When a church lies to itself …

Because I was going to be in town for a while, a fellow pastor asked me if I would participate each week in reviewing the Sunday morning service and activities. I agreed I would.

A couple of weeks later, I was dropped from participating!

This church, led by a good friend of mine, has members from the worship team, greeters, and various other members write down their “honest” assessment of the quality of each service, critiquing all aspects of the service from being greeted at the door to the fellowship that follows the worship hour.

What I noticed in the feedback provided by others was a whitewashing about what was really happening in the services at that church. The critiques were not honest, they were a focused attempt to find something good about the services, and most of the time that was the only thing shared.

My feedback, on the other hand, went beyond noting the few strong points of the service to include detailing the weaknesses. Considering there were more weaknesses than strengths, it was easy to do.

But there was a primary reason why it was easy to detail the weaknesses: Until that church learns to be honest about what it is doing poorly, it will not improve.

If every service is always “alright,” and “alright” is always acceptable, it will remain mediocre. You cannot begin to purposely pursue improvement until you become discontent with your own level of mediocrity.

I give that church credit for having a system of reviewing what they were doing, whereas many churches do not. However, if you’re only going to be dishonest with yourself about the quality of what you’re doing, then you’re wasting your (and others’) time.

A church can benefit by routinely reviewing the quality of its work. But that effort needs to be an honest assessment so that you can identify and pursue areas that really do need to be improved.

Scotty