I’ll let you in on a little-known ministry secret:
When it comes to matters of faith—all pastors lie.
They don’t want to, but they do.
Here’s the deal: Most pastors/ministers/youth workers speak or preach 40 times a year, and if they have traveling speaking ministries or podcasts or blogs, even more.
If you’re a regular churchgoer, you might attend 35-40 of said services a year. (45 if you really love them.)
During those visits to communities of faith, places of worship, church websites, conferences, camps, blogs seminars, and tent revivals, how often do you hear confessions like these from the pulpit?
“Well, I don’t really know what I believe today, but here’s a little nugget I thought sounded good, so here it is…”
“I’m not sure why that is even in the Bible. I usually just skip over it and jump to the Sermon on the Mount.”
“These days I’m not sure God is even real, but if so here’s what He apparently said to someone 2,000 years ago.”
That would make for an awkward church moment.
Or would it?
As someone who has attended church regularly for nearly all of my life, I can count on one hand the times a speaker has bared his or her soul and said, “Right now, I just don’t know if this real. Right now, I’m just not sure I believe this.” But the times that it has happened in some form, have been liberating, refreshing, and faith-building for me and for others present.
The truth is, most pastors, preachers, priests, ministers, youth workers, and speakers are terrified of real authenticity.
They are afraid to stand before a congregation and admit current doubt (though talking about your past doubts is perfectly fine).
They abhor the thought of getting-up on their platforms or in front of their computers, and speaking from a place of uncertainty or anger or indifference or unknowing.
They would sooner be beaten with bamboo sticks than admit that they never studied, read, or even heard of that Scripture passage you are asking about.
That’s because we have created a modern church culture of pastor-worship, where leaders are propped-up as Sunday celebrities, feeling they need to be perpetually positive, eternally enthusiastic, and unceasingly correct.
We have prized the content of communication, over the soul of the communicator.
We have elevated Christian leaders to a place where the expectations on them are as high as they are for God Himself.
We’ve made certainty a prerequisite for ministry.
But do we really believe that all of these “professional Christians”, each called on every week to speak, teach, impart and inspire, never doubt what they say, never have to get up on a Sunday morning or before a microphone and sell something that they themselves aren’t currently buying?
Is that realistic? Is it fair? Is it even Biblical? (Editor’s note: No, No, and big-time No).
I’ve always loved working with teenagers, for two reasons:
1) They love to ask questions; honest, deep, confounding, sometimes unanswerable questions.
2) They smell manure from a mile away.
Early in my ministry to students, I was insecure. I constantly worried about losing the respect of kids or their parents, or about troubling my church or embarrassing my pastors. When I received a question that I couldn’t answer, either because of a lack of study or my simple human inadequacies, I proceeded to talk my way to an answer; putting together on-the-fly, something that sounded good, but was essentially the spiritual equivalent of throwing a dart at a bunch of balloons and hoping to hit the right one.
(If you’ve ever heard a religious person do this, you know what I mean).
In fact, I learned quickly the secret of so many leaders; that if you said something loudly and emphatically enough, you could seem confident and even downright authoritative—even if inside you were a tangled mess of insecurities.
In my later years though, I’ve come to realize that one of the greatest gifts I can give those I minister with and to, is raw, naked honesty.
Sometimes that means saying hard words to them.
Sometimes it means boldly speaking what I feel God is telling me to, regardless of the cost or the pushback.
Sometimes, it means simply saying, “I have absolutely no idea.”
So for all the pastors out there—heck, for all the church leaders, volunteers, and parents who are called upon to teach spiritual matters, give those in your care a real blessing:
Let them see your struggle.
Let them hear your doubts.
Let them into your difficult seasons as they happen.
Your people will not run screaming, not if they believe in true community.
Your church will not implode, and God will still be God.
Your credibility will not be diminished with greater authenticity.
So stop faking certainty in matters of faith.
Quit acting like you have this God thing all figured out.
Stop lying in the face of the tough questions, and simply have the courage to sometimes say, “I don’t know.”
