In a previous post, we defined vulnerability as a profound awareness of our weaknesses, limitations, and failures, and the willingness to abide the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure of letting ourselves be seen.
The gospel promises, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1). Intrinsic to experiencing our freedom in Christ is a life that embraces vulnerability as a way of life.
- Do you give yourself permission to be human?
- Do you accept your vulnerability as your true condition?
Vulnerability is hard for most of us, especially men, because we’ve been trained to associate it with weakness. But vulnerability can be particularly difficult for those tasked with leadership in the church.
Church is not always a safe place to be a human being.
A mentor once said to me, “We seldom forget that we are Christians; but we often forget that we are human.” It’s a sad fact that if you want to witness brave acts of self-disclosure in a church, often you need to go the basement where the Recovery meetings are held.
There’s a lot of talk about “safe spaces” these days, enough that the phrase is almost threadbare. But when it comes to being honest about human frailty, the church ought to be the safest place in any community. So why is vulnerability so hard in the church?
And why can it be most difficult for those tasked with standing before the community of God and encouraging the rest of us to live lives of honesty before God?
Even if we want to live lives of honesty and integrity, the more self-aware we become, the more we wonder if we can risk being honest with anyone. Lets’ run through a few reasons why vulnerability is especially hard for spiritual leaders and chart some trajectories forward.
Why is vulnerability so hard in the space it ought to be most welcomed?
Fearing the Consequences
At the top of the list is the fear surrounding what effect our vulnerability is going to have on our reputations, our calling, our career, even our livelihood. The question “can we afford to be honest?” is a literal concern.
Pastor is the only vocation where a confession can cost you everything. Confess a moral failing as a banker, and it might cost you your marriage, but probably not your job. But as a pastor, vulnerability can cost you your job, your family, your community. The fear of being cast out and shunned is primal.
To take a common but painful example, what can be done about the epidemic of pornography use among pastors? A few years back, two anonymous surveys, one conducted by Barna and the other by Rick Warren, reported that 54% of pastors said they had viewed internet pornography within the last year, and 1 in 3 over the last 30 days. Stop and consider those numbers – more than half.
Can you imagine the toll of guilt and shame so many of our leaders are privately carrying? Can you imagine what effect standing before others and talking about the goodness of God is having on their souls? No wonder so many clergy are disconnected from their own heart. It’s an occupational hazard to be called to continually speak to others about realities you yourself are not experiencing.
That’s not to single out sexual sin as more shameful, because frankly the leaders who should scare us more are the ones who tell themselves, “I would never do that,” and who sit in judgment over those who have. If Jesus is our guide, God’s heart seems more grieved over self-righteous religious leaders than those trapped in sexual sin (Matt 21:31, Mark 3:5).
But if you are convinced that pornography rewires our brains, wreaks untold havoc on relationships and marriages, and arguably causes more harm than any drug widely available, then what’s to be done? What does compassionate care look like? Can leaders risk raising their hand and asking for help?
You probably know more than one ministry leader or church staff member who was publicly humiliated and forced to resign after he (or she) made a brave private confession about a secret shameful battle. And with an epidemic like this just beneath the surface of so many other lives (1 out of 2 pastors, but 3 out of 4 men) what message did those churches send to their communities?
If a church has a “zero tolerance” policy, what kind of culture around vulnerability in confession does that perpetuate?
- Is your church a safe place to fail?
- Is your community a safe place to be human?
How a church handles any confession of weakness and failure will shape their culture more than a thousand sermons. Even if people can’t name it, they can smell it. It’s not a coincidence the Apostle Paul places his comments on being the aroma of Christ right next to his call to forgive and restore an offending brother (2 Cor. 2:5ff). Does the way we respond to vulnerable confession smell like Jesus?
