Verbal Spewage

My friend Marc and I are supposed to write a blog entry with the same title, and then we’ll compare notes. His site is www.twentymillionthings.blogspot.com if you are interested in reading his rant on 'verbal spewage.'

In terms of my thoughts on verbal spewage, I was going to say that sometimes when we verbally spew on people they quite simply can’t hear what we are saying. I think the key thing in learning wisdom (and I haven’t learned it yet by a long shot) is learning when one should spew verbally and when to keep one’s damn fool mouth shut. That, I think, must be the essence of true wisdom…

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about churches, for instance, and church leadership. A lot of these ideas and concepts I have come out of my own experiences as one who spent a lot of years in leadership positions. Some experiences were positive—I think we influenced a number of people’s lives for the better—but overall the experience was probably more negative and hurtful. Years after the fact, now that I’ve had the time and opportunities to be healed up, I feel that I have a little distance and some objectivity about those events. I’ve learned a lot, mostly about what not to do, but there are some positives in there as well.

But I have found that not everybody wants to hear my ideas. I have learned over the years that there is a price tag associated with pretty much everything leaders do. If leaders want to maintain the status quo, then there is a price to pay for that. If they want to introduce real and lasting change, then there is a price to pay for that as well. The key thing is, I think, is knowing why you want change; what is it for? What are we trying to accomplish? And then, building enough elasticity into the new processes so that the new thing doesn’t become rigid, formal, and institutionalized. If that happens then we’re right back to where we started.

So a few years ago I was all fired up to try and influence church for change, but I found that in my verbal spewages I probably turned off more people than I turned on to my ideas. There is such a thing as coming on too strong, isn’t there? Even though what we have to say may be good and worthwhile and even what someone needs to hear, badgering them actually is counter-productive in the long run. So now I have to live with that legacy. Even some fairly critical things I’ve written on this blog may have come back to bite me in the end, but it was all part of my verbal spewage process.

So here I am a few years later, perhaps sadder and hopefully a little bit wiser for it. I have learned that it is very hard to convince people that you aren’t a crank because you keep harping on the same things and, for some reason, nobody listens!? We had a guy like this at the church where I was an elder and pastor. All he did was criticize and complain about everything the leadership did, but the strange bit was—he actually made some good points from time to time! But nobody could hear him because all of his verbal spewage. He had permanently soured people against him, and all it did was create a vicious cycle whereby he was increasingly frustrated—and every opportunity he had he let everybody know it.

The scary part for me was that the other day I had a bizarre thought—I wondered, am I turning into this guy? Bizarrely enough I think I can actually see how he got started, and it makes me appreciate—just a bit—his point of view. But I definitely don’t want to end up like him. Somebody said that if we don’t truly love other people and treat them with respect, then no matter what we say, it’s as if we are covered with clanging gongs and cymbals. Can’t hear what you’re saying because the crashing in my ears is too loud!

Perhaps that is the secret to verbal spewage—we can say the hard things that need to be said, but only if the other person absolutely knows that we love them and wish the best for them. Then the other person may actually listen… and we may learn as much in the process.