Delirious, Gone for Now

Tonight I went to Delirious’ final North American concert, for now at least. The band is breaking up after a few final concerts in the UK in November.

I first heard Delirious when Tim Wright bought me their Live and in the Can CD on a trip to Anaheim, CA for a worship conference in 1996. I was instantly a fan and caught their vision of “taking it wherever it goes” which meant doing a lot of spontaneous singing in their concerts. I had never heard anything quite like that.

A year later, I heard they were playing at the Cornerstone festival in Bushnell, Illinois, so I made my way up to that area of the US and heard them live for the first time.

My favorite song of theirs is probably History Maker. I remember one time I played History Maker in a singles group and through my pride told all of them that they weren’t too old to be history makers. What a fool I was. But I loved the song and it really gave me a vision for dreaming something beyond myself.

I really thought in the late 1990s there was an opening for Delirious to get a foothold in the worship market, that at the time was still in its infancy. You have to remember at that time on something like KLTY you would hear a bunch of “positive” songs about God, but none meant to sing in church. Delirious had a relevant sound that was actually sang to God, and it could be big.

For whatever reason, the band saw things differently. They saw their home country drifting further away from God and they wanted to impact those at home, through more of an approachable and “secular” sound. Thus, Mezzanine Floor and Waiting for the Summer were two albums that were meant to attract the masses. Unfortunately, they didn’t and Delirious found themselves with a bad strategy.

So they switched back to what they did best and put out some worship albums. By then though they had alienated their core fans (including me) and their momentum was gone. Others had began to establish themselves as at the forefront of the worship genre (like Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman, Mercy Me) and Delirious didn’t seem to do as well.

Which led me to tonight. That is quite a history over the past 13 years and I have quite a lot of experience with Delirious in the background. I remembered a lot of great memories I had with their music. I saw how Martin Smith performed and saw how I have copied his style of performance (but he copied Bono so who knows). I’m glad I got the opportunity to see them one last time. I hope that they will do it again sometime, but until then, Delirious, thanks for the memories.

Grace to Believe

I've been thinking a lot over the past couple of years about grace. It turns out I had been talking up grace while living a life devoid of it. I'd like to share a few ways I have done this.

The first way that jumps out is how I would refer to the faith of others. If someone stopped going to church, or even if they were from a completely different denomination (like, say Episcopal), then I would think that they probably weren't really Christians. One would also need to believe the right thing about how one's debt of sin to God was paid off, whether one's actions had anything to do with that forgiveness of debt, and what one was being saved from (eternal damnation was the only right answer).

The problem with this is that it led me to become obsessed with believing the right thing about everything. This leads to an important life lesson: You will show grace to yourself to the same degree that you show grace to others. And let me tell you, trying to nail down all of life's questions for fear that the wrong answer might lead to something bad is truly insane.

And it's not really grace at all. It's a complete redefinition of the word. Grace should lead to joy and peace; or in other words it should lead to a life where you relax, not where you try harder to meet the standard. The point of grace, as I see it, is that you don't measure up. When you accept that and stop trying to be the center of the universe, you will then find happiness, or as Jesus calls it "eternal life" (notice he says you can "have" present tense eternal life).

This bastardization of Grace I was under was a very unique form of hell: the overarching belief that you are right mixed with the inexhaustible effort to prove it.

Do friendships survive without cathartic moments?

One of the hardest things to deal with in the past two years is friends that we have had that have not seen things as we did in our old church. One of the big draws to our old church was its connectedness and community, and it has been difficult to see many relationships we had fade away.

We had a strange situation when leaving our previous church. Many we were the closest to at the church had no idea what we were talking about when we alleged that the environment in our previous church was extremely unhealthy. Most of those we weren't close to knew exactly what we were talking about. So it seemed that the closer we were to someone, the less they agreed with our take on the nature of our previous church.

And that's fine. I'm not out to get everyone to agree with me. In fact, I think it's healthy and good that those around me don't agree with me.

What has been tough is how we haven't really talked about it. And in not talking about it, I have the sneaking suspicion that they think I'm crazy. And it's hard to be close with people who may think you're crazy. So in the disagreement the relationship drifts apart. Which I guess is good or healthy. If you don't see things the same way in the very area that brought you together, you will naturally grow further apart. That's so easy to type but so painful to experience over time.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I have this need for people to say, "Wow, I can see why you feel that way," when I deal with the feelings that come with a crisis in my life. Without that, there isn't much there for a friendship to survive.

