Musings on Spiritual Matters

Often congregations believe that the most important skill in a preacher’s success is his speaking ability.  Often the ability to public speak seems to separate the good preachers from the bad preachers.  At first impression, this seems to be the case, but in a long term ministry this is further down the list for what makes a preacher successful.  I remember sitting across the table with Dale Jenkins, who stated “People can criticise me one side to the other.”  This is really a mature attitude that makes Dale one of the best preachers in the church.  The key behind the statement is that Dale is not going to become defensive over criticism.  This is one of the major downfalls of numerous preachers: the inability to handle criticism.  Typically, people who are being criticised attempt to defend themselves from the attacker.  This is usually the wrong response.  The last thing you want to do in the face of a critic is defend yourself.  The reason is that we come off as defensive.  This causes a break in the communication process.  The critic does not feel heard therefore he continues to attack.  Here is some of the best advice that I can give on this topic.  Call Jerrie Barber and buy him lunch.  Ask him to talk to you about criticism in the church and how as a minister you can use it to help the church and your ministry.  I have never meet a man who understood criticism better than he does.  He will blow your mind.  Also, he has a great sermon on this topic too.  Ask him for it.  Also, if you can get him, he is busy, get him to come and talk to  you and your leaders about dealing with criticism in the church.  He is worth every cent you pay him to do so.

Related posts:

1. Rules to Handle Criticism
2. Skills for Criticism
3. My First Criticism
4. The Skill of Fogging
5. The First Step in Intrepretation

Tags:

This entry was posted by Matthew on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Church News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.