Pornography is an easy example because of its prevalence. But every leader has sources of secret shame because he or she is a human being and shame is a universal phenomenon – as is the desire to hide (Gen 3:8). In most churches the pastor might be the only safe place someone has to take his or her shame. But where does the pastor take their own shame? With whom can the pastor feel safe to be human?
Fear of Reprisal and the Trauma of Betrayal
Did you know that the 5th Amendment, where we get the phrase “pleading the fifth,” was originally put in place to protect the tender in conscience from condemning themselves? It was established to shield the overly conscientious from others using their willingness to confess, their vulnerability, against them. Our Founding Fathers understood that if only one side of a conflict takes extreme ownership, justice will be obscured. Anything they say can and will be used against them.
You may not have had that experience in a court of law. But most likely you’ve had the experience of daring to confide something shameful to someone, only to have them later use it against you. Like the turtle sticking his head outside the shell, you stick your neck out and expose a vulnerable part of you – only to be whacked!
Vulnerability always entails risk, uncertainty, and emotional exposure. There can even be terror, from the uncertainty of what the other is going to do, to mix metaphors, with the fine china of your life? But as a gesture of letting someone in, believing you can trust them, you give them access to what is precious, what is holy ground. You tremblingly hand them your glass heart!
And it is terrifying – that’s what vulnerability feels like! If it’s not scary then it’s not true vulnerability. But if someone, whom you thought was a confidante, turns around and breaks your confidence, it hurts. And if they not only share your confidence with others but then use your confession to justify turning their backs on you, after they’ve labeled you, it’s devastating. It feels like a betrayal because it is. In fact, it’s a form of trauma, betrayal trauma is real. And it is unbearable (Ps. 55:12, 41:9).
It can affect your willingness to stick your neck out again for years, far beyond your conscious desire to be a transparent person, because that trauma gets lodged in your body, and a part of you never wants to feel that pain again.
Every spiritual leader walks this fine line. We want close friends in the community that we serve. And we know that someone can’t really be close to us unless they really know us. And yet, we can’t help but fear: if they really know us, will they still want to consider us their spiritual caretakers? Can a pastor, or the pastor’s spouse, really have friends in the church?
The Pedestal Effect
I learned about the pedestal effect from my counselor, who taught me, “The higher the pedestal; the deeper the resentment when you fall from it. And given enough time, you invariably will fall from it.”
When you’re a pastor, people often put you on a pedestal, and the more compellingly you can speak or attractively you present yourself, the more people might be inclined to elevate you. When a subconscious part of you craves approval, you might even have helped them put you up there.
There at least a couple of reasons why people put their spiritual leaders on pedestals. One is to distance themselves, so as to absolve them from following Jesus as ardently as their beloved leaders appear to do. The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said:
“What then, is the difference between an admirer and a follower? A follower is or strives to be what he admires. An admirer, however; keeps himself personally, detached. He fails to see that what is admired involves a claim upon him, and thus he fails to be or strive to be what he admires.”
In today’s language, Kierkegaard is saying people would rather be a fan than a follower of Jesus. But that can translate to our leaders as well. If we can elevate their devotion or character to an extraordinary level, it removes from us, as mere ordinary people, the burden of following them as they follow the Lord (1 Cor. 11:1). We create a two-tiered Christianity – the most devoted and the rest of us. We venerate our leaders to exonerate ourselves and diminish Jesus’ claim upon our lives.
Another reason is that our weekday lives are hectic and messed up enough. We may come to church to be reminded there is one refuge, one haven, one safe place. And there is! But it can be disorienting to find out that it’s actually not our church community, and that our leaders, being human, are just as broken as the rest of us who make up the church. Both sides of this equation – leaders and congregants – have a vested interest in suppressing authentic vulnerability.
No doubt you’ve heard someone say to another, “I just want you to be honest with me.” We tell people we want them to be vulnerable with us. But that’s not always true, especially with those we admire and rely on to be rocks of refuge in our own stormy lives – we want, even need them to be OK. We don’t always want to see our leaders’ feet of clay. Can spiritual leaders in such a landscape dare to admit fear, sadness, anger, and doubt?
