Why not follow our example?

If you want your church to prosper, why not suggest that you make 1999 a "Criticism Free Year" at your local church?

At Coolum Beach, any member or visitor has an opportunity to contribute to the worship program. But, of course, we have to have rules. And the main rule is "No criticism."

We state those rules each week. They are:

1. Any person can make a presentation up to five minutes long.

2. You are not to criticise something someone has just said. (If you disagree with something someone says, you can put your viewpoint next week.) Similarly, you cannot criticise our denomination or its leaders, or criticise another demonination.

Ducks in a shooting gallery

Think of how damaging criticism is to the Adventist church.

We criticise our leadership as if they were ducks in a shooting gallery. So the nice, warm, soft leaders can't take it any more. They drop out of the system. That leaves us with those who have thick hides to do the job. (And thank God that we have those with thick hides, otherwise the job wouldn't be done.)

But those with thick hides are not usually the warm, people-oriented types. So we get an imbalance in our administration -- all thick-hides and no warm fuzzies.

More than that, because we criticise their decisions, they don't like to make decisions. The less decisions they make, the less criticism they get. So we get adminstrators who tend to avoid making decisions.

And if they do make them, they like to make those decisions as committee decisions -- so that they won't be blamed for them. As a result, we need more administrators to do the same job.

If we laity gave up criticising our church leaders, the change would be remarkable.

Why not declare 1999 a world-wide "criticism free year"? If we can get rid of criticism for just one year, imagine the difference it would make.

Anyone else want to support this criticism free year?

Click here to email us your thoughts about a criticism free year -- and we'll post them here at the website.