Responding to Criticism

How does your church leadership respond to criticism? This is a great topic of conversation for your next church staff meeting. I’m sure every pastor and person on the church staff has been criticized at one time or another; it’s what you do with the outcome that matters.

This topic was brought to my attention recently when one of ChurchTechToday’s sponsors was written about on Bill Seaver’s blog (Bill is a truly talented social media consultant). On a side note, it’s always interesting when people you know, but don’t know each other, make contact in cyberspace without you.

Basically, Bill found BombBomb’s video email services and tweeted that they were misrepresenting themselves as a true video email solution. Instead of ignoring what Bill had to say, the folks at BombBomb actually reached out to Bill, heard him out, discussed his points, then explained their point of view. Really, it was a great picture of how to respond well to criticism.

So how does your church respond when a member expresses concern or outright angst? I searched the web and found a few helpful articles:

From Ron Edmondson (fabulous blogger on leadership)

• 5 Right Ways to Respond to Criticism
• 5 Wrong Ways to Respond to Criticism

From ChurchLeaders.com

• How to Handle Personal Criticism
• 10 Ways I Deal with Criticism

From MichaelHyatt.com

• The Number One Way Leaders Get Derailed
• Why Leaders Cannot Afford to be Easily Offended

Lauren Hunter is a freelance writer, church technology consultant (http://lhpr.net) and founder of the blog ChurchTechToday (http://ChurchTechToday.com), Technology for Today’s Church.