A Great Transparency

Galatians 4:8-20

Introduction

I want you to think of people who have had the most impact on you. It may be a pastor or a teacher or an employer. It could even have been someone in the community who had a public presence and you looked up to them. How did they carry themselves in public? By that, I mean how open were they about their struggles and challenges? Did they open themselves up to people outside of their closest family or friends? Did you ever have a sense of when they were happy and when they were frustrated? Did they have a separate public face that never shared what was going on inside?

I believe that attitudes toward transparency, that is honesty about what is happening on the inside, has changed throughout the years. There is less or more openness to transparency depending on cultural seasons and contexts. For example, when I think of pastors of churches that I have attended before becoming a pastor, I would never have guessed that most of them ever had a struggle or problem. They presented themselves as having it all together, not in a boastful way, but with clear boundaries of what should and should not be shared.

I am not either endorsing or critiquing that style. I would say that was very standard a few decades ago but perhaps is less so today. More pastors are being open about what is happening in their lives, while still keeping appropriate boundaries. A recent Barna poll asked what congregations most valued in their pastor’s sermons and the top trait was honesty and the lowest was boldness. This is the opposite of what was modelled for me when I was in my early twenties.

I did some searching and this concept of personal transparency and honesty is growing quickly among leaders in the business world. Gone are the days of “fake it until you make it” and here are the days of being vulnerable and open. This is a radical change.

I will be transparent with you and tell you that I almost quit pastoral ministry about twenty-five years ago, almost before it began. The reason for that was that I was taught about a strict separation between pastor and congregation that required an impenetrable mask that would not allow anyone to know what was happening on the inside. What changed things for me was working with a pastor who was transparent and honest. He was real and people could identify with him and that helped me to see that there was another model of pastoral ministry.

Where does the Apostle Paul fit into this? We might assume, considering the immense impact that he has had upon the church in his team and even to today, that he was a pillar of strength and stoicism and that he never let people see any weakness. But that is actually not the case. The passage we are looking at gives us an insightful glimpse into who Paul was and how he led his churches.

Paul Getting Real

I will be honest, transparent even, and say that I struggled with choosing where to go with this passage. Paul touches on so many issues in this passage that I could easily do a series on just this passage. It almost feels like Paul is all over the place. And in a way he is. Not that he is saying anything wrong but his emotions do shine through.

The Galatians are considering giving up on the simple faith and taking on the Law. What does Paul say? “I am afraid that my work for you may have been wasted.” I cannot imagine ever saying that, whether to a congregation or an individual. Paul is not saying this to be mean but because he wants the Galatians to know how he is feeling in this. This is not just a theological debate.

Paul them reminds them of how he first arrived. Most likely we all have an image of what the great Apostle Paul was like. We might picture what he looked like or sounded like. Paul came in weakness, even physical weakness. Paul does not describe explicitly what his physical weakness was, but based on some of his comments, it may have been poor eyesight. The point being is that Paul embraced his own weakness and did not try to put on a mask of strength. Paul was transparent that he had struggles. When we read his other letters, we know that he also was honest about other areas of his life. This is remarkable because we would expect him to posture himself as someone strong, as someone who had it all together, and from a position of strength to lead the people who needed his spiritual help.

Then we get this statement from Paul: “My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, I wish I were present with you now and could change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.” While I generally recommend that men not claim that they understand the pain of childbirth, Paul makes a powerful point. Paul gives the Galatians a glimpse of what he is going through with this controversy. Paul does not hide the emotional and spiritual impact of what this is doing to him. I must say that as a Christian leader, I am challenged by the transparency that Paul shares here.

A Transparent Church

You might think that this is mostly a message for leaders and pastors. There is an important corrective when it comes to them but this is a message for the entire church.

It is not just a pastor that communicates to the community. Congregations speak to their communities by the way they live out their faith. This brings us back to the concept of living the Christian life.

My experience is that churches seek to attract people by impressing them. This may be through the quality of their Sunday morning services or the number of their programs. I am not critiquing the desire to be excellent in these areas.

But what would it look like to be a transparent church? We have to be clear what we mean by that. I am not referring to hanging out all of our dirty laundry for people to see. It is not about focusing on the negative or being pessimistic in outlook.

How was Paul transparent? Well, he came to the Galatians as he was and not with a mask to try and impress the people. This included being real about his physical weakness. This is directly relatable to small churches. I have a love for small churches but I also find that they often have an inferiority complex. Why would people be interested in us when we are so small? In one congregation I was pastoring, we were quite small and 95% of us were over seventy. One Sunday, a family with a teenage son visited our church and attended a few weeks before disappearing. Not surprisingly, they had left for the bigger Baptist church that had a youth program. A few months later, they returned. It ended up that their entire family actually preferred our church, even though on paper it looked like the other church was much better. We did not try and pretend that we were something that we were not. We once visited a church after going to their webpage. Based on the pictures online, they were a young and vibrant congregation. It ended up those were stock photos and reality was much different.

What are people looking for? Yes, there are people who are looking for programs and a style of music and certain atmosphere for worship. But many people are actually looking for a real community. They are looking for transparent people who they can be transparent with. Again, this is not about sharing our darkest secrets with everyone we meet. It is just about being our real selves and allowing others to be real with us.

Conclusion

What would be the worst criticism that people visiting a church could make? Is it that the pastor told a joke that was not funny at all? Is it a mistake by the musician? Is it the size or age of the congregation?

The criticism that would devastate me more than anything else would be a visitor who walked away saying “Those people were so fake.” It would take much more than a minor tweak to fix something like that.

Say what you want about the Apostle Paul, he was never fake. Even though he adapted his style to the nature of his audience, he presented himself as he really was. He had physical weakness and he got frustrated by people he was leading. 

In leadership circles, we talk about integrity. Integrity is not just a virtue, it is something that is also used for physical objects. A piece of wood or metal that looks strong on the outside but has something wrong on the inside is going to be a problem. Integrity is about being the same thing all the way through. This is what we want with leaders and what we want for churches. Even if we feel the temptation to impress, it is better to be real and transparent than for people to later discover who and what we really are. Paul models that for us and we are invited to follow his example.