I so appreciate your post. I spent 8 yrs in a church in the Wesleyan/Arminian tradition. There was no transparency. People claimed they could go weeks and even months without committing any sin. There was a constant emphasis on how “saintly” we are. At first we appreciated this positive and optimistic outlook. However…when we got involved behind the scenes of this church, we discovered there was a lot of hidden sin going on. Ironically, we saw more sin in this church than in any other we have been a part of. When people focus only on their “saintliness”, when people won’t admit their capacity to sin, when people are not honest about their struggles….this only seems to lead to more sin, not less. Although they claimed the opposite.

[...] the blog Parchment and Pen. Written by C. Michael [...]

Here in Big D we got another lesson from Favre this afternoon…

I totally agree with this post! I think we have lost the art of transparency in part because we have lost the art of discipleship. When discipleship takes place I think transparency will naturally follow and much more easily.

I think of Augustine’s Confessions, the works of Luther and Calvin as extra-biblical examples of transparency that the church needs to follow in addition to those mentioned in the post.

Good work Michael!

Thanks for the post. The Lord was just encouraging me yesterday to be more transparent with others. For those of us who are “professional Christians,” such as missionaries, being transparent can be very threatening.

As I sit down to write some donor correspondence, I will keep your points in mind. Especially that “It’s about God.” Our stories need to point to His adequacy, not ours.

I always viewed “transparency” before they were labeling it as “transparency” as personality. We all need to be humble and admit that we are sinners and everyone needs to check their pride because we have nothing to boast about, but there are reserved personalities that will never be transparent and I don’t think they should fight themselves to become transparent. If you starch your shirts, jeans and underwear this maybe a clue you’ll flunk out at an attempt to be transparent. But that does not mean that person is dishonest with themselves or others.

I think it is not only true of individuals but of ministries , we all have our place and functions in the body but I am thankful for those who can bare it they are not so much a comfort by way of comiserating but just easy to be around and usually entertaining to boot.

The timing of this is interesting. I am taking one of my courses at DTS on-line and the very first assignment we have to do, is write our autobiographies. We post them and then interact with the other students in our group.

I don’t have the picture perfect story by a long shot, and have made many mistakes. But I believe in transparency, because I know that there are others out there as well who can quickly cower under the shadow of guilt and regret. So I hope my story encourages others that Christ’s love and redemption knows no bounds.

But as I was reading the other stories, there was a part of me that regretted being so open, and even with the very edited version of my story. I was confronted with stories that seemed to be the “right way of doing things”. For the married people, they’ve been married to their spouse for X years, raise kids, serve in ministry, etc. No divorces, no unequally yoked marriages, no single parenting. There is a part of me that says “don’t share – no one needs to know that you were married twice and both were unequally yoked marriages or that you had a 13 year period of rebellion away from God during that time. Just tell them you are a widow with 2 kids and leave it at that. They will not understand since they did things the right way and you obviously didn’t”.

It’s tough because on one hand, you don’t want to hide or feel shame with struggles or past history. There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ (Romans 8:1). So many failures in the Bible as Michael points out. But on the other hand, you just get the impression that people will not understand, especially those that have not made mistakes the way you have. There is a part of me that really wants to keep quiet about my story but I don’t know if that’s a good thing.

“Fear of rejection: “Its all about me. If I let others know about this or that struggle, what will they think about me. They will reject me and all that I say.” ”

Sadly, sometimes, this fear is valid.

Too, and perhaps pushing the parameters of this discussion a bit, there is so much focus on leadership in some strains of the American church, a leadership modeled on slick, success-driven business principles (think church CEO vs under-shepherd as a pastoral model), that signs weakness may be interpreted as failure. Sometimes grace is missing from the framework. Personally, I thank God that He often chooses to use the weak and foolish to confound the strong and the wise. Therein I find solace.

“I will just send to your Email.”

I’m sure CMP will be thrilled by this ROFL.

Sorry Michael.

I will not post any more here.

I will just send to your Email.