For God’s Sake, Disagree With Me!
Jason Fried had a post over at SVN that resonated with me. Basically, he said that it should irritate when people agree too quickly us.
In truly ironic fashion, I agree with him.
He quoted Houston Rockets GM, Daryl Morey, on his philosophy about disagreements:
You have to have a culture where there’s no bad idea and people aren’t afraid to bring them up. I want the people who work with me to have very, very strong opinions. And I get really mad if I make the first argument against and they’re immediately like, “Oh yeah, maybe you’re right.†That drives me nuts.
Nice ≠100 % Agreement
Our churches are filled with people in leadership who agree too quickly with one another. One unfortunate side effect of the Christian faith is falsely believing that we always need to be “nice” to each other. Mostly, this means never disagreeing with people.
Ugh.
It’s painful to think of how many brilliant ideas have gone by the wayside in churches because people are too afraid to “rock the boat.” Similarly, if we could see all the mediocre ideas that have been forced through by “King of the Hill” type leaders because no one disagreed with them, we’d be very sad.
Push Back on the Push Back
The bottom line is this: You have a voice. You have ideas. Some of them are good ones. Some of them are even brilliant. And, as a wise friend once shared with me, “You’re only one good idea away from transformation.”
Deviant Challenge: Push back on someone’s idea today. Not to be a jerk, but because you think there’s a better way. Be respectful. Create discussion. Change the mediocre atmosphere of wherever you’re at. Especially if you work in a church.
I agree completely
Whenever I have a chance to make the distinction, I clarify there is a great difference between being nice and being good. Being nice has left the church spineless and emasculated. In fact, I believe that only being nice will inevitably lead to some form of evil, e.g. kindly telling a “white lie” to someone to save their feelings, rather than telling them the truth, and letting them be pruned for more fruit from it. Whereas, if we had people who were consistently striving to be good, what a Church we could be. We may occasionally say something that offends, but if we could trust everyone was being good, I think grace would be given much more (not that it shouldn't always be given). Good people strive for change and improvement, whereas nice people will never accomplish anything significant for fear of upsetting the status quo.
Wish I could disagree with you on this one, but you're right. We do have a culture in church leadership that is sometimes too nice.
I think this has a lot to do with the difference between management and leadership. A manager's job is to steer the organization back towards equilibrium. On the other hand, a leader's job is to steer the organization towards change (improvement, growth, vision for the future, momentum, etc.).
Obviously you have to have both. But sometimes Christians in church leadership make the mistake of labeling managers “peacemakers” and leaders “troublemakers.”
Not every fire should be put out. Some should be stoked so that they can burn off what needs to be burned. Not every relationship should be fixed right away. Sometimes God needs to work through the tension so that the parts of ourselves that need to die can be revealed and killed off.
Sometimes managing back towards the equilibrium actually stands in the way of what God is doing.
Totally. I hated my time in Christian college (immediately following my worldly public school) because everyone seemed enamored with agreeing all the time, no matter what. There was nothing to argue about because the answer to everything was Jesus!
Haha…you should sit in some of our Bloom meetings sometimes. Deep relationships are especially healthy environments for relational tension. Just have love built up in the love bank…makes disagreements much easier to stomach. Then hug. Hugs usually make everything better
We also need to ask: “how easy is it to disagree with me?”
if we are passive aggressive and catty, we are encouraging the status quo. It's a leadership issue. But…sometimes we just need more ballsy people around us.
Good distinction. “Am I dis-agree-able?”
I had a friend in seminary who was told by the professor, “You're too damn nice to do ministry.” And he wasn't giving him a compliment.
“But sometimes Christians in church leadership make the mistake of labeling managers “peacemakers” and leaders “troublemakers.”"
My quotation punctuation aside, this is brilliant.
You guys seem like you can bang around with each other and still come out friends!
Be careful what you look for… you may just get someone like me showing up in the crowd…
I feel like I tried this and it totally failed. I agree, though.
I feel like I tried this and it totally failed. I agree, though.