The Problem with ‘Nice’ Christian NGOs

It is a problem when the ‘world’ mistakes Christians as being ‘nice’, or rather when it interprets ‘nice’ as being synonymous with ‘Christian’.

Stating that Jesus was a ‘nice’ person in this light is positively insulting and to some, he quite frankly wasn’t ‘nice’. He challenged, lead, disciplined and even rebuked.

It is sad to me that in many Christian NGOs, we often are ‘nice’ to each other when we should rather lead, challenge, discipline and yes, even rebuke!

This is not to say that we shouldn’t also be ‘nice’ – caring, compassionate, understanding, full of grace and love and with great forbearance forgive one another’s sins, living as far as it depends on us, at peace with everyone. But to be good stewards and to live faithfully to Christ, we cannot and should not always be just ‘nice’.

We must not be scared to lead, challenge, discipline and rebuke and speak the truth. In love.

Sadly, we haven’t learnt how to do this. We are scared of speaking out boldly so we don’t hurt one another’s feelings. We shy away from discipline and holding people accountable to avoid conflict. We are scared of leading courageously that we should be seen as power hungry. We don’t talk about effectiveness from a fear of being seen as worldly, corporate or domineering. And if we do talk about it we often lack the guts to follow through.

As such, Christian NGOs often become ‘nice’ places to work. They have ‘nice’ people, who are ‘nice’ to one another, who do ‘nice’ things, in a ‘nice’ way, who gently and with great forbearance work alongside each other to make a ‘nice’ difference to the world.

However, generally, while we work hard we are quite often ineffective and inefficient with frustrated staff, desperately trying to make a difference in serving our King, but caught within the confines of what feels like a local Church youth club. We are desperate to be lead and empowered but feel like we are ‘managed by (s)mothering’ if being managed well at all.

Lets reiterate the point: we shy away from clear leadership to avoid conflict, we don’t hold people to account when their behaviour is outside the accepted norms, we are unclear in the boundaries of the employer / employee relationship and we find it difficult to maintain performance through managerial relationships - are you my pastor or my line manager?

So. There’s something here about needing strong courageous leadership – and not being afraid to use it or be a leader. And there’s something about being able to challenge, discipline and rebuke. This kind of rings bells with being a called to be a good steward and a faithful manager doesn’t it? Or does being a good steward mean just being ‘nice’?

For me, I don’t think it does.

In fact, the problems that come from shying away from leading, challenging, disciplining and rebuking result in more conflict than we start out with.

One of the mistakes I think we often make is that we confuse the outworking of ‘Church family life’ into managerial relationships. What do I mean by this? Well, we’re called (in part) to live in community, in relationship with one another and our neighbour. One way this community is worked out is through the living body of Christ i.e. the Church. Not the Church building – the Church – Us. i.e. we see (or we should see) ‘family’ worked out in it’s fullest sense through the Church i.e. through the body of Christ.

In Christian NGOs, we often take ‘Church’ and ‘family’ and try and work it out in our managerial relationships. We end up with a ‘parenting / pastoral’ approach to line management where conflict, disagreement and discipline become as painful as they are to address within our own family – and it often hurts as much when it goes wrong. We distort the employee / employer relationship to the extent that we make it almost impossible for us to actually manage our staff.

A Christian NGO has (or should have) clear aims and objectives. It has legal obligations and contractual relationships it must fulfil. It has an employee / employer divide where there are managerial relationships in place and where there is ‘contractual accountability’ for performance. There may be salary arrangements and benefits. Annual leave, maternity pay, disciplinary procedures, vision statements, performance reviews, policies, systems, processes etc… Why? Because we (hopefully) have a clear vision and a source of funds to which we are publicly accountable – and to achieve that vision we need to draw boundaries to ensure we get there. Otherwise we end up going in so many different directions that we fall (or tear ourselves) apart.

Do these things exist in a family? No. Would a family be a family if it had them? Perhaps! However I would not like to live in one! As one of the recent Apple Mac adverts puts it, would you run a family like an office? – with time cards, promotions and performance reviews? NO! It may then be pertinent to ask the question: Can you run an office [Christian NGO] like a family?

I think in many cases we really do try to! And in my experience it does not work. I’m not saying in anyway that the value and quality of ‘Christian’ relationships nor the priorities of Biblically based values should be lost within a Christian NGO, more to the point, they should be demonstrated in every way. Whether in the disciplinary procedure, supervisory catch-ups, duty of care for staff or in maternity pay. But the misapplication of ‘family’ into ‘nice’ Christian NGOs brings many an ill… Combine this with a lack of bold leadership and consistent direction and over the long term, unresolved conflict and strain build up gradually wearing staff members down or result in a cataclysmic eruption of conflict and breakdown in relationships.

So what am I calling for?! A hard nosed, corporate, results-oriented meritocracy? Certainly not!! I have been there!

This is a calling for simply just good stewardship. A challenge to leaders to lead. A challenge for managers to faithfully manage; fairly, compassionately, with justice, with understanding, with grace; with discipline, without favouritism, without fear, with authority, with respect and with clear consequences… nipping in the bud laxity and disrespect, addressing issues of conduct and behaviour while looking out for every opportunity to encourage, support, coach and build up their staff.

Author: Chris Jones