Learning and Leading in Ministry: Chapter Four

The Silhouette Syndrome

Learn forthrightness.

A silhouette appears when light shines on everything except the actual subject. The emerging profile yields ample visual clues and enables viewers to tell whether an object is a bird, a plane or a flower. Silhouettes of well-known images, like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln may be easily recognized, even with no direct lighting their faces. Nearly every holiday finds kids scissoring turkeys or Lincoln profiles out of black construction paper. Subtle, yet stark, demure, yet enlightening, silhouettes intrigue us. The absence of light can be as revealing as its presence.

Art project silhouettes are one thing. Silhouettes that show up in when we decline to shine the light of truth on right things are something else. For example, as citizens, we become outraged when law enforcement officers “look the other way” while patrolling crime infested neighborhoods and allow prostitution and drug dealing to go down in plain view. We complain bitterly at judges who let DUI offenders off the hook, permitting them to get behind the wheel of another car and risk the life of yet another innocent bystander. They may not realize it, but they reveal more of their core values by their silence than by their noise.

Edmund Burke said “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Good men who do nothing, in fact, may not be good. James 4:17 says, “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” Failure to do good creates a deafening silence, a blinding darkness. In Christ’s parable, the men who crossed to the other side of the road to avoid contact with the wounded traveler may have been able to write or speak at length on caring for the sick, but their failure to do something good at a critical moment exposed the content of their hearts. What they didn’t do has made a far more lasting impression than anything they did. The legacy of a hard heart, an uncaring spirit—-or even an apostate mind—-forms in the wake of those who simply decline to act. In leadership, you not only reveal your true values by the things you do, but also by the things you don’t do. Ignoring a problem may be worse than mishandling it because it looks like you don’t care about it.

Those who desire truth will not flee the flak of opposition to retreat into the safe grayness of silence. Imagine if doctors vowed to share only good news with their patients. Imagine if contractors schemed to hide the negatives and talked only about the positives of a proposed building project. Likewise, leaders who key in on safe subjects that make few waves, all the while glossing over equally critical subjects, abdicate their responsibility. Doing some good things, but omitting others will not work. Com-missions cannot compensate for o-missions. We reveal our true interests through our negatives as much as our positives. Jesus said, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.” Matthew 23:23. Undone matters broadcast loudly the default values of our hearts. Pentecostal sage T. F. Tenney says, “Anything that goes unpreached will soon go unpracticed.”