Afraid to do wrong

One of the unspoken rules I have lived under in past churches was:

If you do something you must do it the right way or not at all

On its face this seems to be a fairly rational course of action; why waste your time with activities that are or may be clearly wrong? Since I've moved on from my last church, I've grown to appreciate how destructive this thinking can be.

The key to understanding how this rule can be a trap is, who decides what the right way is? If the person who decides what is right and wrong abuses that power, then you have a trap. Let me illustrate from my experience. In my old church, an unspoken rule was that you couldn't really leave on good terms in the church unless you met with the pastor beforehand. Then you found out when you met the pastor, the focus would turn on you and there would be something wrong with you (e.g., selfishness, bad attitude, some other sin) that was making you want to leave. Thus, it is virtually impossible to leave "the right way" because the way the definer (the pastor in this case) defined it, you would either (1) not come to him first, thus do it the wrong way, or (2) have something wrong with you that you didn't deal with and left anyway.

When I finally left my old church, I realized how destructive this rule was to my mental and spiritual well being and decided to stop following it. It no longer mattered to me whether I may have been doing something wrong at some point. I was no longer captive to perfectionism. What mattered more, (and ironically I learned this principle in the same church against which I was rebelling) was that I live in honesty and transparency.

In other words, if my honesty and transparency led me to do something wrong then in my mind that wrong thing was there the whole time and it's just being known by others. If talking about my feelings was wrong to people, then what about how I was feeling in the first place? Isn't that the more important thing?

I think the best thing to do when one encounters this rule is to run away as fast as one can. The minute perfectionism creeps into an organization someone is likely to take advantage of other people. It's inevitable because perfectionism has no basis in reality. I believe that's why I am a Christian. Who would have thought that I would have had to flee that in a Christian church?

Who is it for?

Another good indication of an organization's health is to what extent the organization is about the leader(s) and to what extent the organization is about the people it exists to serve.

I had a dream about this where my church was having a joint service with my old churches and invariably one of my old pastors was there. I walked up to him and said, "How are you doing?" He said to me, "I'm doing horribly, terribly, and I don't want to talk to you." Then his wife and him whispered something and she glared at me.

That dream reminded me of this principle. When confronted with any situation, it seemed that he had to remind me constantly about what he felt, both good and bad. When I was going to his church, there was a strange importance around his beliefs, his feelings, his theology, his opinions about things, him. When I left the church and disagreed with some aspects of it and wrote a blog, that focus was on how hurt he was, how terrible of a thing this was to do to him, etc. It was never, "Wow, Michael, you seem to be in a bad place right now. Can we talk? How can I help you?"

This extended into even the good things. My pastor had sacrificed financially for the church to survive. But we ended up knowing about it. He was tireless in meeting with people, sometimes until early in the mornings. We knew about that too. In the good and the bad, even in the midst of service, it felt strangely like it was all about him.

Another thing that reminds me about this principle is when pastors complain about how hard their job is. I understand that being a pastor is emotionally difficult, but so is a lot of other things. Guess what? My job is difficult. I could rant on and on about how difficult my job is, how stressful it is, but I don't because I know that chances are you who are reading this has a difficult job too. I believe that is the nature of work. And besides, and back to the point of the post, does this exist for the leader or the people?

In my workplace, which I consider to be mostly healthy (but not perfect; nothing is), the leaders don't constantly remind us about how hard their jobs are. They don't take extended vacations while we work so they can recover from the ravages of leading a large organization. In fact, I get the distinct impression that they're most concerned with how to help us, the ones who work, act in such a way that the customer and shareholders will be satisfied. And, I don't find myself thinking about them really. That's healthy: they get out of the way so I can help accomplish the bigger goal in serving our customers and shareholders.

So I believe that's a good litmus test of an organization's health. How much of the people's time is spent thinking about (both the good and the bad) the leadership's opinions? Are the elders, pastoral staff, CEO, executives rock stars that people fawn over? If so, you may be in an organization that fosters a cult of personality, and that unfortunate reality will likely hurt you sooner than you may like to admit.

Protecting the Reputation

When I blogged in disagreement with my former church a while back, someone suggested I stop on the grounds that it is not good for the church's reputation to have disagreements out in the open. The thought came from good intentions, probably from experience with people who say something like this:

I would go to church but there are so many hypocrites and back biters there.

So the thinking goes you cut down on the public disagreement so people will not have the good part of church clouded out by the bad part of church.

I disagree with this approach. I think it's good and healthy to publicly disagree about church matters. Let me state my case and you can judge for yourselves.

