Unhealthy avoidance techniques

There is a common methodology for avoiding accountability for our shadow side and that is to become a professional critic of others. All of us have encountered these folks at one time or another – or done the same thing ourselves. They are quick to criticize and distrust, are always questioning motives of others (without doing their homework to validate their distrust), love to become enmeshed with others who are also critics (nothing like another critic to verify our version of reality), love to take on the offenses of others (even when they don’t have the facts and it does not pertain to them) and live in a circle of other unhealthy, distrustful, critical individuals. And yes, there are plenty of these in the church and Christian organizations. They will twist motives, conversations or actions to match their view of reality.


What is really going on behind this behavior is often the justification of their own behavior so that in the critical assessment of others they do not need to do critical assessment of their own shadow side. It is frankly a convenient way to ignore personal issues by focusing on the issues of others. Because everyone has a shadow side, it is not hard to pick it out in others and professional critics will quickly tell other their faults but are unaware or unwilling to deal with their own shadow side. Often the glue that holds their friendships together is not a common mission but a common enemy – someone out there that they can focus their unhappiness, anger or personal unresolved issues on – and it is often a leader because they are visible.

Not only are these unhealthy individuals but they form pockets of unhealthy individuals since they find others who will validate their view of reality and can deeply hurt organizations through their closed circle of opinions and criticisms.

All of us have strengths and all of us have liabilities that come with those strengths. There are many ways of coping with our own shadow side. One is to face it and seek to deal with it – and it is a life-long practice. The other is to do what many do and mask it, ignore it, spiritualize it or focus on the shadow side of others rather than their own. People of deep influence never mask or ignore. They realize that they are people who have a lower nature and that the process of spiritual transformation is that of exegeting ourselves so that we bring all of our lives under the Lordship of Christ, especially the shadow side which represents more than anything else the residual of that lower nature.

Often, we resist pressing into our shadow side because we are ashamed that we even struggle with one. This is a misunderstanding of God’s work in our lives. Every one of us is a work in progress, every one of us lives with the liabilities of being human and therefore imperfect and limited in our understanding of ourselves and those around us. Paul understood this when he said in Philippians 3:16, “Let us live up to what we have already attained.” God does not expect perfection, simply obedience to where he has brought us at this point in our lives.

Furthermore, humble individuals are transparent about their strengths and weakness, their areas of struggle and their liabilities. Those who pretend they have it all together fool themselves but not those around them. Our influence is not gained by pretending to be something we are not but by transparency in our walk with God and the issues we face in our lives. People of deep influence don’t hide who they are or the struggles they have. In fact, it is precisely because they are honest about their own struggles that we can identify with them and it is their commitment to live with authenticity that draws us to them.

All of T.J. Addington's books including his latest, Deep Influence,  are available from the author for the lowest prices and a $2.00 per book discount on orders of ten or more.

The unique fingerprint of your church

God's creativity is amazing. With 7 billion people on our planet, no two fingerprints are alike. No two people are alike.

And, no two congregations are alike. But too often we try to make "our ministry" look like "another ministry," because we like the "success" of that ministry. The problem is that you cannot clone congregations. And when one tries, we lose the uniqueness that God built into that particular congregation. Leaders who try to emulate someone else's ministry not only are chasing an impossible dream but they are denying the uniqueness that God intentionally built into their church.

Plastic surgeons get patients all the time who want to change something so that they can look like some celebrity who is rated as the picture of what a beautiful person should look like. They are chasing a dream that is not real. And, usually not necessary.

Church leaders do it as well - by trying to become something they are not. Just as people chase a dream with plastic surgery - when they use it to emulate someone else - so church leaders can be caught in the same trap.

Success for every congregation is living out the Great Commandment and serving the Great Commission. It is not found in the particular program, music style or the number of people we can gather on a particular weekend.

The fingerprint of a congregation is a unique blend of its ministry philosophy, history, geography and neighborhood, the gifting of its people, its vision, and the gifting of its leaders. And, because of its unique fingerprint, God will use it in unique ways. In fact, it is in a diversity of ministries that the church will be most effective and reach the broadest swath of people.

If we can celebrate diversity of ethnicities and the uniqueness of each individual, why cannot we celebrate the diversity of congregations: large, small, in-between, house church, cell church, ethnic, traditional, non-traditional, seeker driven, seeker sensitive, inner city, suburban, rural, high church, low church, or just church!

We ought to be all that God made us to be and maximize our unique potential and commit to health, honoring Christ, becoming like Christ, living out the Great Commandment and committed to the Great Commission. And celebrate the unique opportunity that God has given us as a congregation.