Wisdom questions about “appropriate” vulnerability
Psalm 73 is not numbered among the seven “Penitential Psalms” (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143). But the author confesses his envy and disquieting doubt. These are not theoretical questions, but deeply personal, affecting his walk with God, “Surely God is good [to others]…But as for me, my feet had almost slipped” (Ps 73:1-2).
The psalm is written by Asaph, a worship leader of Israel, tasked with leading others in faithful worship, composing hymns and singing songs of praise to the LORD. Yet, as with any psalm of lament, we are allowed to overhear the emotions and inner cries of his heart. There’s a line in Psalm 73: “If I had said, ‘I will speak thus,’ I would have betrayed the generation of your children,” (Psalm 73:15).
Asaph is aware that if he had broadcast his struggles, it could have damaged the faith of other loyal followers of the LORD. He’s acknowledging that in his public role, it would not have been wise or caring for him to air his private struggles. If the leader publicly announced his private struggles that could undermine the faith of others.
To return to the example we gave earlier, it’s inappropriate and irresponsible for a youth leader to tell the young people in his youth group that he continues to struggle with looking at pornography. He might think he’s being authentic, real, and relatable. But that kind of vulnerability could easily dishearten those under his care, “If my leader, whom I look up to, is still being defeated, so many years later, why should I even try to fight sin?”
Vulnerability always calls for wisdom. Who is this vulnerability for? Is it wise and helpful for your listener to know this about you? You don’t have tell everyone everything. That’s not vulnerability. That’s emotional vomiting. It’s self-indulgent when it comes at the expense of others.
Every preacher knows there’s something intoxicating about airing your dirty laundry in front of a crowd. Far from threatening your status, a part of you (that you may not be aware of) senses that you’re enhancing it. I call this faux vulnerability. It can make you look quite humble. It’s the pastoral equivalent of the humble-brag and it’s pervasive, especially in evangelical churches that prize authenticity.
Make it a rule of thumb: if it doesn’t cost you to say it, in a genuinely fearful way (emotional exposure!) then you are more likely manipulating your audience than ministering to them. On the other hand, if you do sense the risk, remember Psalm 73. Pause and ask: is this confession of mine going to enhance people’s confidence in Christ and their personal quest for godliness?
And if you’re wondering – is this a person to whom I can/should risk opening my heart? A rule of thumb could be – is this person so deeply acquainted with their own heart of darkness, that I feel reasonably confident that nothing I say would shock them or cause them to withdraw? Hopefully they’ve proven over time, by their own vulnerability, that they will be wise and empathic stewards of your glass heart.
Earnest Questions about the Source of our Spiritual Authority
In his classic treatise on rhetoric, Aristotle highlighted three components of an effective public presentation. There was not only logos (the quality of your ideas, what you say) but ethos (the quality of your character, your credentials to speak on this matter) and also pathos (your sincere and experiential acquaintance with the words you are speaking). For Aristotle an audience was not only listening to what you are saying but also assessing, “Does he or she mean what they are saying?”
Young preachers often worry more about cleverness than character. Older preachers may rely more on a good story in the pulpit than tending to their private character outside of it. And yet, in his own ministry, Paul dared to appeal to the example of his own life (1 Cor. 4:13). Our Lord tells us to let our light shine before others (Matt 5:13ff), and the Bible exhorts us to be aware of our public example (1 Pet 2:12, Titus 2:8 et. al.). We are exhorted to watch closely not just our doctrines but our lives (1 Tim 4:16). As leaders we are called to be “examples to the flock” (1 Pet 5:3, cf. Phil 3:17).
Apparently, Aristotle was on to something. The public depth and power of our words over time will be strongly tied to our private character. If you want your teaching to have deeper impact, pay more attention to your private choices and private prayer life than time spent on sermon preparation.