For the sake of argument, we'll accept that there exists a large number of people out there who are disillusioned with church for one reason or another. And we'll accept that we want to minimize this disillusionment so that people can have an appropriate, healthy view of church which we hope is positive.

What is the best way of going about this? Is it hiding every problem from clear view so that, it is thought, only the good is publicly shown? That seems like the obvious answer, but unfortunately it falls short. Here's why: when a church habitually hides disagreement it never really fixes the problem that the disagreement brought up. The way I understand power in organizations, people who aren't checked by others, especially those who disagree with them, are not going to change. They will be blinded by their power and the organization will settle into its natural weaknesses.

In plainer English, the pastor who never has to deal with public criticism will end up with a church that has institutionalized its weaknesses. And therefore, it won't matter what isn't said about the church, people will see it for what it is and hate it.

The remedy? Honesty! Honesty is the best way for an organization to properly deal with its weaknesses. Having open, honest dialog, especially with those who most passionately disagree with you. A church that laid down its ego and embraced that path would become healthy enough to ward off the disillusionment of the unchurched community to a far greater extent than keeping secrets ever would.

Why blame setting reveals the true nature of organizations

Earlier I wrote about how the placing of initial blame when allegations of abuse or leveled is so important in determining the true health of the organization. I'd like to investigate this further to reveal a fact of organizations that I've only recently appreciated.

Here's the nugget in a nutshell: An organization will take allegations seriously to the degree that those allegations violate the organization's true core values.

So let me unpack this for a moment. Lets say we have a truly sexually abusive workplace from the early 1970's before good sexual harassment litigation made such environments legally prohibitive. The organization is infested with abuse, from top to bottom. If you were to approach the organization and ask them if any abuse goes on, what would they say? They would probably say, "No abuse goes on here, we treat the girls with a lot of respect!"

So lets take this a bit further and imagine a woman who was propositioned by her male boss. She goes to her boss' boss about it and alleges the abuse. What happens?

Well, despite the explicit claim that no abuse happens in the organization, their exists an implicit value system that says that anyone who alleges abuse is being overly sensitive, a baby, and a trouble maker. The abuser, in these unhealthy organizations, is just being a normal guy.

So what kind of response does the accuser get in this situation? Probably scorn. And then a healthy dose of character assassination, probably through a whispering campaign. And finally, if the organization is really bad, the accuser can expect to loser their job and their reputation in the community. It is a big price to pay.

And what to say from the organization's perspective? This is totally predictable. They are acting out of their value system. Of course they wouldn't see anything wrong with what happened; they would have probably done similar things in similar circumstances.

What are we to do with such organizations? The minute we see their true character revealed by how poorly they handle allegations of abuse, we turn around and run as fast as we can out of there. Because, if it wasn't us this time, it will be us next time. Unhealthy organizations have a way of claiming everyone as victims sooner or later.

Who gets the blame?

We enter a garden variety organization. It could be a church, workplace, or civic organization. Someone approaches the leadership of this organization with allegations of abuse. The alleged abuser denies the charges. The abuse is benign enough to not warrant legal action. What is the organization to do?

I think these types of situations are a very good litmus test for an organization because they answer the basic question, "Does this organization tend to the side with the victim or the victimizer?" The answer to that question tells us the answer to the more fundamental question: "Does the organization tend to victimize or not?"

An unhealthy organization will tend to blame the one making the charges. "Well, she shouldn't have made herself available to him". "She was asking for it; she always wore revealing clothing". Or, more subtle, "He is just upset that he didn't get his way; please pray for him." I believe they call that an ad hominem argument in logic class.

The other thing an unhealthy organization will is make excuses for the alleged abuser. "Well you don't understand, he's been under a lot of pressure lately." Or "I believe God has a call on his life and want to preserve that." This is classic rationalization and if it weren't so infuriating it would be kind of comical.

So what is a healthy organization to do? I would say make the alleged victim the priority. Get him or her out of the abusive situation and get them help. Don't make excuses for other people's actions. Respect their wishes with how little or how much is said publicly. Don't make it their fault for stepping forward because they threatened the public reputation of the organization.

At the same time, get the abuser help too. Get the law involved. Get them help. But don't do so at the expense of the victim; they're in a much more vulnerable place than the victimizer.

And don't, for God's sake, make the method by which the victim communicated the abuse the issue. It's not the issue; the abuse is. I believe they call that a red herring when people do that. If someone has been abused emotionally, sexually, spiritually, or physically, they should get to choose how they communicate that fact to others.

