Creating a Culture of Grace and Eliminating the Scourge of Gossip, Slander, and Judgementalism in your Congregation.

 

The damage that gossip, slander, and judgementalism do to our congregations and those within them (perpetrators and victims) is incalculable. I outline some of these impacts in Gossip and Slander, the Scourage of many Churches. 

What many church leaders do not understand is that they can actually create a culture where these spiritually damaging behaviors are not practiced in their congregations. This is a roadmap for moving toward a healthier church culture.

First, a note about culture. Culture is what you create or allow. In other words, whatever you allow in your congregation will become part of your culture. The alternative is to intentionally create a God-honoring culture and disallow behaviors that are antithetical to God's character, the fruit of the Spirit, and His teaching. 

In many places, the New Testament makes distinctions between behaviors we are to eliminate from our lives and those we are to practice. For instance, in Ephesians 4 and 5, we are told to eliminate falsehood, stealing, unwholesome talk, bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander, malice, unforgiveness, sexual immorality, impurity, greed, foolish talk, coarse joking, and other behaviors that emanate from our lower nature. 

Rather than these, we are to put on truthfulness, forgiveness, love, kindness, and compassion, become imitators of God who live in love, wise living, speaking those things that build others up, unity, humility, gentleness, and peace. 

Paul wants us to declare certain behaviors illegal in the church because they don't reflect Christ and to focus on those that do. This is how you create culture. You call people to a higher standard and are clear on those things he wants us to eliminate and those he wants us to practice.

Disciplemaking churches are clear about behaviors that they will not tolerate. They are equally clear on a culture of grace and obedience. This takes ongoing attention, teaching, and explanation. For instance, when it comes to gossip, people need to understand:

• It does not please God
• It is a form of character assassination
• When we have an issue with someone else, we go to them directly and not to others
• Our words can heal, or they can hurt
• We don't do gossip and slander in our congregation
• We do use a Matthew 18 approach when we have differences
• We live in a culture of grace and extend that grace to others
• We allow the Holy Spirit to convict people of their sins (and ours)
• We will talk to those who traffic in gossip and slander within our congregation

The amazing thing is that you can dramatically eliminate divisive gossip and slander if you are intentional, remind people often, and are clear about how we live with one another. What happens is that you create an expectation of Jesus honoring behavior, and the public nature of your "culture creation" makes it difficult for those who traffic in gossip and slander to do so, as it violates everyone's understanding of who we are and how we love one another.

Think of what it would be like if you attended a church where:

• We accept one another and one another's shortcomings as Jesus does ours
• We are as patient with one another as Jesus is with us
• We speak words that build rather than words that tear down
• We love others as Jesus loves us
• We forgive others as Jesus forgives us
• We major on the Fruit of the Spirit rather than the fruit of our lower nature
• We do all that we can to live in peace and unity with one another

Those churches do exist, although not in the number they should. The reason is that we do not create culture but simply allow culture to happen. Don't do that. Remember that culture is what you create or allow, and the Scriptures give us great guidance on what we should not allow and what we should create. 

Gossip and Slander: the Scourge of many Churches

 

Congregations pride themselves in "being like Jesus." Yet, in many congregations, there is a willingness to overlook one of the most divisive and disruptive behaviors of all. It is not heresy. It is gossip and slander.

Gossip and slander are not having a difference of opinion. Everyone is entitled in the church to differences of opinion. Gossip and slander assassinate the character of another individual. You can kill a person physically - something we would never do in the church. But we seem skilled at killing another's character at will and without any consequence. 

Gossip is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as: "casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true."

Slander is defined as "the action or crime of making a false spoken statement damaging to a person's reputation." Or to "make false and damaging statements about (someone)."

The reason that gossip and slander are so often linked together is that when we engage in gossip, especially when we share details that we cannot confirm as being true, we are often engaging in slander as well. Trafficking in second-hand information where we have no redeeming purpose for sharing such information is an anti-value in the church.

