When Silence Becomes Culture: Creating Healthy Church Leadership

Churches can be healthy places.

Places where people can belong, grow, disagree, ask difficult questions, admit when they are struggling, and still know they are valued.

That kind of culture doesn’t just happen. It needs to be cultivated and protected, especially by those of us who lead.

A healthy church culture is about trust and belonging. It needs accountability. It needs humility. It needs people to be able to disagree without everything becoming a battle.

One part of this is what is sometimes called psychological safety — creating an environment where people can say, “I’m not sure,” “I disagree,” or “I think we’ve got this wrong,” without worrying about what happens afterwards.

It doesn’t mean everyone gets their own way, or that every criticism is right. Leadership still has to lead.

It means people can speak honestly, and leaders are secure enough to listen.

As church leaders, one simple thing we can do is say it out loud:

“I want you to push back. I want you to tell me when you think I’ve got something wrong. I want to hear what I’m not seeing.”

But saying it isn’t enough.

There need to be actual ways for people to have those conversations. Somewhere to go with a concern. Someone they can talk to. Some way of saying, “This doesn’t feel right to me.”

Sometimes a church culture becomes closed without anyone ever saying, “You can’t question me.”

There is simply nowhere for the question to go.

And sometimes people don’t speak because they are frightened. Frightened of being seen as a troublemaker. Of undermining the leadership. Of being labelled negative, disloyal or difficult. Or of discovering that raising a concern changes how people see them.

So they hold back.

They become careful about what they say and who they say it to. And sometimes they carry things that were never given a place to be spoken.

That matters.

Because a culture isn’t really what we say it is. It is what people experience.

James says, “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” (James 1:19).

It sounds simple. It isn’t always.

And Proverbs reminds us that the first person to speak can seem right until someone else comes along and questions them (Proverbs 18:17).

That is worth remembering in leadership.

Sometimes the person who disagrees with me is the person who helps me see something I couldn’t see.

I know this from my own experience.

I lead Lighthouse, but I’m also accountable to a board of trustees. Sometimes they disagree with me. And that’s OK. In fact, it’s healthy.

Sometimes I go into a meeting with a particular outcome in mind and don’t get the outcome I was hoping for. At the time, that can be frustrating.

But that is part of healthy leadership and accountability.

The same should be true in our churches — with PCCs, eldership teams, leadership boards and whole-church meetings.

None of us has a hotline to God.

None of us gets everything right.

Being the leader doesn’t mean being the only person in the room who can hear from God.

I’m a leader, but I’m also a human being. I get things wrong. I have blind spots. I make decisions as a complicated person, shaped by my history, emotions, assumptions, pressures and all sorts of things I’m probably not even aware of.

Other people will sometimes see things I can’t.

That doesn’t mean I have to become unsure of myself.

Humility isn’t insecurity

I can be confident in who I am. I can be confident in my calling. I can make decisions and take responsibility for them.

And I can still be questioned.

I don’t need to win every argument. I don’t need to defend myself every time someone disagrees with me. I don’t need to turn disagreement into disloyalty.

I can hear it, think about it, and even change my mind.

Perhaps that is part of secure leadership: being strong enough to be questioned without feeling threatened by the question.

If you are part of a church where questions are genuinely welcome and disagreement doesn’t threaten belonging, guard that culture. It is precious.

If you are part of a church where people have learned to hold back, where difficult conversations have nowhere to go, or where speaking honestly has caused harm, we need to recognise that and do better.

And if you’ve been on the receiving end of a closed culture, perhaps you need to hear this:

It shouldn’t have been that way. Your question wasn’t the problem. Your voice wasn’t the problem.

Healthy church leadership isn’t about everyone agreeing. It is about creating a culture where people can speak honestly, disagree well, be accountable to one another, and still belong.

For those doing this well, guard it. For those who aren’t, we can do better.

Rev’d Jon Swales

photo: Jon Swales