Alternatives to becoming an armadillo

“You have to grow tougher skin, Carol,” my colleague told me when I invited him to lunch and asked for his advice on a church matter.

I inhaled deeply. That was the same response I heard repeatedly for the first five years of my pastorate. Whenever I got frustrated, well-meaning friends and colleagues would tell me that I needed to miraculously grow some sort of Teflon epidermis. 

Am I too sensitive? I don’t know. What I do know is that I don’t thrive well in positions where members of the church constantly criticize, because I can never ignore them. I left one call partly because of relentless complaints, and I’m sensitive to that aspect of congregational life now. I can walk into a church and feel it. I know it’s there even before meeting the church members, because churches usually show their pettiness in those passive aggressive notes. (Like that cross-stitched sign above the kitchen sink: “Your mother doesn’t work here, please clean up after yourself.”)