As a pastor, I understand the need to be communicate excitement to my congregation. I am shepherding people—many of whom have busy lives with a lot of involvements and activities going on—and I need to talk about the church in a way that will spark interest and enthusiasm. I need to be appropriately passionate so they will hopefully structure their schedule so they can be involved.
But it’s one thing to be passionate and enthusiastic; it’s another to engage in exaggeration and hyperbole. When in our attempts to demonstrate passion and enthusiasm we cross over and engage in exaggeration and hyperbole, we sow seeds that will undercut our leadership and work against us long term. We either come off as disingenuous or out-of-touch with reality—both outcomes that cause people to view our words suspiciously. Hyperbole and excessive exaggeration causes us to lose credibility and sacrifice trust.
Ephesians 4:25 says, “Each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body” (NIV). Most of us, when we read those words, readily agree that stretching the truth and/or misrepresenting things weakens the fabric of the body of Christ. You cannot develop the sense of trust necessary for a healthy sense of community if some folks are going around spreading things that are untrue. But I would argue that the negative effects of exaggeration and hyperbole are just as real as the fallout of those who outright lie. Perhaps it’s not the intent of those who engage in hyperbole to sow unhealth within the community … and perhaps it takes a little while longer for those negative aftereffects to manifest themselves. But the consequences are every bit as certain and injurious.
Max DePree said, “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” When we engage in hyperbole and exaggeration, we are not “defining reality” for our people. We are obscuring reality … distorting reality … denying reality. Now, this doesn’t mean we should overcompensate in the other direction and imply that the sky is falling when, in fact, we may just be going through a lull or a downtime. Hyperbole can be just as detrimental when we’re being excessively negative and gloomy as it is when we’re trying to be zealous and enthusiastic. We just need to make sure that, in our attempts to be appropriately enthusiastic and earnest, we don’t cross over the line and become overwrought … that we don’t muddle the truth or do anything that hints at a promise that we can’t possibly honor or make good on.
I recall a situation, when I stepped into one of my pastorates, where the person overseeing our website lived more than a thousand miles away—an arrangement that made updating the site rather difficult and complicated. When I asked how this situation came to be, a staff member informed me this individual was from the community, had a deep love for the church, and chose to offer his services at no charge because of his longing to maintain a connection with a congregation he cared deeply about. For that reason, I chose to leave the arrangement in place. When our webmaster moved back to the community a couple of years later because of family circumstances, I felt sure he’d plug into the church. However, it really didn’t happen—his involvement started out as sporadic and eventually transitioned to non-existent. In time I learned that he and our staff member, who also hailed from that community, had gone to school together and this was the primary connection. Not that there’d been any deliberate or intentional motive to deceive—I genuinely believe that staff member was internally convinced of the accuracy of that statement—but the exaggerated nature of those words caused me to often question the truthfulness of future statements. I always wondered if I was being told the truth or if I was receiving a spun, distorted version of it.
So—where’s the line between appropriate passion and inappropriate hyperbole? I don’t know that there are firm principles I can lay out that will help us know when we’ve crossed the line. Perhaps the defining issue is the emotion and extravagance of the statement. It’s one thing to say, “There was a powerful sense of God’s presence in today’s service”, but it’s another to say, “I’ve never felt God’s presence so forceful and thick.” It’s one thing to say, “We’ve seen some very positive and encouraging things happen in the past few weeks”, but it’s another to say, “We’re on the cusp of a divine breakthrough the likes of which this church hasn’t seen in years.” It’s one thing to say, “It feels like we’re dealing with a sense of malaise these days”, but it’s another to say, “The boat is taking on water and the ship is going down!” Even though we might be incredibly well-meaning, when we make these kinds of excessive and exaggerated statements, it moves people backward rather than leading them forward.
For a lot of us, we’re not capable of seeing embellishment and hyperbole in ourselves. The line between appropriate enthusiasm and undue hyperbole is somewhat blurry, so we need to give a few trusted people the freedom to love us enough to point it out when they see it in us. For I know this: Over the long haul, hyperbole yields diminishing returns. We may get a family or two to show up by saying this year’s VBS is going to be “the best ever.” But if we continually employ hyperbole week after week, month after month, year after year, and event after event, eventually people will tune us out. As is the case with the boy that cried “Wolf!”, they will come to ignore our words if they detect a pattern of exaggeration and overstatement that doesn’t align with reality in our lives.
I’m convinced at the root of the person who routinely engages in hyperbole is a sense of passion. However, I don’t believe the passion is for the church or for Jesus. More often that not, it’s a passion for attention and a passion for ourselves. For when our passion is for the church and for Jesus, we will carefully monitor our words so that we don’t unintentionally or unthinkingly do anything that threatens the health of the church community.