Two events have been occupying my thoughts early this morning. The first is from yesterday’s sermon. Towards the end of the sermon the elder preaching opened up about struggling with the fruits of the Spirit. That might not seem like a big confession and in the context it was the elder identifying with the self-disappointment we all often feel when we take the time to examine our lives. It is a big deal when juxtaposed with a recent conversation from a small church pastor’s forum. On that forum one pastor was lamenting that when they tried to open up and get help for some trivial struggle a congregant shut them down and told them that as a leader they should never confess weakness to the congregation. I remember reading that and feeling angry. Some of the strongest moments in my own ministry were also those where I was most transparent about my struggles. Here’s the rub, leaders are people too, lovely flawed people. We can all be idiots, we can and will let ourselves and the people we love down. The moment we pretend otherwise is the moment we start loving a fiction over the truth.
Now when our elder mentioned their own struggles the context was how they have been meditating on the fruits of the Spirit as a way of trying to be better. My instant thought was: keep talking like that and you will lose people. The sad thing is that many people do not go to church to be challenged in their own failings let alone want to follow someone they think of as being less than perfect. Often people prefer the willful lie over reality because facing reality means working on ourselves. It shouldn’t surprise us that churches which expect perfect leaders have a hard time dealing with leaders who do evil things and even cover up wickedness that should never be covered up.
My second thought was that any people you lose by being transparent are not the kind people who really want what is best for you anyway. We need to expect something better from the church. We need to be a place where we can come with all our warts and imperfections and call each other to the life God has for us. We need to love truth, especially the truth about ourselves. We need to love each other, especially when we are unlovable. And loving never means pretending everything is perfect, instead we have hope that one day we will be made perfect in the presence of God. Today we work together to help each other be better, a work that is made easier the more we are free to open up.
I don’t expect that this week’s sermon will chase off any of the people I’ve come to know and love in our church. In fact our elders have a good track record of living out their imperfections from the front. I think it is one of the biggest strengths of the new Vineyard here. I am encouraged greatly when I see it. But I also know that some people will not like giving up the illusion of perfect leaders. Hopefully we’ll have few instances where people push back against such transparency, I know I had a few in my time pastoring. My prayer for our elders (the two couples who pastor our church) is that they will be bold in the face of all resistance, continuing to live in such a way as to promote transparency and real growth.
Let me know your thoughts...