Breaking the Silence

Why transparency is essential in the church family.

One of the peculiarities of the culture I live in is personal privacy. We are well known as a polite culture, but also a very reserved one. When my family immigrated from South Africa to Canada in the 90s, I can recall my mom waltzing into our neighbours' houses and starting to make tea for herself. To polite Canadian sensibilities, that was horrifying.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve observed close friends in our church choose to

transparently share a substantial burden — a challenging pregnancy — with a wide net within our church family. We talked about how countercultural it was, but also how it produced more support and more natural relationships.

We often use the words “private” or “personal” to describe aspects of our lives that we don’t share with others. Certainly, some information is more sensitive, and there may be good reasons not to share everything. But my observation is that we tend to err on the side of keeping things in, when we would be better served to open up.

Meaningful relationships happen when we open the private or personal components of our lives to a circle wider than we might be comfortable with. Paul says, “carry one another’s burdens,” but that’s only possible if we know what burdens people are carrying.

The choice to live transparently is an essential and necessary component of a healthy church family. Secrecy cloaked as privacy serves no one, and in many cases, only leads to isolation.

A church family is naturally a wider and deeper network than our immediate peer group. By extending our support circle beyond ourselves, we receive many benefits and confront a few realities:

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Surface our decision-making to others

Our decision-making — especially around major decisions like jobs, dating relationships, marriage, and finances — is often shrouded in secrecy. These decisions, made in isolation or with minimal input, can create a sense of disconnection. The irony is that what we are afraid to share with others, perhaps for fear of being judged, ends up fraying our relationships anyway as we navigate life without the help of others.

Conversely, when we proactively invite our church family to speak into major decisions, we strengthen the bonds of friendship. Of course, this comes with some discomfort. Our brothers and sisters may call us to faithful and patient obedience to Jesus when we’re tempted by impulsive decisions. Or they may challenge our assumptions or thinking. Though painful, that’s exactly what we need.

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Dispose of false pretense

Pretending to be something we’re not is perhaps the most common type of lie that infiltrates church families. The problem with lies is that they allow us to manipulate and control another person's perception of reality. These lies of false pretense are, in effect, an attempt to act like God. Only God defines reality. When we lie, we create our own alternate version of it.

You could also call this deception. And deception makes long-term trust and relationship impossible. Everything in relationships rises and falls on trust. When we pretend to be something false, we build our relationships — and the trust that comes with them — on something that will eventually fall apart.

On the other hand, when we’re honest about what’s going on in our lives, it deepens trust and invites people to build relationships with our authentic selves. When this happens in the wider church family, everyone wins.

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Invite others to help in our weakness

Gaining the support of others may be the most obvious benefit to breaking the silence, yet it’s often the hardest. We live in a world where strength and independence are central values. But as Christians, we’re called not only to embrace our gifts and strengths but also our weaknesses. It’s in embracing our weakness that we experience the Holy Spirit’s power and the support of community.

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Break the grip of secret sin

Ugly things grow in the dark. This is especially true of sinful behaviours. Yes, this is obvious in cases like pornography — and I suspect that’s well understood by my audience — but it’s also true of things that are harder to classify or easier to rationalize.

Let me give an example. Several years ago, some brothers in our church began engaging in sports-betting. (Ontario, where I live, has some of the most lax sports-betting laws in the world, and it has basically taken over the sports world.) We had never talked about it as a church, because I foolishly assumed we didn’t need to. Meanwhile, the group involved had avoided raising the subject with those who might challenge them. Before long, the practice had become normalized.

I found this very distressing. Not just because gambling has no place in the life of a Christian — that was the easy part to address. What grieved me most was that sin had taken root in our community and no one was willing to speak up. The secrecy was the most damaging part.

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Enable others to identify with our pain

One of the classic ploys of the enemy is to convince us that we are alone in our battles. When we share our struggles with a wider net of people, we push back against that lie. We are generally not as alone or unique as we think. Often, God has already placed people in our lives who can encourage and strengthen us through their own experiences.

No two experiences are identical, of course. But it’s usually our pride that keeps us from opening up.

By sharing our stories, struggles, and situations more widely, we help create a community with greater relational awareness and support. If we only confide in our peers, we lose the broader benefits of being part of a church family. But if we’re willing to share more openly, everyone benefits.

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Here are a few quick individualized suggestions to put these principles into practice:

• Intentionally reach out to build a relationship with someone new in the community.

• Share a specific challenge or pain point when giving a prayer request — the more specific, the better.

• Ask someone for help this week. Make it a clear, actionable request.

• Invite someone to challenge your thinking when you’re uncertain about something.

• Apologize and seek forgiveness where you’ve lived under false pretense.
  
  

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A final thought:
The burden does not only fall on those carrying the burden. It also falls on the church community to risk being nosy. We may step on a few toes — but stepping on someone’s toe might help them avoid breaking their back under the weight of an unshared burden.

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