Is free speech limited?

Earlier I mentioned how important it is to judge the health of an organization by its actions, not its intentions. The biggest action to judge an organization by is how it handles open criticism that it does not agree with.

Most, if not all, Americans understand this principle when it comes to politics. If someone openly criticizes the President, for example, the President should not respond by suppressing the speech of the dissenter. In fact, even shallow attempts at suppressing speech have backfired in American politics. Openly calling the speech criminal or immoral and throwing the dissenter into prison would shake the very democratic foundations upon which our country is based.

Most also appreciate this principle in work as well. Americans pride themselves in being able to openly bring up the weaknesses and shortcomings of the organization. In fact, I drive by signs every morning criticizing American Airlines for its executive bonus payouts in the midst of layoffs. While the executives disagree with the merit of the union's argument, they aren't heavy handed in their treatment of the union. They seem like a healthy company, and in fact the law compels them to be so.

So it appears that American society has developed an appreciation for open, honest critical speech for those in organizations. This is a nice safeguard against tyranny, for the government or company that is allowed to suppress free speech is the one that will oppress its constituents.

Unfortunately there appears to be a disconnect in this principle when it applies to church. When faced with unhealthy circumstances in church, people react differently than they would in other circumstance. We give the leaders a pass on behavior that would be reprehensible in other situations because we believe it's biblical to not criticize our religious leaders.

What does this lead to? It leads to the same thing it would lead to in any other organizational environment: oppression and tyranny. The degree to which a church's membership is willing to give church leadership unchecked and unquestioned power in their lives is the degree to which the same membership will experience devastating spiritual oppression in their lives. It's a fact of organizations learned over centuries of experience, including in religious settings. We should pay heed to past lessons learned.

Judging by the Fruit

I'm going to do a series of posts on organizational health in the coming days and weeks. This has been long overdue. I've basically been holding off on sharing any of my opinions in this area because I shared similar opinions a couple of years ago and got into a lot of trouble. That has turned out to not be a very healthy way of dealing with my feelings.

The first thing I often hear when discussing whether an organization is healthy is something along the lines of, "the people have good intentions." You hear this with Democrats a lot. Yes, they passed an extremely bloated stimulus bill in the spring that had no business becoming law, but they care about poor people so everything is ok.

It turns out intentions have little to do with whether an organization is healthy. I believe Jesus said that you can know a tree by its fruit.

The reason why Jesus' advice is so good is because most people think that they're doing the right thing most of the time. Even when leading an unhealthy organization, people feel as if they are doing the right thing. In other words, they have good intentions. For whatever reason, whether it's rooted in a personal mental malady or a philosophical bent towards unhealthiness, the organization they run is unhealthy.

So what are we to do when understanding which organizations are healthy and which are unhealthy? The answer is not to look at what the organizations are telling us. All organizations will tell you that they have only the best intentions for you. I can go to the most abusive church in America and ask the pastor, "what are your intentions for me?" and he would probably say something along the lines of, "For you to live the life that God wants for you."

The real way to judge an organization's healthiness is to look at its actions. How does it respond to people? This is especially important when looking at ways the organization responds to criticism and situations that threaten its worldview.

An example of the latter is a socialist dictator (like Hugo Chavez) and a rogue media organization that is speaking out against him. How does he handle that? Does he shut them down? That "fruit" tells me that he is more interested in his power than of the truth and open debate. He's not a healthy leader.

Next, we'll look deeper at a main criteria for judging an organization's health: how it handles public criticism.

The game last night

I enjoyed watching the game last night with Paul and my two boys. The Cowboys made a lot of bad mistakes, some of which were flukes. There was an element of home field advantage there; the crowd seemed into it. But the Cowboys looked like the better team because you don't commit four turnovers and are still in a game and not be better than the other team.

So, if they are able to reign in the turnovers, they'll be fine. Loss or not. They look like a good team. Unfortunately the newspapers don't really say the same story. I guess doom and gloom sells.

The demise of the whiny Caillou

Lately Samuel has been whiny and talking like a baby at times when he wants to get his way. I chalked it up to his age, but then I watched a few episodes of Caillou with him. It turns out that, in their esteemed brilliance, child psychologists who write the show think it's a good idea to expose 2-6 year olds with a whiny, bratty kid who walks all over his parents. While this may be the case for many 2-6 year olds, do we really need a television show portraying it?

So last night Annie and I deleted all the shows. Samuel has a rude awakening this morning when he asks for it, because Caillou is no more. He'll be way better for it.