February 6, 2012

Being Nice or Not

I sometimes have trouble distinguishing between being nice and being kind. In my experience, it’s a distinction that church leaders often struggle with as well, especially staff. This may not be true in every church – we all know that some people have no trouble with being too nice – but I’ve worked at a few places where everyone was trying to do good work, and the desire to avoid conflict overshadowed the need to be honest. I have often been tempted to sacrifice honesty and open conversation in the pursuit of getting along, imagining that this meant the workplace was conflict free, and that I was treating those around me with love.

In churches, where we often feel pressure to get along as part of a religious community, we can occasionally confuse niceness with being Christ like. Jesus was kind, but he wasn’t always nice. He said difficult and sometimes painful things to those around him if they were the truth and needed to be said. While I’m not suggesting that we tell the church treasurer to “get behind me Satan,” I do think it’s important that church leaders find ways to communicate difficult truths, both big and small, with each other and with the staff.

No one wants to express frustration or disappointment or anger and no one really enjoys a difficult conversation, but if those conversations don’t happen, tension and frustration build and build, and growth can’t happen. A simple problem can turn into passive aggressive and unhappy employees and community members, and have an effect on the entire community.

Priests and church leaders shouldn’t be afraid to tell their employees that they are doing something wrong. As an administrator at various organizations, I have often wanted more feedback from my bosses, good or bad. Without feedback it is easy for volunteers and employees to feel unsupported and unaccountable. As long as expectations are made clear, a little straightforward and specific criticism (and praise, employees also need to know what they are doing right) can go a long way. While having these conversations, remember that the goal is not to lay blame, but to do God’s work and do it well.

From time to time I have struggled to communicate with other staff members and parishioners. This might mean telling a parishioner that she can’t come to the office to use the computer today because I have work to do, even though I know she will be disappointed, or communicating with a staff member again that he really needs to get things to me on time. Occasionally these weren’t easy conversations to have, but when I didn’t do this it lead to resentment and made the office difficult to run.

Of course, these are small things, but they are symptomatic of a tendency to confuse being nice with being followers of Jesus Christ. Niceness is a useful artifice that helps strangers get along. A healthy community requires more than niceness. Real work doesn’t get done if everyone is simply nice without being honest, and community can’t grow unless we go deeper and bring our true selves to the table.