This morning Tony and I received a great compliment from someone who’s fairly new to Harbor. They didn’t talk about dynamic preaching, or Spirit-filled worship, or our Hawaiian-warrior-like physiques. It was this: “What we like most about you and Tony as leaders is that you’re so normal! Just regular guys.” The reason it was such a huge blessing to me is because it means we’re (at least somewhat) fulfilling one of our core values at Harbor: authenticity.
Since the Ted Haggard scandal broke last Friday, I’ve been reflecting a lot about how important authenticity and humility are in the church, especially among its leaders. I’ve developed a renewed commitment to ensuring that our church family is a safe harbor for people at any stage of faith to deal with real-life problems in an environment of proactive love. If people feel like they have to paste on shiny happy faces before they come to church to sing shiny happy songs and listen to a shiny happy sermon, we’ve failed.
This response to the scandal from an Eastern Orthodox writer echoes many of the same thoughts I’ve had:
It is a mistake to present Christianity the way some churches do, as if it is the haven of seamlessly well-adjusted, proper people. That results in a desperate artificial sheen. It results in treating worship as a consumer product, which must deliver better intellectual or emotional gratification than the competition. And that sends suffering people home again, still lonely, in their separate metal capsules.