huge numbers of burnout, huge numbers of people quit the ministry.And I’m passionate about gospel catching because I think it is a tool, a really helpful tool to help people thrive, sustain and be fruitful.

Great.Well, I’m going to put a link in the show notes to City Church Manchester and also and also your work with, with, with CMM gospel coaching in, in Europe as well.Yeah, be good, be good.If you are listening here in Australia, be good to pray for our brothers and sisters in, in the UK and, and pray, you know, pray for the work that is, is happening with a whole bunch of ministries over there as well.

Now I want to just jump into this topic because, you know, the, the title is not kind of catchy.The the Sin of empathy is a talk that you gave a couple of years ago at A at a ministry conference.Yeah, in, in the UK And, and I was, you know, as I heard that I was a sin really like, you know, and it was, it was provocative.

But, but what’s wrong with empathy in pastoral ministry?Yeah, yeah, yeah.Well, let me say now, before, before kind of like you get lots of emails and I get fired.The Sid of empathy actually was a quote from a theorist, a leadership thinker called Edwin Friedman.

And he was making the point that empathy itself is distinct from compassion.And empathy actually is a significant cause in not so much loving our brothers and sisters when we’re in leadership positions, though that’s what we intend it to be, but can actually hinder our ability to care for them, support them and enable them and our churches or our organisations to thrive.

And freedom was was talking about it in a time which is similar to now really, where everyone’s talking about empathy.Everyone’s saying, actually, if you want to be a healthy leader, you’ve got to be empathetic.Empathy is something that we all have to kind of saturate ourselves in.

And what Friedman was trying to do was say, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, just let’s slow down a little bit.Let’s actually unpick what this means.And let’s reflect a little bit on the consequences of just going totally down this rate in an unreflective sense.

And so he used this provocative term, the sin of empathy.And that’s what the the the talk was picking up in and sharing it with the UK.Leaders So so you’ve just talked about compassion.What?What’s the difference between empathy and compassion?Yeah.

So compassion is the idea of suffering with someone.It’s the understanding of it’s the feeling of concern, sadness or discomfort.When you see another human being go through a time of stress, trauma, suffering, whatever problem, it is a concern that you have that that will ideally lead you to want to help and support them.

So it’s the kind of idea of, you know, suffering with someone, so you’re alongside them.What empathy, what empathy does is, is it’s slightly different.And I think actually we often get confused between the two because empathy is the idea of suffering in someone, not with them.

So it’s the idea that you actually feel the pain of your friend who is in pain.You don’t just recognise their pain, you don’t just feel concerned for their pain, but their pain becomes your pain.

Their perspective becomes wholly adopted by you.And and the issue of, of empathy with that is actually that connection or that bond with the other person.There’s there’s nothing wrong with that per Southeast.

But the issue is if you totally take on board the perspective of the other person at the expense of your own, if you take on the the pain of the other person and you lose your own perspective off the back of that, that doesn’t enable you to help the other person.

That just enables both people to be in a crisis situation.Let me give you an example of that.If I break my leg and the paramedic comes, you know, ambulance blue flashing lights and they come and the paramedic comes to me with my pain, I’ve got kind of, you know, tears rolling down my cheeks because I’m just in absolute agony.

I do not want the paramedic to go, oh, you look like you’re in a massive pain.I can see that you’ve broken your leg.I can see that it’s severed at the bone.I do not want the paramedic to take a sledgehammer and break their own leg and go, yeah, I, I’m totally feeling, literally feeling what you’re feeling because that means we’ve got two people in acute agony and pain.

Neither is able to help and support the other person.I need the paramedic to have compassion on me.I need them to be sensitive to the what I’m going through.