Pastor, “We don’t take hard stances here” is costing you testimonies.

Have you ever said it from the pulpit? Have you ever thought it in the planning meeting? “We don’t take hard stances here.” Maybe it’s why your beliefs aren’t on your website. Maybe it’s why you skipped that passage. I get it, because I was trained in it. But it’s a sermon of the serpent, and it’s quietly stealing the testimonies out of our churches. Here’s what’s underneath it, and how we get our voice back.

What purposeful ambiguity is

Purposeful ambiguity is a deliberate strategy of not stating clear convictions, on the website or from the pulpit, so nobody is offended and attendance isn’t threatened. We stay vague about hot-button topics like politics, sin, and sexuality so more people will keep coming.

The result is that premises get reinforced instead of challenged. People walk in with correct premises and false premises, and we accept all of them and take everybody on a journey. It becomes an endless journey to nowhere, with both sides sitting in the room.

The serpent’s question

The serpent’s first move was to make God’s clear word feel uncertain. This sermon asks: “Did God really say that plainly, and do we have to?” It doesn’t deny the truth outright. It just suggests we’d be wiser not to say it out loud yet.

Step 1 — Name where it came from

I was trained in the church growth movement. That’s where I found Christ, and it’s where I was trained as a young pastor. I implemented most of it. So when I critique it, I critique it out of love.

But we were told: don’t touch hot topics, don’t rub people the wrong way, don’t show your cards up front. Don’t put what you believe on your website, because it could be a stumbling block for first-time guests. Attendance became the highest value, not conversion. And it turned into a bait and switch. If you’re going to tell people the truth eventually, why not today?

Step 2 — Admit what our silence cost

When our voices went silent on important things, other voices came in and spoke in our place. Because we were cowardly, other people who were bold spoke up, and they didn’t always say the right thing.

We used to talk about preaching with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. We don’t have newspapers anymore. We have Google Trends. People are asking real questions about the things in their actual lives. If you refuse to speak into those things, your whole concept of relevance goes away. You’re not just avoiding the weeds. You’re refusing to walk into their home and deal with the real issues of their heart.

Step 3 — Attack the premise, then trust the word

Persuasion isn’t accepting every premise. You can state someone’s premise; you get in trouble when you agree with all of them. Often you have to challenge it, because you’re converting someone from something to something. And spoiler alert: the truth is controversial. The truth confronts us.

Either we trust the word of God or we don’t. God says His word “will not return to me empty” (Isaiah 55:11). When I preach the truth, the truth will do what the truth does. Sometimes the rich young ruler walks away sad (Mark 10:22). Sometimes people repent and their lives are never the same. I’m responsible to you, not for you. My job is to teach the truth. What you do with it is between you and the Lord.

Step 4 — Decide your highest value

Here’s the line I keep coming back to: where there’s purposeful ambiguity, there are no testimonies. Where there’s truth, there are testimonies. When you preach the unpopular, untrending, everlasting word of God, the Holy Spirit changes lives, and all of a sudden there are stories everywhere. The journey never led to a testimony. It was just a long, comfortable sit.

So ask your team the honest question: what’s our highest value, transformation and conversion, or attendance and an endless journey? And then do something about it. Put what you believe on your website this week. Name one premise your church keeps reinforcing that it should be challenging. Maybe you sat in the same “deep and wide” trainings I did. If the message was ambiguous, it wasn’t as deep as we said.

Let’s no longer be ambiguous about what Scripture says about sin, suffering, and sexuality. Tell the truth, with grace, and watch what God does with it. “We don’t take hard stances here”? The Bible takes hard stances, so we take hard stances. The Lord Jesus is explicit, so we are explicit. Truth produces testimonies.