Recently on Facebook I asked a question: “What’s one key measure by which you would consider an organization ‘healthy’?”
There were a number of awesome suggestions. So good! I’m still chewing on some of them. I highly recommend heading over there and reading them. Then use them as a rubric for your own context. If you hold those side by side with an organization you’re involved with, what do you notice? Feel free to chime in on FB if you haven’t already!
One response connected with some of my own conclusions that I’ve been coming to. This certain friend responded with one word: Love.
Which dovetails with my answer to my own question: One measure of a health organization is the value and practice of speaking the truth in love.
This phrase is, of course, borrowed directly from St. Paul:
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.
(Ephesians 4:15)
Without speaking, we remain disconnected from one another, from ourselves, and even from God. Where there is no communication, there is no reality. Love that is hoarded in your heart is not love. Speak gratitude and praise and encouragement out loud! No one can read your mind. People need to hear loving words before they can internalize and believe them. Real love does not stay silent. And—I must add—especially not in the face of wrongdoing and injustice. Love that protects the reputations of wrongdoers over defending the wronged is a warped version of love, no matter how much spiritual spin one may put on it.
Without truth, all kinds of lies can be told and believed, and all kinds of details can be conveniently omitted. Whether by commission or omission, lying is still lying. We even suffer from our own lies that we tell ourselves, or the truths we unwittingly blind ourselves to. We all need some solid truth-telling friends, who tell us about ourselves and the God who loves us—it’s far too easy to believe our own negative press. Sometimes self-talk only gets us so far. We have ears for a reason. I firmly believe that when Paul talks about “speaking the truth in love,” what he has in mind is a communal dialogue. A real conversation, in which every voice is heard—even when the conversation is an uncomfortable one. Discomfort often causes us to recoil and plug our ears to the full truth. Yet if the narrative is controlled by one person or party, we can be sure that it is merely a highly curated version of the truth.
Without love, words can become weapons. Love must be the source. We can say something true from a lot of different sources: anger, frustration, self-righteousness, or shame. Love must color the tone. We can say something true with a lot of different tones: contempt, arrogance, annoyance, or dismissiveness. Love must be the fruit. Life-giving fruit like patience, kindness, generosity, and humility. (1 Corinthians 13, anyone?) Again, I believe Paul has the community in mind. Our organizational health depends on the fruit of love being borne on every branch. In every conversation. In every relationship. In every challenging situation. In every conflict.
Without a robust practice of speaking the truth in love, we may grow—by whatever measure we may choose—but not necessarily into a “mature body.”