During my doctoral studies, many books have peaked my interest and have consequently helped make sense of the successes and disappointments occurring during my fifteen years of vocational ministry, particularly of those in the pastorate. Ministers today are continuously seeking to find terms that define more fully and correctly their personal experiences in His church. These experiences not only affect the minister’s leadership but also describe the “goings on” within a particular ministry context. While reading The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, I found some helpful terms which describe a phenomenon found in local churches that oftentimes thwarts the work of Christ through that local body.
This phenomenon can be found both in the leadership of a congregation and in the laity (non-vocational ministers).
In their book, Loehr and Schwartz help the individual to become a better leader by encouraging him or her to be more engaged in all the elements found within the person. Loehr and Schwartz desire the leader to expand his or her capacities in all of its divisions (physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual). One part of their book discusses facing the truth. This practice must be exercised by the formal leadership and the informal leadership found within a congregation. This includes limiting self deception and false realities and expectations.
Denial runs rampant in the local church in America today. When churches are growing and are working out their unique part of being God’s church there will always be an element of leadership found in every congregation which lives in a dream world. Depending on the congregation, these deniers of truth may or may not be a powerful voice. They may or may not have the majority of the church with them. Depending on their leadership, they will either be militant or passive, but because of their denial they will have lost all sense of reality. It seems that no matter what the specific issues are, it all comes back to comfort and protecting their own way of life or view of reality. In short, this group and its leaders have bought in to a kind of self-deception.
Loehr and Schwartz share that denial is a key deterrent when seeking to better oneself, both organizationally and personally. “Denial is effectively a form of disengagement: It means shutting down a part of ourselves. When we fear the truth we become more defensive, rigid and constricted. Like an anesthetic, avoiding the truth numbs us from pain, but it also cuts us off from freely and fully engaging in the world. In addition, denial and self-deception requires energy, which is then no longer available for more productive activities” (p. 149).
Part of my job as a pastor is to help the laity discover their hidden strengths and to meet their potential. I believe that churches who are actually making a difference for Christ are those being led intentionally by their undershepherds and are individually seeking to meet their God-given potential. Loehr and Schwartz seem to point out the fact that strengths (and for the Church, spiritual gifts) are oftentimes suppressed or even unrealized because we fail to face the truth – the Truth of God and the truth found within us. “Trapped in a narrow vision of ourselves, we may also fail to notice and nurture our hidden strengths. Much as we suppress that which we find distasteful in ourselves, so we may fail to give ourselves credit for our best qualities” (p. 153).
Are we living by the Truth? It would be wise for each of us to examine ourselves. Are we in a state of denial or a state of Truth?
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 139:23-24
from my fishbowl,
kevin
