I think of myself as an old Gaelic warrior, scarred and grizzled, hammer-fisted, able to subdue any foe with one fierce and piercing look. I'm brave to my own peril. I'll be the last man standing, wearing the blood of entire armies.
But really, I'm a wimp. Even the hint of mildly bad news can make my heart flutter like a budgie with a cat in the room.
Stuart Briscoe once said that the qualifications of a pastor are the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the skin of a rhinoceros. It's that rhino hide that has, for me, been a long time developing.
I didn't know when I first became a pastor that you're a sitting target, a soft wide one. How you speak, what you speak about, your clothing, your smile, your work ethic. That's just the beginning of a very long list of faults. I have been told I'm too loud, too quiet, too theological, too experiential, too driven, too lazy.
I bleed easily. All this cuts me.
But not as deeply as it used to. Over the 24 years I pastored, and now in my role as a professor (where every student I teach, plus my Dean, gets to evaluate me in writing every three months!), I have developed some thickness of skin. But a thick skin cannot be gained at the cost of a hardened heart. To guard against criticism while deepening in your affections for the critic, to want the best for them even when they don't want that for you, is a miracle of grace. It's grace we can easily miss.
Here are three disciplines that have helped me not to miss it.
• Hear the critic. I have never had one that wasn't at least 5 percent right.
Sometimes a critic is God's means of telling you what you couldn't hear from your friends, family, and fans. Your BFF wishes you were more caring, but she says it so gently and subtly, you shrug it off. Mrs. Lambast is neither gentle nor subtle; she bludgeons you with the revelation.
I have never met a critic who wasn't at least 5 percent right.
Some critics are like Shimei, the angry follower of King Saul who, on a very hard day for King David, names David's sins and failures. One of David's hatchet men offers to dispense with Shimei. David tells him no, that he's pretty sure this is God talking to him (2 Sam. 16).
That's not a bad assumption. I've learned if I assume God is speaking through my critic, he indeed does, roughly, give or take, 10 out of 10 times.
• Hear the voice of the Father. A thin skin causes a unique kind of deafness: we can't hear the Spirit testifying with our spirit that we are children of God (Rom. 8:15). Paul sees this inner dialogue of Spirit to spirit as the grounds for knowing we are not condemned, that God works everything out for good, and that nothing, not in time or space, can separate us from God's love.
When we know deeply, in the inmost places, God's voice speaking to us the same affirmation he spoke to Jesus (You are my son, my daughter, whom I love; with you I am well pleased) then the voice of a mere critic can't cut very deeply. We can say to that voice what Paul, on the basis of Christ's resurrection, says to death: Where is your sting?
There's a third thing.
• Hear the critic's heart. Angry people are usually hurt people. Their disappointment with you is often rooted in a much deeper and rawer disappointment: with a parent, a spouse, a job, life itself. I can't recall one harsh critic who, as I got to know them, didn't have a story to break your heart.
Like Debbie. She walked into my office one day in a rage. She savaged me with a litany of my failings. She turned to storm out.
But I was wearing my Rhino hide. So I asked her to stay. I thanked her for what she said. I asked her to help me become a better pastor. And I asked her how I could help her. And then, as she poured out her story of loss and loneliness, she cried and cried, and I ministered grace to her aching heart.
It was one of the best drubbings I ever took.
Mark Buchanan teaches pastoral theology at Ambrose Seminary in Calgary, Alberta.
Copyright © 2016 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