God would be delighted if:

We could learn from one another but not try to be one another.

We would celebrate one another's ministry and not covet the unique mandate of another church.

In our success we would not assume that other ministries should look like us - leadership hubris.

We would gladly cooperate with one another and not be threatened by one another.

We humbly claimed our place in ministry and maximized our opportunity as a congregation.

He would be delighted because he has given every congregation a unique fingerprint. Celebrate it. Maximize its uniqueness. Don't try to be someone God did not make you to be.

I am privileged to work with many different kinds of churches. I am always amazed at the creativity and passion of healthy leaders and the unique ways they are making a difference for Christ. I learn something new with every church I consult with. It is in our uniqueness that we are effective, learn new ways of reaching people, innovate and reach those God has called us to reach.

Making Ripples

Changed lives is the coin of God’s Kingdom and influence with people is the key to seeing lives changed. It is the stuff that legacy is made of especially because influence creates ripples and ripples continue to create even more ripples – it is the nature of influence.

Drop a pebble in a pond and what happens? There is not just one splash but the splash creates ripples that reverberate across the surface in ever widening circles. Drop a bunch of pebbles in a pond and the various ripples hit one another and create small waves that start moving the whole surface. It is the nature of influence.

The most important work we do for Christ is that of rippling on others for Him. Christ rippled on his disciples, they rippled on the new believers in Jerusalem, who in turn rippled on the whole world as they were forced out of town by persecution and ended up on the highways and byways of the Roman Empire. It was one ripple at a time that changed the course of civilization forever.

If Barnabas had not come alongside Paul when the other Apostles were frightened of him, his ministry would not have gotten off to the start it did (Acts 9:26-31). It is not an accident that his name means “son of encouragement.”

The very reason God gave spiritual gifts to every Christ Follower is to allow them to ripple on others. Whether it is teaching, healing, faith/prayer, administration, leadership, care, giving or a whole host of other ways we have been gifted, these are gifts given so that we can influence others in the church and the world for him. One splash, many ripples!

My mother in law was a simple woman. Originally from Sweden, she came over by ship and got so sea-sick that she swore she would never go back. She met her future husband in English class in St. Paul. He was an immigrant from Ukraine, having lived through the Second World War, having served in the Russian, German and American armies (it is a long amazing story. Neither of them learned English too well and for the first five years I dated Mary Ann, I just said yes to every question they asked – not being able to understand very well.

Not only was Gunberg a simple woman, she was a quiet woman. She served as a nurses aid throughout the years at Miller and then United Hospital. She spent hundreds of hours with her four grandchildren, two of them ours.

What amazed many was how many came to her memorial service when she died from complications of a car accident. Never had she served on a committee in the church or had any visible ministry. But we heard story after story of people she had demonstrated small acts of kindness too, making meals, visiting, sewing clothes, giving money, helping neighbors and the list went on. The number of peoples this simple woman had rippled on was amazing, like Dorcas in the New Testament.

She was not a theologian, she had little wealth, she had a low level job, she was a first generation immigrant and she touched an amazing number of people – no doubt part of the reason that my wife and sons also have a heart for the underdog.

The heart of our ministry is people

It is people that God created for eternal purposes. It is people that He died on the cross for so that our sins could be forgiven. It is people that God loves with an indistinguishable love. While the world pursues things and bank accounts and properties and fame, God and His people pursue people. Stuff will not outlast our world but every human being has an eternal destiny – either with God or without him.

Most of you, like me, are just “ordinary workers” to quote my son. We are not people of great resources or wealth. We have average jobs and income. We are not famous or well known. But all of us have the one thing that we need to make ripples for Christ – we are surrounded by the very people He wants us to influence.

Two critical skills

Our world is desperate for love. In order to ripple like Jesus wants us to we need to develop two skills that Jesus had. The first skill is to see people as Jesus saw them. Hundreds of people would trail after Jesus and the disciples and in their exhaustion would often see those people as “irritants. Jesus on the other hand, saw them as “sheep without a shepherd, looking for love and answers.

When Mary Ann first came to the High School as the student nurse she would see kids like the disciples did, “bad kids,” “troubled kids,” with a bit of judgement. God changed her as she got to know the bad and troubled kids and now sees them as hurting kids with a lot of pain. That is the difference perspective we need to develop if we are going to ripple on those around us.

The second skill we need to learn is to love people like Jesus loved them. He met their needs, He expressed compassion, He came with an attitude of grace rather than judgment, He befriended the sinner, the prostitute, the leper, the outcast. His ministry was actually more on skid row than on easy street. The reason that bad or poor or marginalized people responded to him was that he offered love rather than judgment, grace rather than condemnation and hope rather than life as it was.