Gossip is often the result of an issue with another without the courage to go and have a conversation with that individual. So rather than seeking to resolve our issue with a specific person, we instead talk to others about them. In doing so, we drag innocent bystanders into our issues, and they often take up our cause with no first-hand knowledge of our issues. Now, we have recruited additional character assassinators for our cause. And, we have left the individual who is our target without any means to explain, defend, or bring reconciliation as they are not even part of the process. 

In one church I am familiar with at present, there is a concerted effort by one couple who is at odds with the pastor (and the board) to bring disrepute to the pastor. They have recruited many close friends to their cause, and the charges against the pastor can be traced back to this one couple. In another church, there have been armchair critics for years in the shadows, sowing mistrust and discord against whoever was in leadership at the moment. 

These situations are an internal cancer in any church. The New Testament is explicit that gossip, slander, and anything that does not build up the body is anti-Christ behavior. In addition, Paul warns against those who cause division in the church. Certainly, gossip and slander cause division, mistrust, ill feelings, and deep hurt to those who are the targets. To make matters worse, many who traffic in gossip do so under the guise of "we need to pray for _____ about." In other words, they hide their gossip by declaring their spiritual intent, which is total nonsense and probably not well received by Jesus Himself. 

The church is ill-served by professional Pharisees who love to snipe at others about lifestyle choices, dress, and any number of personal choices. How in the world can we expect new folks to feel comfortable in our midst when the critical Pharisiacle spirits are allowed to run rampant among us. Gossip is one of the most prevalent reasons that people do not feel safe in the local church. This is also why spiritual formation is such a challenge. How can you do true spiritual formation in a culture where gossip and backstabbing are OK?

Culture is what we create or allow. If we allow gossip in our body, we are allowing behavior that the New Testament strongly condemns. The alternative is to create a culture where gossip is not OK and where the expectation is that we deal with differences in a Matthew 18 manner. And that we learn what it means to live in the same grace with one another as Jesus grants to each of us on a daily basis. Think of the difference in our relationships if that were true. 

For some suggestions on how to create a culture of grace and eliminate gossip and slander from your congregation, see Creating a Culture of Grace and Eliminating the Scourge of Gossip, Slander, and Judgementalism in your Congregation. 

The sin of slander, an evangelical preoccupation

 

Slander is to speak something untrue of another individual and it is a common way for believers to hurt those who they don't agree with. Recently I was intrigued by an interview with a well known evangelical leader, Francis Chan, who talked about the things that he had heard over the years about other Christian leaders, repeated those things to others and now has found many of them to be untrue.

This is what Jesus says about slander. "For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander." Matthew 15:19. To slander is to lie, besmirch the reputation of another. If, as Jesus says, we will held accountable for every word we speak, many of us will be sorry for words we have said about people we don't know based on information we have heard second and third hand. 

Think of gossip we hear and repeat. Think of innuendos we drop about other people. Think about assumptions we make about people based on things we have heard or assume but do not personally know. When you think about it, each of us have been guilty of slander! It is so easy to assume that which we don't know, pass on that which we have heard but have no personal knowledge of and make statements to others which have no basis in fact. And it destroys the reputation of others.

If you want examples of this, look no further than social media, or think about information you are told by friends or acquaintances about others. Think about those things we tell others about people we don't like. Things meant to hurt their reputation. Things meant to pull you into their (or our) unhappy or bitter orbit. We love to hurt those we don't like and we do so with sharing information meant to hurt their reputation. If you have been on the receiving end you know how painful it is. 

What is the Jesus way? Consider these words from Paul in Ephesians 4:29-32. "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you."

TOV is the Greek word for goodness. A church called TOV is making the rounds in evangelical circles and is long overdue. One of the practices of a TOV congregation is that we don't slander others, speak the truth and those things that build others up. Think of the pain that would be avoided and the culture that would be developed if we simply lived by the words of Paul. Or Jesus.

A person of goodness does not slander to speak to issues they don't know of. They don't repeat information that they are not clear on. They build others up and resist tearing them down.