A group that I really enjoy listening to (besides Bruce Springsteen and the E. Street Band) is
The Avett Brothers.
They have a new song that begins like this:
Tell the truth to yourself and the rest will fall in place
Tell the truth to yourself and the rest will fall in place
I lied to the doctor
I lied to my lover
I wanna make amends, but where do I start
Tell the truth to yourself and the rest will fall in place
Tell the truth to yourself and the rest will fall in place
Tell the truth to yourself
Tell the truth
This song seems like a good place to begin as the calendar turns to a new year. A lot of us will make resolutions to try to change something in our lives. That always begins by being honest, by telling the truth to ourselves.
But I find myself wondering, in this context, how we can support truth-telling in our congregations. What would Annual Meetings look like at the end of this month that tell the truth? I’ve been serving in diocesan ministry for nearly seven years now. I don’t think most people lie on purpose. (Although, as an aside, if you’ve never read M. Scott Peck’s
People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing of the Human Spirit
then I commend it to you. It’s NOT an easy read. But it may be helpful in trying to make some sense of what doesn’t make sense; intentional, compulsive lying.)
Much more common than outright lying, though, is that too often we are able to deceive ourselves with half-truths and wishful thinking. We avoid the hard conversations. Yet the work of ministry in the 21
st
century congregation begins with an honest assessment. Where are we? What resources do we have? Where do we need some help, or a partner to do this work?
True repentance requires the truth, which always sets us free. Yes, we can tell the truth in love but in my experience more often it’s the other way around: because we are already deeply and profoundly loved, we are able to face the harder truths. Unflinching realism has the potential to be “good news” that brings forward new possibilities.
The hardest work of all is to tell the truth in a culture that prefers comfortable ignorance. But when we put our trust in the living God, we don’t need to be afraid. I invite you to practice this ministry together as part of the ongoing work of discerning God’s call to us in this time and place. May that lead to the difficult, but necessary, conversations we need to be having in this new year of grace.