But it’s because our lives speak louder than our words that we worry what affect real vulnerability, as opposed to faux vulnerability, will have on our credibility. Will anyone want to listen to me if they find out how terribly afraid and messed-up I really am?
This balance is a razor’s edge, and it’s easy to fall off and slip into thinking that the real power in our teaching or leadership comes from us, our example, our character, as if the best way we can serve those we lead is through modeling – or at least faking – strength.
But perhaps we can best serve those whom we are tasked to care for by letting them witness how much we ourselves need the blood of Christ to atone for us, the power of Christ to help us, and the presence of Christ to strengthen us on a moment-by-moment basis.
I have one or two teachers from whom I’ve learned the most. And what has helped me more than their brilliant sermons was witnessing when they confessed, in a truly vulnerable way, how much they needed Jesus’ presence and forgiveness. “If that could be true even for them,” I thought, “then there’s hope for me.” If those whom I thought were the best of us still desperately and continually need God’s grace, then there’s hope for the rest of us (1 Cor 15:10).
Maybe that kind of “who is sufficient?” and “when I am weak, then I am strong,” that 2 Corinthians-kind of confession is the best way we can serve those under our care. We reveal ourselves in a way that strengthens their hand on the plow (Luke 9:62).
There’s a spiritual authority in the humility that relentlessly points others away from ourselves as the source of our credibility and to the sufficiency of Christ. Look at Him, look at Jesus. Letting others witness how much we truly need Jesus every hour is one of the best ways we can lead by example.
That’s the authority of “this person seems to have spent much time with Jesus” (see the testimony in Acts 4:13). To go back to Aristotle’s categories, that kind of ethos is more powerful than our logos and it’s felt in our pathos (1 Cor. 2:1).
Dual and Asymmetrical Relationships
The desire to be a friend with someone you pastor is commendable (John 15:15). But precisely because of a leader’s role, the relationship is always a dual relationship and will always remain and need to be asymmetrical. It’s not about being ahead of them on the Way; it’s about our role as helper and servant. That’s what makes vulnerability so hard with “friends in the church.” You are always in a dual role: pastor and friend; leader and pastor. This dual role makes vulnerability problematic.
We can’t always be as vulnerable with our friends in the church as we hope they might be for us because we are there to serve their interests above our own. For anyone in your community who comes to you for spiritual direction, no matter how good of friends you are, you are first their pastor. Unless they are of such wisdom and spiritual maturity that it’s understood, between the two of you, that this relationship is atypical: you may be the preacher, but they are your spiritual leader.
It’s hard for many spiritual leaders to admit in a genuine way that some of the people to whom we preach know Jesus much better than we do – to the point that we ought to be learning from them. If you think you have no problem admitting that, then there’s a pretty easy test: do you have such an atypical friendship in your community? Are you under the care of someone ostensibly under your care? That’s a pretty good measure of your authentic vulnerability.
A Pervasive Lack of Self-Awareness
Here’s an irony rarely mentioned. Most leaders don’t know themselves very well. And, by definition, if you’re not self-aware – then you’re not aware of your unfamiliarity with yourself. Most leaders, especially in a church, think that we’re self-aware. But there’s a pretty easy test here as well: the first fruit of self-awareness is humility.
The more self-aware we become, the more humble we get, because we grow more in touch with the reality of our true condition. Lack of humility = lack of self-awareness. If you’re anything like me, that is a disturbing equation. The Bible speaks of “boasting” in our weaknesses (2 Cor. 12:9a). But you can’t boast about something you’re not aware of, and you can’t be aware of something you can’t name. But if we can name our weaknesses, and if we know Jesus like we say we do, then we won’t mind lifting up our weaknesses in front of others, “that the power of Christ may rest upon [us]” (2 Cor. 12:9b).
