Recently, a friend shared with me his experience of receiving an anonymous letter from a member of his church. I don’t have to tell you that the letter was not intended to encourage my brother. How do I know?
Well, for the 28 years I served local churches in the role of Worship Pastor, anonymous letters, nameless voicemails, and scribbled messages on strips of bulletin fragments placed in offering plates was an all too familiar experience for me. In one church, I had a choir member who met with me every Monday morning to share the biggest complaints and concerns of other choir members from the day before — always unable to tell me who actually made the comments — they were just passing the comments to me on the condition of anonymity. What a blessing.
Brothers and sisters, this ought not be.
What God desires from His church is unity. It’s precisely what Jesus prayed for His disciples. And while unity does not demand agreement to happen, it does demand mutual respect and understanding. When someone sends a message anonymously, they are not seeking unity — they are attempting to control and influence. And one thing I am totally convinced of — you have no right to influence anyone you are not first willing to serve and love — let alone someone you don’t respect enough to be honest with your feedback.
So, if you have a deep concern that merits the attention of your leader, share it in the context of a relationship — and for the biggest and most difficult conversations — conduct them face-to-face. It is the only way to have a conversation that can produce unity — which is the most essential quality of any family of believers. And if you don’t have unity as your goal in the exchange, but your intent is to control or unduly influence, I submit you may need to abandon the whole thing. Instead of complaining, how about praying about it?
Now, for those of you who are getting these kinds of communications, let me suggest a few things I started doing after several years of being eaten alive by the few criticisms from the anonymous —
- When someone came to me and said, “Someone told me something they wanted you to know, but I can’t tell you who it is.” I would simply respond — “You know, instead of sharing that with me go back to that person and tell them I asked you not to share it unless you could give me the name and then encourage that person — in the spirit of Christian respect — to have their own conversation with me.”
- When I got a letter/note/bulletin fragment in the mail with no return address, I would immediately go to the signature — if it was blank, I would take it to choir practice and read it to my choir and add, “Someone may have forgotten to sign this. If it was you, I sure would love to know who you are so we can discuss it.” And then if I could and it was appropriate, I would give my answer to the letter to the choir. Sometimes the point made was a valid one and I could express that in a public forum, which would foster an environment where people knew I took comments seriously. The amazing thing is that I would only have to do that once or twice — after word got out that I read anonymous letters to the choir, I wouldn’t get one very often, if ever.
- I tried to create an atmosphere where people were comfortable approaching me with their ideas and feedback. I learned to cherish relationships and to thank and affirm people for honest and spiritually motivated feedback. I tried to be open — not defensive, and to remember that the goal in any relationship is not to be right on issues that are doubtful (Romans 14) — but to be one.
- I wanted to remember I was leading people — if I distanced myself from the ones I felt disagreed with me, then I would not be able to lead them anywhere. Instead, I wanted to move toward the people who resisted my leadership. I tried to serve, love, care about them, their families and their concerns. I started to see those folks as my prize — not my problem.
Now, I don’t want to intimate that after trying this, I never had any more times of doubt and confusion caused by an anonymous criticism, because I did. But the way I approached people got better when I stopped letting the criticisms of a few nameless people drive my decisions for the good of the whole. And when those people saw me leading with more confidence and less reactionary doubt, I became a much easier leader to follow.
I thought about not signing this, but then…
Mike Harland
Director, LifeWay Worship
Interesting…I don’t recall your ever doing that in choir rehearsal when you were my worship pastor. The orchestra would just tell you what we thought.
When my husband was handbell leader, 16 or 17 years ago, he got one of those anonymous notes over some nitpicky little thing about his directing–not from one of his ringers, but most likely from a soprano in the choir. It stings him to this day.
From the other side of the baton: I had a worship pastor a few years ago (not the current one) whom I absolutely was afraid to approach openly with any concerns. I didn’t send the anonymous notes; I went to lower-level staff members, or, more often, just bit my tongue and lived with the problems. Would that more worship pastors had your attitude of openness and caring!
For the better part of my first 4 years at my present church, I received regular notes of discouragement and they were almost always anonymous. These were submitted on the prayer request form of our worship guide and sent via the offering plate. In fact, the staff even printed these negative comments in the staff meeting agenda along with the prayer requests. Everyone on staff, including ministry assistants, read these notes until I insisted that we didn’t need this information being public. My previous pastor, after receiving a number of anonymous notes regarding worship, etc. simply told the congregation that if something wasn’t signed or had a return address, then his secretary threw them away before we ever saw them. Therefore, the staff would not be aware of any comments, positive or negative, unless they had a name attached. Incredibly, the negative submissions virtually stopped overnight!
I believe as leaders we should address those in opposition in a spirit of love but I also believe that when we give credibility to anonymity by allowing it, we allow those individuals to sow seeds of discord by providing them with a voice and therefore, I prefer not to address them publicly.
Thanks for a wonderful reminder of how important honest communication is.
I have received only one such note, but knew who it was that sent it. So I sent a kind note to her at home saying I received her memo and that the oversight was purely unintentional and apologized for any offense she may have taken. We’ve been good since that time. She comes to me any time. I have had a couple of times where I was approached with the “you did this wrong, don’t do it again” disdain of a deacon or church member, but that was early on in ministry and though hard to take then, I learned how to deal with such as you have done.
Most of the time I have had some honest feedback. I have always told folks, in public forum, to please come to me with any problems or issues — I don’t bite, I won’t divulge confidences — and that if they would not, or felt they could not, come to me, then to please don’t do the “nyah-nyah” behind the back and gossip on the telephone. Those who have come to me have been surprised how open I can be, how apologetic, or that I actually had a purpose/reason for doing what I did. We’d pray together, I’d thank them and we always the meeting laughing.
I did lose an older couple recently. To this day I have no idea why (just guesses). They would not talk to me and did not want to talk to me. They started the telephone mess, trying to get others to leave, but everyone else as soon as they learned that the couple would not talk to me, told them to please stop — if they would not talk to me face to face then they needed to keep it to themselves.
I am so proud of what this congregation has learned about honest communication and that they responded to what was going on in a loving, Christian manner.