{"id":286,"date":"2005-03-14T13:04:32","date_gmt":"2005-03-14T13:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/03\/speak_the_truth.shtml"},"modified":"2021-05-29T02:46:51","modified_gmt":"2021-05-29T02:46:51","slug":"speak_the_truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/03\/speak_the_truth.shtml","title":{"rendered":"Speak the Truth in Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking more and more about my recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salguod.net\/weblog\/archive\/000253.shtml\">conversation<\/a> with my minister.  My last post focused on my reactions to it.  I was more confused and frustrated with church afterwards than I was going in.  Later, I prayed earnestly about it and gained some (much needed) perspective from God on it, but I&#8217;ve thought more and more about what he said during that lunch.<br \/>\nHe shared about his frustrations in getting help.  I was critical of his being a one man show and he felt like he&#8217;s been trying to get people involved and get their opinions, but has gotten little back.  Now, I may disagree on how well he&#8217;s sought that input, but I could see how he felt he was and how it was frustrating to him.  I realized since then that I&#8217;ve been <em>critical<\/em> of his shortcomings, but I haven&#8217;t been trying to <em>help<\/em> him overcome them like I should.  He has weaknesses in terms of communication and confronting people.  That&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve been critical of him for, and rightfully so I think.  But I realized that he&#8217;s kind of been alone in that folks don&#8217;t come challenge him on this kind of stuff much, if at all.  If they do speak up, they (like me) may like to complain and attack, but they don&#8217;t go to him and confront him on it and work with him to help him change it.  When he and I talked, I heard a man who loves God and His church and who&#8217;s trying to figure stuff out too.  He&#8217;s trying to lead, but without a real support system, just folks like me throwing rocks (or talking behind his back).  He&#8217;s got weaknesses and needs folks to confront them.  I&#8217;ve apologized to him for my critical heart and I&#8217;ve decided to be that person for him.<br \/>\nOn a bigger picture, I&#8217;ve realized that our church has developed a &#8216;hands off&#8217; culture.  Where we in the ICOC used to be intimately involved with each other, we no longer are.  I&#8217;ve seen people hurting with no one stepping in to comfort them, stand by them and help them or help them find help.  I&#8217;ve seen situations where two people have a disagreement, but there&#8217;s no resolution.  They complain about it to others, sometimes anonymously and sometimes not, but when told to go try to work it out they don&#8217;t want to.  In other cases, it&#8217;s one person seeing the sin of another, complaining about it or even gossiping.  But when told to confront the person, they will not go either.  In both situations the people involved say that it&#8217;s not worth it to confront.  It will turn out badly or it hurts too much to deal with.  I&#8217;ve told brothers before that I&#8217;ll go with them, back them up, but they still won&#8217;t go.  I know that it hurts to think about confronting someone and about how badly it might go, but the damage to individuals and the church his <strong>enormous<\/strong> when we don&#8217;t.  The feelings fester and grow and destroy what God has given us.  Worse, it cultivates a culture of judgment, distrust and disunity, all enemies of God&#8217;s church.<br \/>\nOn the other hand, when we gather up the courage to go and confront a difficult and painful situation, amazing healing can happen.  In fact, the outcome is usually so much more than we can imagine that we are left to only stand in awe of God.  What was an adversarial situation or a distant relationship can turn into best of friends.  What was divisive become uniting.  I&#8217;ve found that most of the time, when I confront someone who loves God on their sin, they are so amazingly grateful that I cared enough to challenge them that I&#8217;m left to wonder why I was so hesitant.  They are longing, <em>desperately<\/em> it seems, to have someone speak the truth to them in love (Ephesians 4).  Sometimes it does go badly, and it hurts.  But even then, I can be somewhat satisfied and content because I did <em>something<\/em>.<br \/>\nI wish I knew how to change this culture in my church.  I <strike>suspect<\/strike> know that there is no magic switch.  We can teach on this and instruct people (and need to more, I think), but it will take a decision on each individual&#8217;s heart to pursue this change.  What I can do is commit myself to lovingly confronting the sin I see in my brother&#8217;s life, address the hurts with those who have hurt me and aggressively pursue reconciliation at all times.  In that, hopefully I can make a difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking more and more about my recent conversation with my minister. My last post focused on my reactions to it. I was more confused and frustrated with church<a href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/03\/speak_the_truth.shtml\" class=\"more-link\">Read More <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Speak the Truth in Love<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Speak the Truth in Love - salguod.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/03\/speak_the_truth.shtml\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Speak the Truth in Love - salguod.net\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;ve been thinking more and more about my recent conversation with my minister. 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He lists some sad facts on what the burdens of ministry are doing to pastors. They're leaving the ministry, they feel inadequate, they're depressed and burdened. Think\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;God and Church&quot;","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":281,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/03\/whew.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":286,"position":1},"title":"Whew &#8230;..","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"March 7, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Tonight I just had to get out. I actually felt it yesterday, but I let things get in the way. I hadn't done this in a long time, and I was over due. So I left the house from about 9:20 \u2013 9:55 and just prayed. I haven't written much\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;God and Church&quot;","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":439,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2006\/01\/redirected.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":286,"position":2},"title":"Redirected","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"January 24, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been meaning to write this for a couple of weeks now. You may have noticed that my Quiet Time journal has been more active lately. I started the year wanting to be in my Bible more, but thanks to the genuine concern of two friends I am more determined,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;God and Church&quot;","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":371,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2005\/08\/this_is_what_th.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":286,"position":3},"title":"This Is What The Gospel is Good For","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"August 17, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Bill is an average guy. Well, an average father of two who owns three businesses, one of which is struggling and takes him out of the state 4 or so days a week. Last week, that trip also took him 17 feet in the air to do some maintenance work\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;God and Church&quot;","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":561,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2006\/09\/god_the_biggest.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":286,"position":4},"title":"God: The BIGgest Difference","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"September 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"This is something I've been meaning to post for months. This first appeared in our church newsletter this past spring, and most recently at Disciples Today (subscription required). The day that Ryan was baptized was an amazing one at church. It was the first baptism at a church service in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;God and Church&quot;","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":144,"url":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/2004\/05\/a_new_era_for_t.shtml","url_meta":{"origin":286,"position":5},"title":"A New Era For the Columbus COC?","author":"Doug Schaefer","date":"May 30, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Monday night was a monumental night, or at least it could have been. Time will tell. The deacons of the Columbus Church of Christ (myself included) met with the evangelist to discuss the state of the church and its future direction. Decisions were made that will effect the lives of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;God and Church&quot;","block_context":{"text":"God and Church","link":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/god-and-church"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1986,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions\/1986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salguod.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}