Another sure sign of self-awareness is this: you don’t get offended when someone else points out your weaknesses to you. Because you know, strictly speaking, that no one can say anything about you that is too bad. If you know that the real truth about you is worse than they could ever know, then you become unoffendable.
I’ve rarely met a leader who didn’t want to be vulnerable, but it’s much harder to find a leader who is unoffendable. Plenty of pastors are nice but that’s not a biblical virtue. What’s rare to find is a leader who is gentle and meek (2 Cor. 10:1).
The paradox of self-awareness is that the more self-aware you become, the more willing you are to admit how often you fail to be.
A Lack of Emotional Awareness and a Shallow Joy
“Rejoice in the LORD always and I say again, rejoice” (Phil. 4:4). We’ve heard often that we are not to be anxious about anything and that we can always choose joy. Well-meaning preachers might say, “Joy is the state of contentment and confidence, independent of the happenings around us but dependent upon the awareness of Christ and the right relationship we enjoy with God because of Him.”
And those are beautiful words. They remind us that joy is not dependent upon our circumstances, is to be distinguished from happiness and is often only proven in adversity. In churches, we laud people who put on a cheerful face of trust in the midst of heartbreaking personal circumstances.
And yet, this can communicate something false – that expressions of anger, sadness, fear and desolation are expressions of a lack of faith. As if half of the Psalms should be torn from the Bible. We forget that it can require more faith and more courage to pray our honest emotions before God’s face. Do we consider our faith to be more mature than King David’s? Are we as honest in our prayers?
The man who told us to “rejoice always, and I say again, rejoice” was also the man, toward the end of his life, who said “I have learned…to be content” (Phil. 4:10). We squelch vulnerability in our communities and in our own hearts by thinking we need to rush to the end, and push past our distressing emotions in what we think is an expression of mature faith.
Paul did learn joy and contentment. But it took many years. It was on the other side of shipwrecks, imprisonment, being flogged, often being hungry, constantly on the move, in danger on all sides, “exposed to death again and again.” He concludes his catalogue of heartbreak, “And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak?” (2 Cor. 11:23-31).
Apparently, the man who wrote “Be anxious for nothing” appreciated the pressure of naming and battling with his anxiety every day. He didn’t mind confessing his anxiety or his weakness, publicly. He did not forget that he was a man (2 Cor. 4:7).
Paul’s joy was not one that repressed fear and anxiety. He named it, prayed it, and brought it to the LORD, precisely in order to push through toward contentment. Paul doesn’t describe himself as joyful instead of sorrowful, but as “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor. 6:10). Both, together.
Have you ever considered when he repeats himself, “I will say it again, rejoice!” he’s allowing us to see him letting his own heart take courage (Ps.27:14) precisely in his chains, so that then he can turn around and encourage us not to lose hope in ours?
Before we rush ourselves past our emotions like sadness, fear and anger, we can take heart that even the man who wrote a third of our New Testament says, “I have learned…” If it took him years, and trials that are unfathomable for many of us, then we can hold out his words as an aspiration for our faltering hearts. Who is weak and we are not weak?
One of the myths discouraging vulnerability among Christians and leaders is that spiritually mature people don’t admit seasons of sorrow, darkness, uncertainty, doubt, and despair. Didn’t Moses doubt his calling? Elijah? Jeremiah? Even our Lord in the garden? You don’t end up singing songs in the night (Acts 16:25) without passing through more than a few dark nights of the soul.
A joyful melody that does not also contain strains of grief and complaint is more often keeping us from experiencing a true, unfettered joy rather than being an authentic expression of it. Sorrowful, yet rejoicing!
There are other reasons for a lack of vulnerability in the church that we could sketch:
- Misunderstanding the true nature of resilience, confusing it with grit
- A thin view of sin, treating it as primarily bad behavioral choices or failure of character
- A thin of view of holiness, treating it as a moral perfection that repents less and less
- Misunderstanding the nature of biblical confession as a private, solitary affair
- Understating the place of mutual confession as indispensable to our health
- Underestimating how the unconscious wounds of our past still affect us today
- A subterranean fear that if we let ourselves feel, our lives would unravel
If we say we don’t have a problem with vulnerability, could any of us dare say we have surrendered to God’s love in such a measure that we have been utterly set from free from fear?