We were created to ripple on those around us. Our neighbors, the guys and gals at the homeless shelter, our colleagues at work, our friends and fellow sojourners at church. Think of the power of all God’s people rippling on those who they come across!

Ripple in your sphere of influence

Each of us has a unique sphere of influence. One of my friends, because of his profession runs in economic and political circles I will never be a part of. God has uniquely placed him there to ripple on people most of the rest of us cannot influence.

My sphere of influence is largely within the church community around the world. My responsibility is to have as much influence for Christ in those circles that I possibly can – using the gifts God has given me.

My wife, Mary Ann has had the opportunity in years past to ripple in a middle class school of 2,000+ where no soap opera or TV show could match what happens in real life. This is a group that the church by in large is not reaching and frankly would be shocked if they knew the challenges our next generation faces. She created huge ripples with her gifts of grace, mercy, honesty and loving care.

When you think about it, God has placed each of us in a sphere of influence that is unique to us and the opportunity we have is an opportunity others don’t have. It may be your neighborhood, place of employment, economic circle or any number of unique circumstances. When we all are intentional about rippling in our sphere of influence – that is when the church has influence.When all we do is ripple on fellow believers in the church, the church has little influence outside its own walls.

How leaders often shut down discussion, stifle dialogue and create stagnant cultures

Have you ever been in a staff meeting at some time in your career where you knew it was unsafe to say what you really felt? Or, where everyone knew that nothing would be said that would be considered contrary to what the leader thought? Where many positive things would be said about the ministry but no one would name the many elephants? 

Whenever I see a culture like this I know that there is a leader who has shut down discussion and stifled dialogue enough times that people will not say what really think, and everyone but the leader seems to know that.

How do leaders shut down discussion, stifle dialogue and create stagnant cultures? One of the easiest ways is simply to make  dismissive statements when suggestions are made: "that won't work," "I don't like it," "We don't do that kind of thing here, "We've never done that." Sometimes it is just body language that says something like "You have to be kidding."

Whether the idea or suggestion is a good one or not these kinds of statements from leaders send a strong message that one is better off just keeping their mouth shut. Not only are such statements pathetic in their lack of EQ but they are designed to end conversation that the leader does not want to have.

Often, leaders who display such behaviors are really saying that if the idea is not theirs it is not going to fly. In other words they are simply not willing to consider anything that does not fit their paradigms which staff quickly pick up on and choose to simply stay quiet. 

Those who continue to speak up and press into things that the senior leader does not want to hear or do quickly find that they are marginalized and sometimes even forced to move on. That sends a very powerful message the conformance and silence are the keys to survival.

Another way that leaders can do this is simply to ignore proposals that are made. In one such case I am aware of, the leader will tell subordinates that he will "think about it" or "study the proposal" and never bring it up again. It dies by deliberate neglect.

All of this creates a culture of stagnation because ideas, suggestions and different paradigms are not welcome at the leadership table. Staff must operate within a narrow band of what is acceptable and cannot be themselves in using their best thinking and creativity. It is a deeply frustrating place to be for anyone who is even a moderately healthy individual.

It also creates a culture of elephants - issues that everyone know are there but which cannot be safely addressed or even identified. What makes this so absurd and crazy is that the issues are not secret but they have to be treated as secrets, or as non-issues. As the number of issues grow that cannot be discussed, so does the dysfunction in the organization. When things do erupt out of frustration, the eruption is often unhealthy because healthy dialogue was shut down long ago. 

Unfortunately there are many examples of leaders who shut down discussion, stifle dialogue and create stagnant cultures. It is a sign of personal leadership dishealth, insecurity, dysfunction and it hurts the staff, organization and even the ability of the leader to lead well. I have vowed that I will never again work for such a leader. 

How the past can become a threat to your future

Every leader and organization faces the dilemma. How they did things in the past successfully got them to where they are today but will often not get them to where they need to go tomorrow. Yet the past is what they know and have experienced while the future is not known and has not been experienced. Good leaders thus live in a dynamic tension between the past and the future - knowing that their knowledge of the past is often a detriment to moving into the future.

I have seen this tension about what is known (the ways of the past) and what is unknown (the ways of the future) literally paralyze leaders from taking the necessary steps to lead their organization into the future. After all, the unknown requires measured risk while the known requires no risk at all (except, ironically, the very survival of the ministry). 

Healthy leaders understand this tension and also know that while we can and should learn from both our failures and successes in the past, we must always be moving the organization we lead toward the future with all of its unknowns. This requires courage because we know what the road behind us was but we don't know what the road in front of us is. Our GPS can take us to what is but not to what will be.

