Dealing with the Truth about Your Church

by William Cowles

In my Love that Growth; Hate that Change blog, I shared Pastor Cary Nieuwhof’s excellent list of six things church leaders can do to deal with people who push for growth, then pull back from change. 

I repeatedly am reminded of the wisdom of his first tip – Tell the Truth – every time I coach a church leadership team. The common reality is that established leaders in established churches have no idea what they look or sound like to an outsider – a first-time visitor. Then, when someone comes in and holds up a mirror so they can see themselves as others see them, the responses are predictable and typical of many DEAD churches:

• Denial (“That’s not who we are.”)
• Excuses (“You caught us on an off day.”) 
• Antagonism ("How dare you criticize the church we've worked so hard to build?")
• Defense (“It’s their problem, not ours. People need to understand the way church is supposed to be.”)

At a recent church leadership team feedback session, I talked pretty pointedly about the truth of how I perceived them as a first-time visitor. Bottom line, based on their behavior during my visit, they were inhospitable, unwelcoming, and non-engaging. This is not what this group of seasoned leaders wanted to hear because they work hard at loving on each other. So hard they ignore a stranger in their midst. 

Wisely, though, their pastor anticipated the pushback, and prepared them for some meaningful follow-up dialogue by asking them to consider and share responses to three key questions:

1. What did you hear?
2. What do you think about what you heard and how does it make you feel?
3. What actions or decisions does this call us to take?

Those three simple questions have far-reaching impact because they create ongoing dialogue about key issues. That group’s discernment won’t stop with just hearing and commenting on a presentation by an outside consultant. With that kind of truth conditioning, they now own a process that will help them resolve those issues.

Use these three questions the next time you or someone else has to present some unexpected or unwelcomed truth to a group at church. Hearing the truth isn’t enough; equipping and empowering people to act is the way forward.