The Paradox of Vulnerability
The paradox of vulnerability is that the more confident we are of our worthiness in God’s sight because of Jesus, and the more in tune we are with the Spirit of Jesus within us to help us (Phil. 1:19) the less defensive we will be, the more gracious, the more longsuffering with the failings of others, the less afraid of being seen, the more willing to repent we will become. We will no longer fear the judgments of men (1 Cor. 4:1-3), the more we live in the perfect love of God that casts out fear (1 John 4:18). And that perfect love makes us utterly unafraid to pour out our hearts before Him (1 John 3:20).
By passing through the long wilderness of our very real fears, the world becomes a perfectly safe place to be. We can say with the psalmist, “in God I trust and am not afraid. What can man do to me?” (Ps. 56:11). If we’ve been crucified with Christ so that we no longer live, but the life we live in the flesh we live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us, then vulnerability ceases to scare us. And when we see vulnerability in others, we recognize it for what it is – a demonstration of strength, an act of valor. Rather than causing us to withdraw, vulnerability draws us in. We see the pearl.
Vulnerability Counterfeits
We’ll save these for another post, but often, we can tell ourselves we’re being vulnerable but it’s just another way of managing appearances. We are still caught in the grind of the “imposter syndrome,” fearing we’ll be found out, desperate to keep up appearances.
No wonder so many of us get burned out. We are just tired.
I’ve had more than one close friend blow up his pastoral life seemingly beyond repair. Have you ever wondered: why would a person do that? Why would they sabotage their lives so catastrophically to the point there was no going back?
Because sometimes the pain of feeling trapped, not being honest, of not being truly vulnerable, became so agonizing that finally a part of them took matters into its own hands and acted out. Without excusing any hurt they caused, it was a cry for help. The great songwriter Leonard Cohen put it:
Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir..
I have tried, in my way, to be free…
If I, if I have been untrue … I hope you know it was never to you.
The songwriter knows even if he did betray those closest to him that the one he found it most difficult to be honest with has been himself. That’s another paradox of vulnerability – one of the most vulnerable moves we can ever make is to confess how seldom we’ve dared to be vulnerable.
Some Trajectories Forward
You can’t be a pastor today and not learn to inhabit vulnerability as a way of life in community. And you can’t be vulnerable alone. Confess your sins one to another…that you may be healed. We might confess to God in private to be forgiven and cleansed (1 John 1:8), but the deep healing we crave can only be found in vulnerability with others – that’s walking in the light (1 John 1:7). Finding a small, trusted community where we can experience solidarity, compassion and forgiveness, where we can bear the face of Christ, through the faces of one another, is non-negotiable if we want to be free.
We’ve said that every leader needs four people in his life.
- A battle-scared mentor
- A wise counselor
- A real friend
- A discerning spiritual director
Each one of those can and will be necessary for learning the art of vulnerability. But as much as our closest friends love us, the friend we need the most is the one who sticks closer than a brother.
With Jesus, there’s no need to hide. Jesus is the loving mirror. Jesus sees all and allows us to see ourselves. As Barbara Brown Taylor put it, that’s why we killed him. “He offered himself as a mirror they could see themselves in, and they were so appalled by what they saw that they smashed it.”
It’s a frightful thing to see ourselves, so no wonder we are so reluctant to let anyone else see us. But the more confident we become in God’s steadfast love, the more safe we will feel risking emotional exposure (Ps. 51:1).
Then, the call to vulnerability becomes a pathway to freedom, rather than a daunting challenge. We grow towards the deep freedom of having nothing left to lose and nothing left to be.