Criticism
The service had gone well, and I felt that welcome feeling of grateful weariness, the warm glow that comes when you sense as a leader that perhaps you’ve helped people to walk into another day with a handful of hope. I went to the back of the church building to the book table, ready to pack things away. It was then that I saw it. The note was folded crisply in half, and stood upright on the book table, demanding attention. My name was scrawled in an angry address across the front of it. Something told me that this was not an epistle of warm appreciation. I was right. A familiar dread turned my stomach as I reluctantly unfolded the note.
I had obviously angered somebody in the congregation, who were certainly not used to the approach that I take to preaching. I love humour – but not all Christians share my desire to smile. I am personally committed to the idea that fun is not something that should be (a) post death for evangelical Christians and (b) kept a million miles from preaching. The writers of the note vehemently disagreed. Their scribble was like an angry scar on paper; it screamed their indignant protest.
“Sir, we would see Jesus, not your comedy act and nonsensical gibberish. You can’t win souls to Jesus with all that rubbish. You’re not a preacher, you’re a comedian. You have missed your calling”. The diagnosis was unsigned.
I folded the note back in half, my heart a brick within my chest. I know what I’m called to do, and I’ve been around long enough to know that not everyone is going to like it, and neither do they have to. The privilege of leadership carries with it many times when we will feel the bitter string of criticism. But the wildly scrawled note had the effect of a missile on my own sense of hope. I stood there, wandered about what kind of person could be so hateful in Jesus’ Name, and wanted to not be a Christian leader anymore.
Criticism is never fun – particularly when it comes wrapped in the cowardly garb of an anonymous letter. These days, if a letter comes unsigned, I won’t give it underserved dignity by reading it. If the person who wrote it does not have the moral backbone to sign it, then why should I trouble myself reading the fruit of their spineless lack of conviction?
D.L. Moody once received an anonymous letter while preaching. The usher placed a note on the pulpit, which Moody opened, to discover the single word “fool!” written thereon. Moody had a brilliant response, and I wish that I was half as quick.
Holding the letter up, Moody said, “I’ve received some strange letters in my time, and many of them are written by people who write the note and then leave it unsigned. This is the first letter where the person forgot to write the note and just signed their name…”.
Waves of laughter rolled across the congregation, as they celebrated their leaders wit in the face of such acidity. It was a great moment.
But hold on. Are there time when we leaders are criticised, and too quickly rush to conclude that our critics are just fools? Write off the critic too quick, and you could be ignoring an unwelcome gift of God to you.
Visionary leaders often find it very difficult to receive even the most constructive criticism. Blinded by our passion to follow what we perceive is a God-given mandate, we brush off words of caution and correction as being born of a lack of faith – or worse, we gleefully suggest that our critics are speaking as unwitting agents of satan. Surely, we conclude, if we, (like the Blues Brothers) are on a mission from God, then any voice that challenges that mission must find its source from the pit below? This is particularly possible when a church is following a prophetic word that has been spoken. With simplistic naivety, the leaders determine that God has spoken, and so any contrary voice must come from the Satan who loves to distract, conveniently forgetting that the prophetic must be weighed, and that honest, rugged, healthy debate is an essential part of that process.
We then move to the place where anyone who speaks with a dissenting voice themselves becomes the enemy, even though they may actually be expressing the true faithfulness and commitment that only comes from the best of friends.
The problem is further compounded if the criticism comes in the high pitched messiness of an unhelpful attitude. The critic is angry, upset, maybe even spiteful, and so we conclude from the way that the message is delivered that therefore the message itself must be wrong, which is like ignoring a letter because the envelope is torn. And so we stumble on, convinced of our own rightness, now infallible evangelical leaders who can’t even be corrected by the ultimate authority of scripture. Deception has begun its’ winsome, seductive dance with us.
We get deeper into the fog when we endeavour to use the issue of local church unity as a weapon to silence dissent. We brand anyone who asks a question as awkward, or worse still, an agent of division. I am staggered by the way that Christian leaders sometimes describe those who have left the churches that they lead. “God is just purifying the body”, they affirm with a self- conscious smile, branding the departing people as dross. The worst example of this in my memory was a leader who wrote off some people that had left the church with the words, “Well, of course, every healthy body needs a bowel movement once in a while” – an arrogant, devastating belittling of people as being little more than effluent. Outrageous.
Let’s face it, none of us enjoy criticism, and there are many times when it is unjust, hurtful, a slap in the face for the already weary. But just as pain is unwelcome, yet is actually the gift of God to us if we have placed our hand on a hot stove – and remember that the absence of pain is the blight of the leper – so criticism may be the signaller that we hate to see but may just save our lives.
I still encourage you to ignore unsigned letters, as long as you have not created a culture in your church where people are too scared to identify themselves with even the most constructive criticism. But be careful about badging your next critic as a fool too quickly. He or she could turn out to be the most faithful friend you have.