Therein lies the dilemma. When I drive home from work each night I do it by habit and without any thinking about where I need to go. It is familiar, comfortable and second nature. Not so the future which requires a lot of thinking, evaluating, looking at trends, emerging opportunities, and evaluation of what is currently being done. 

Churches get caught in this dilemma all the time, doing what they always did and then wondering why attendance and giving are down. Often they are simply not responding any longer to the needs of a new day. One church I know is known for its exceptional biblical exposition and preaching which is always excellent (and which I deeply believe in). But, there is no application of the Biblical truth to every day living. The pastor is living in the past when there was a general knowledge of the Bible and truth whereas today there is not and without helping people make application to their lives they are no longer meeting the needs of a different day. It should be no surprise that both the attendance and giving are down.

Leadership is about leading people somewhere and much of that has to do with leading into the unknowns of the future. That means deep thinking, careful exegesis of our context and being willing to risk new strategies and ways of thinking to respond to the needs of a new day. It is all about not allowing the past to become a threat to the future.

a messy world and messy leaders

We often think of our Biblical heroes as people who were born that way. Just the opposite is true. We have always lived in a messy world and our Biblical heroes were no exception.

Take Moses, for example. We know him as the guy who rescued God's  people from slavery, as a deeply humble guy and one who talked to God face to face. I can't compete with that. But what we forget is that he too had a messy background and it took God 80 years to prepare him for his life assignment.

Everyone has issues and so did Moses. Consider this. While he grew up in wealth, splendor and privilege as a member of the Pharaoh's household he knew who he was: an Israelite who should have been a slave rather than royalty. Talk about identity issues!

Those issues came to a head when at 40, Moses took justice into his own hands, killed an Egyptian who was mistreating an Israelite and was forced to run for his life, ending up as a shepherd in another land. In one day he went from privilege and wealth to working as a shepherd with nothing to his name. In addition he now was a felon and a wanted man. Obviously he had an anger management problem.

I would guess that for the forty years he worked as a shepherd (he didn't even have his own flock but looked after the flock of his father in law) he felt like he was a has been. He had blown his chance, God would never use him for anything and he was consigned to a forgotten existence and a wasted life. 

If you doubt that, think of Moses' conversation with God at the burning bush. Finally God was calling him to something and Moses kept pushing back. Why? He felt unqualified, lacked the confidence to say yes, and gave all manner of excuses with a final comment, "O Lord, please send someone else." Of course, God never calls us to do anything that we can do by ourselves but only in His power but it took quite a while for God to convince Moses of that.

Of course God had different ideas. God is never in a hurry and he is always up to something. During those year from 40 to 80, while Moses felt he was stuck on a shelf, God was developing a relationship with Moses that would sustain him through the next 40 years in the wilderness leading a people tough to lead.

Four lessons emerge from Moses past. First, God can redeem any past for His divine purposes. Even our pasts! Second, while we may think we have been put on a shelf, God is always up to something, preparing us for what He has for us. Third, God never calls us to do anything we can do by ourselves. Why should He? His work is a divine work that requires divine power. Fourth, God uses regular people to do His divine work in the power of His Holy Spirit. 

Moses had a past with a lot of issues, just like we do. Yet he used Moses just as He desires to use us. 

Success, resentment and criticism

It is an interesting phenomenon but it reveals something about our own hearts. The greater one's success in ministry the more criticism they receive and the more cynicism about their ministry. This criticism and cynicism says nothing about the one they are directed against. It says a lot about those who display the attitude.

I have had many conversations with pastors about large churches in their area. It seems as if there is a rule that we need to find something negative about them because they are large and influential. Sure there are times when we ought to have concerns (health and wealth teaching, legalism or teaching that is not Biblical). That I understand. But often, the real issue is our resentment at their success and a need to lower their standing in order to increase ours.

Here is an interesting question. Is it even necessary to speak negatively of other ministries? Usually not...and if we do what is our true motivation? Even Paul had strong detractors - those who didn't like his influence. If Paul did, it is inevitable that others will too. 

No leaders are perfect and none above criticism for some issues. But neither are we. They simply have more attention focused on them because they happen to lead a large ministry. In most cases they did not ask for the attention and may even resent it but it is what it is. Why should we follow the crowd in throwing stones? It was Paul's advice to use words that build up rather than tear down.

The bottom line is that our tendency to criticize those who are successful is most often a reflection of our hearts, our issues, our resentments and our desires rather than the success of others. If we are going to criticize we need first to look inside and ask what in our hearts creates that need.