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The Transparency of Heathens and Pastors


I watched on Wednesday as former televangelist Ted Haggard sat across from Oprah Winfrey and came clean about his life, his sexuality, his marriage, and his upcoming documentary, The Trials of Ted Haggard, which airs tonight on HBO. 

I have to admit, I’ve only listened to a couple of Haggard’s sermons during his time as Senior Pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, and I thought Haggard appeared much more transparent (an embarrassing scandal destroying your career will do that to you), more down-to-earth, and more pastoral in his humble spot on Oprah than in the sermons I heard from his heyday. 
Some people will roll their eyes at Haggard and call his mega broadcast on the most powerful talk show in the world and film as a desperate attempt to climb back to the communication world at the expense of the church that disowned him in 2006. Some people will not like the content of his conversation with Oprah. 
I don’t want to get into the content of the show itself or of the 2006 incident. Here’s something to consider: Would Haggard’s life over the last 3 years have been different had he been more transparent from the beginning? If he had sat down with trusted members of his board or another leader or coach and said, “Look, I’m a married guy who really loves my wife and kids, but I feel drawn toward men? What can I do to keep my marriage in tact and my career from falling out from under me?” would that have helped his situation? It didn’t help that drugs were involved, and in a church environment that doesn’t support gay rights, he would have probably been asked to step down anyway. Still, a large part of the case against Ted Haggard was that he repeatedly lied about the allegations.
Maybe the transparency wouldn’t have helped…at least from the church’s side. 
Many mid-to-large sized churches have adopted a business/CEO model of leadership and growth. Led by megachurch superstars like Rick Warren and Bill Hybels, these churches tend to operate on a staff/volunteer/committee platform that looks more like a MacWorld conference than St. Paul’s Cathedral (for that matter, even the Vatican is looking like Wall Street these days!). Many modern suburban churches have followed this example. They read the right books (including those by Dr. Warren and Dr. Hybels, among others), attend the right conferences, and showcase the right gadgets and podcasts. I actually think most of these ideas are well-enough in themselves. I love podcasts, love going to conferences, and have certainly been inspired by the writings of Warren, Hybels, John Maxwell, and Andy Stanley.
In the wake of all of these modern conveniences, one message that has sunk into the heads of many pastors of this model is that leadership requires self-confidence and that transparency is dangerous and may cause church members and seekers to look elsewhere for answers to their questions. As I’ve heard more than one CEO-style pastor say, “Fake it ’til you make it.”
I agree that too much transparency and second-guessing can be dangerous. After all, if a leader doesn’t know where he/she is going, how can he/she expect others to follow? Still, I wonder if we’ve pushed this macho leader image too far? Have we become such experts in our fields of spirituality that we’re actually pushing people away rather than drawing them in?
In early 2005, I was let go from a church that operated under this CEO model. While the layoff was largely due to a tragic church-split that I happened to walk into unknowingly (and only lasted six weeks – and which was followed by the departure of every other staff pastor and the senior pastor), one thing was used by a small group of angry parishioners who were out to run the church and take it back to the Dark Ages: a blog. At the time, my 7-month-pregnant wife was getting close to the birth of our first child, and in my oblivion toward the church’s problems within itself, I blogged one night that I was nervous about being a father and didn’t know how I was going to get a baby to adulthood in one piece. Many young parents can relate, I’m sure. This church found the blog and used it to showcase my inability to lead due to showing weakness. In other words, why should a parent trust his/her teenager to a man who shows weakness? 
I have since survived my short time in this church, and am grateful for the experience as it later allowed me to experience some great ideas and dream some new dreams. 
My point is, maybe the Corporate CEO hasn’t done as much favors for the local church. 
In 2006, I attended the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. At the conference, one of the keynote speakers, Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, warned the church about this type of model. “Churches shouldn’t want to run themselves like a business for two reasons,” Collins said. “First, most businesses aren’t very good….Second, in churches, your export is completely different. In business, that export is money, but in churches, that export is people.”
People. Relationships. How do relationships grow? By being honest and transparent with each other. Many churches today are learning to operate under an entirely different approach. They’re building house-churches: churches that are centered around relationships. 
Perhaps transparency couldn’t have saved Ted Haggard in 2006, but judging by the Twitter posts and blogs out last night and this morning, his transparency and admission of uncertainty of all answers helped much of America to begin a new respect. Whether his HBO documentary will allow that respect to grow remains to be seen, but the new Haggard did seem happier. And isn’t that really the point?
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How I Became a Spammer :(

I’ll begin with a shout-out: to everyone who got an invitation from me to join Friendster today, I apologize. Some people immediately placed me in their Spam folder. 

