HippoChurch

I’m sure every blogger ever starting out had some sort of idea how they hoped the ensuing conversations would go. I just wanted to take a second to state it publicly because I’m sure I’ll need you to hold me and this site accountable, and I want to make sure you’re invited to.

Discussing church gets emotional and passionate at times. Thankfully so. My goodness it’s about our faith, we should care a lot. But, as you know, things can quickly get sideways and the discussion stops being anything near “constructive” very early on. We’re human. We get tired and short-tempered. Life beats us up. And we may be saved, but there’s still a lot of “flesh” in us yet to be worked out. So, with all that said, here are a few principles that can hopefully guide us all:

1. Critique generally. Praise specifically. If the name “HippoChurch” plays off of the Hippocratic Oath and seeks to exhort the Church to “first, do no harm”, that implies that there are some practices that are doing harm. Most of the time these occurrences are wholly unintentional or simply poorly thought out. A public blog is not the place to sling mud about “first name, last name” at “church name” is doing such and such and we need to humiliate/criticize them into stopping it. If you keep the critique principle-based, rational people will self-identify whether they fit that mold or not. Also, when it comes to praise, be as specific and tell the story as best as possible. We all need to hear and learn from the “wins” going on out there.
2. Discussion and respectfully disagreeing can co-habitate. Unfortunately, I think media talk shows and cable news have had their greatest effect by devaluing what we call “discussion” today. What we see on those shows is not discussion at all. It’s a production! We have to remember that the media’s job is to grab attention. And nothing does that better than tension. So they get the most polarizing, entrenched views at the opposite ends of the spectrum on an issue and bring them together for a “discussion”. You know the rest of the story. Well, in our media-saturated culture, one of the unintentional after-effects has been the gradual eroding of people’s ability to have healthy, respectful discussion. Thankfully, Patrick Lencioni in The Five Discussions of a Team reminded us, “Rational people don’t always have to get their way. They just need to know that they’ve been heard.” Wouldn’t it be great if the Church could become universally recognized for its people having healthy discussion and still end up loving and pulling for one another at the end of the day. I think you’d agree we could make a lot of progress in that area. Let’s start with you and me and develop a culture where anything less than that is just not acceptable.