Why I Value Vulnerability

I read a lot. At least that’s what people tell me. I don’t read nearly as much as I want to, and it seems I’m always pushing to get a little bit of reading time in.

A hefty chunk of my reading these days is blogs. I subscribe to more than thirty blogs and read roughly twenty a day. Mostly pastors or other leadership-oriented blogs. But from time to time I find myself deleting a blog from my RSS feed. It’s not because I disagree with the blogger; I intentionally read people I sometimes disagree with. And it’s not because the blogger has offended me; I don’t offend so easily. And it’s not because the blogger doesn’t have good things to say.

it’s almost always because he or she blogs like an “expert.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m always looking for expert insights and information. I crave it. I depend on it. BUT there’s a difference between being an expert...and sounding like one. There are many people who have the education and experience to speak as an expert.

But “experts” turn me off. One blogger in particular, a spectacularly successful pastor, is a prime example. I admire him. I respect him. I praise God for him and the work he and his church are doing. But I deleted him from my feed, because he writes like an expert. He speaks with the authority of someone who has arrived. A know-it-all. That not only turns me off; it bores me.

Which, come to think of it, is the gripe a lot of folks have about churches and Christians--and especially pastors--in general. We don’t listen, we talk. We have all the answers (or act like we do). We know it all.

Yuck.

May I say again: Yuck. If I am turned off--and bored--by such attitudes, why should I be surprised that others are? God help me to resign from the ranks of the “experts.” God help me not to act like someone who has arrived. God help me to be way too curious and way too humble and way too vulnerable to sound like an expert on anything....except maybe God’s incredible sense of humor in extending grace to me!