critique

i love good comments from people. i really enjoy it when people brag about something i have done or said. it makes my day or night we someone says that what i have lead has been amazing.

of course, i don't usually grow much from these positive comments that i love to hear. actually, i usually grow the most form negative comments. for me the negative comments usually point the clearest to my weaknesses. in some ways the negative comments are closer to honest critique than any of the positive comments i have ever received.

according to wikipedia criticism is:

the activity of judgement or interpretation ... the process of offering valid and well-reasoned opinions about the work of others in a friendly manner rather than an oppositional one.

i need people to "reason" about what i am doing so that it's weaknesses can be pointed out and i can work on improving those areas. that's why i joined the weekly group at flickr. weekly is a place where you can post one picture a week and then people offer their criticism concerning your photo. i want to improve as a photographer and the weekly group is helping with that. i love it. the positive comments are good but truthfully i usually learn allot more from the negative comments.

i feel the same is true in ministry. the positive feedback is nice but the negative statements (when we sort through all the person crap that often accompanies them) do the best job of pointing out our areas for improvement. i don't absorb all that is said with a negative comment because often there is a bunch of personal bitterness connected with some of those statements. yet more often than not there is a nugget of truth to be found within the criticism. that's what i want to discover. i want to find that small granule of truth and learn from it.

alan, the assistant youth minister, and i are about to start critiquing each other's messages. hopefully we can lovingly point out each other's strengths and weaknesses and improve because of it. i hope it works because i know that i need it.