The Power of Criticism

"I don't know what the key to success is, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."
- Bill Crosby

Ever notice that one person can love a certain type of food, and not the other? Or maybe even the person sitting directly across from you has a completely opposite preference. Taste is subjective and so are a lot of other things. We each have different preferences of food, color, music, fashion, etc because we are all different in our opinions.

Recently at the church I call home, the production department has received some not so favorable reviews. In fact, a few have not been critical but rather scathing.

Let me start off by saying... this church, the church I call home is designed to instill a creative experience of worship with a variety of elements. That is how we've always done it. I truly believe because of it we have grown as a whole.

Having heard the negative feedback it made my head spin. It made me angry, and as a volunteer in this area of ministry it made me want to call several people out. As the week went by I continued to think. It seems as though those people are more concerned about worshiping a list of things they need rather than worshiping the creator himself. Are we more concerned about ourselves or reaching out to a new attendee and turning them towards Christ?

Last week, I read a great article by Doug Fields about dealing with criticism in the church. Here is a quote that really caught my eye on how to reduce criticism called the “10% factor.” It goes like this...

 

“At any given time, 10% of my audience is not going to like me. It doesn’t matter what I do, there are going to be people who don’t know my heart, my motives, my story, etc… They are going to be negative no matter what."

If we continue to go on and seek validation from someone other than ourselves, we put power in that person's hands.  BING!

So lately, I've realized that in life we can either give up on what we are doing or choose to continue with the way we have always done things. We can continue to create and be fired up with the amount of lives changing or get wrapped up in an individuals complaints. Because those rewards far outweigh the criticism.

The rest is out of our control. At the end of the day, the only thing we can control is our response to criticism. It's hard because criticism stings!