In recent years transparency has become a value of increasing importance. In relation to safeguarding, transparency guards against abuse. Where abuse in church settings has come to light, a lack of transparency in leadership is often one of the factors that allows the abuse to persist. Making transparency a key value in church life guards against this.
Moreover, there are good theological reasons for transparency. The apostle Paul urges the Ephesian Christians to ‘have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them’ (Eph.5:11). This echoes a comment in John’s Gospel that ‘whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God’ (John 3:21).
In the end, everything will be made known. ‘[The Lord] will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and expose the motives of the heart’ (1 Cor. 4:5). And in the context of a warning against hypocrisy, Jesus Himself declares ‘what you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs’ (Luke 12:3).
All this ought to create in us a bias toward transparency. We should instinctively favour openness and honesty. For not only do these things guard against evil, they also have a more positive effect – they deepen our relationships. In 1 Thessalonians, Paul says that, out of deep love, he was delighted to share ‘not only the gospel of God but our lives as well’ (1 Thess.2:8). The quality of a relationship is rightly measured by the extent of openness and honesty it allows.
Openness is good for relationships, good for accountability, good for the family of the church.
And yet…
Even the most open of families know that not everything gets shared. Sometimes that relates to maturity. Certain things are held back from younger children because their level of maturity means the information would be at best confusing and at worst disturbing to them.
In other situations, members of a family might be puzzling something through. They aren’t yet sure of their plans and many very different options are still on the table. Those different possibilities might have huge implications for others in the family. But sharing all the various possibilities at the point where they are still completely speculative, and may well soon be set aside, risks creating huge unnecessary worry and concern. In such a situation the kind and loving thing will often be to wait until the options are becoming clearer, so that it is only the more likely possibilities that are shared for discussion.
If a church leadership feels the need to be transparent about absolutely everything, including their early speculative discussions, it will hamper their ability to function, and it is likely to produce a high degree of confusion in the church family as a whole. In some ways a central purpose in leadership is that there should be a group of people who are tasked with absorbing information and discussing possibilities, in order that those not in leadership do not have to.
But of course, here’s the rub: abusive leaders will justify their lack of transparency on these very grounds. All of us sometimes use reasonable arguments to do unreasonable things. Which means we might persuade ourselves that transparency isn’t needed for all the wrong reasons, without even noticing that we are doing so.
So, here’s a rule of thumb. There should always be someone else who knows what is going on. And then, in wider discussion, we should always ask ourselves the question ‘why?’ Why am I choosing to reveal this piece of information – is it out of love for others, or is it just to make me look good? Will others be blessed by what I’m sharing? Or, alternatively, if we are not sharing something, again we should ask the question ‘why?’ Why am I withholding this information: is it really out of love for others, or is it actually out of love for myself – for my own comfort or my own reputation?
We need such questions to help us clarify the motives of our hearts.