Did I send it out? Yes, but I didn’t mean to. 
See, I got a message similar to the one you got today. I didn’t know the person, but I clicked onto the link out of curiosity. For those of you who don’t know what Friendster is, it’s basically another social networking site in a long line of social networking sites. A little bit like MySpace and TagWorld, but really just more of the same stuff.
When I clicked on the link, I entered my email address, and BAM – suddenly I get an email telling me I’ve invited over 215 of my email contacts to join Friendster! 
Oh no! I hate inviting people to do this kind of thing. Huge mistake, and I’m a little embarrassed. So, if you were spammed by me, forgive me. 
There, I feel better. Let’s move on with life, people.
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Write Your Own Obama Inauguration Speech

Remember MadLibs? Remember sitting around laughing at your friends’ or your own ridiculous words in otherwise perfectly normal essays or stories? Well, thanks to the Inauguration Speech Generator from Atom.com, you can help write an inauguration speech for Obama. In the spirit of MadLibs fun, you can see the limitless possibilities of the English language.

Here’s mine:


Barack Obama’s Inauguration Speech


My fellow Americans, today is a grateful day. You have shown the world that “hope” is not just another word for “shoe”, and that “change” is not only something we can believe in again, but something we can actually jog.

Today we celebrate, but let there be no mistake – America faces righteous and boring challenges like never before. Our economy is painful. Americans can barely afford their mortgages, let alone have enough money left over for magazines. Our healthcare system is green. If your leg is sick and you don’t have insurance, you might as well call a custodian. And America’s image overseas is tarnished like a rock tree. But running together we can right this ship, and set a course for Montana.

Finally, I must thank my bright family, my beautiful campaign volunteers, but most of all, I want to thank Clint Eastwood for making this historic occasion possible. Of course, I must also thank you, President Bush, for years of attacking the American people. Without your freezing efforts, none of this would have been possible.

So, what did you come up with? Copy and paste your inauguration speech in the comments section.
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Why Your Resolution Will Fail in 2009

Now that I have your attention…

I was originally going to title this, “2,009 Reasons Your Resolution Will Fail in 2009,” but decided on the current title for 2 reasons: (1.) It’s a major downer and would generate 0 reads, and (2.) I really didn’t want to try and think up 2,009 reasons your resolutions will fail in 2009.
Moving on. Most stats and cultural studies indicate that the majority of New Year’s resolutions are broken within 30 days. I find this astounding, since most of the people I know who make resolutions for New Year’s break theirs within the first two days. I myself have perhaps gone a week or more. That being said, I have found the strength to lose weight, to accomplish things, and such, but this rarely happened as a result of starting a new calendar.
Whoever began marketing the idea that the first day of the year was a great time to guilt yourself into giving up habits or picking up better ones needed to have his head examined. 
I believe New Year Resolutions set people who subscribe to them up for failure in almost every way. For one thing, there are many things that cause success: strong will, inspiration, education. Guilt is not one of those things. Guilt doesn’t make dreams come true; it doesn’t lead to an inspired life; it doesn’t lead to motivation. In most cases, guilt leads to disappointment, a life driven by other people’s demands, and…well, more guilt.
Think about the words we use to describe our “resolutions.” Think about the following common resolutions of most people:
A. “I resolve to lose weight.”
B. “I resolve to stop eating this junk food!”
C. “I resolve to quit smoking!”
D. “I resolve to be a better listener!”
The list goes on. While none of these are bad resolutions in themselves, they play upon the resolver’s subconscious in even the way they are worded. If you don’t think our subconscious thoughts have a lot to do with the results we achieve in life, you’d best think again. 
By saying that we resolve to “stop eating junk food,” we are putting an emphasis on the negative word, stop. In other words, it means we have to give up something we like. The problem with this is that this creates a negative emotion in the resolver’s mind, thus creating a negative orientation toward his/her resolution. 
Suppose, however, that we used the word “goal” in the place of “resolution.” And suppose that, rather than putting an emphasis on the things we’ll be giving up, we put an emphasis on something that we’ve long dreamed of but never really done, an emphasis on a goal that brings out a positive emotional response.
Rather than give up the things we’re not really crazy to give up, we set goals to:
A. Feel good about myself by having more energy.
B. Have more energy by jogging around my block every day. This will give me a chance to unwind at the end of the day and to get my thoughts together for my goals.
C. Eat foods that make me feel great! The fruits and vegetables that make me feel good and have lots of energy.
D. Travel to a new location sometime each week, even if it’s just around the block. 
These “goals” are far more exciting than the “guilt trips” of having to give up something. By simply changing the way we think about something, we change our likelihood for success. 
This year, don’t set resolutions for what you’d like to stop doing. Instead, set goals for what you’d like to start doing, and then get to work on it. Let me know how it turns out!
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Top Posts of 2008

I was going back through my top 10 posts of 2008 according to stats. Here they are, earliest to greatest: