Daily Innovation, Ministry Insights, and Thoughts from Todd Rhoades for Pastors and Church Leaders
What if There Was A GORB for Church Leaders?
Have you heard of the new website called TheGorb.com? According to their home page, Gorb is “an online community of professionals where real life reputations are be earned and viewed by others.” They accomplish this by collecting personal and professional opinions from people all over the internet. They claim that their unique social network allows people to reveal, discipline and reward the good and bad conduct of others. In other words, using Gorb, you can rate people’s reputation, good or bad, online for the whole world to see...
Interesting concept. They claim that there is accountability built into their system. “If you provide an anonymous opinion about another person, and if the community around that person accepts your opinion as fair and balanced, then your reputation as a fair and objective person will be enhanced. However, if you offer an opinion that is too positive or too negative, and the community rejects it, your reputation will suffer. With our system, the truth will come out as opinions accumulate and are validated over time. We believe that most of us will have a positive score, but we also realize that sometimes it’s harder to identify someone with a good reputation than it is to come across someone with a bad one.”
One of the reasons that I find this concept interesting is that I was asked on several occasions (in my past life as developer at ChurchStaffing.com) about putting together a system like this for churches and church leaders. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” church job seekers would say, “to have a way to objectively rate churches so that I as a prospective staff member could tell the good churches from the bad ones?” Meanwhile, church search committees and pastors would ask, “Wouldn’t it be great to have a way to objectively rate potential employees in a way that would tell us more about their local reputation?”
I have a couple of thoughts that come to my mind on this regard:
First of all, isn’t it sad that we have to separate the ‘good and the bad’ in church work? I know, there are highly qualified and lesser qualified candidates in the church job candidate pool, but I hate it that we would need to do a reputation check on potential employees (on top of the standard legal background check). Unfortunately, for many positions, this would be a real asset to have access to).
Secondly, since most people are more prone to complain rather than to compliment; wouldn’t a system like this automatically skew negative… would it really be a fair representation of an individual or a church?
And finally, (introspective person that I am), I wonder, “How would I do on such a reputation rating system?” Not just from those who read my words on the internet, but from those who know me personally? And how would my church’s reputation be? In our community? By other pastors? By our members?
So… today’s question for contemplation… How’s your reputation? How would people rate you and your church’s reputation on a website like GORB?
Have a great week!
Todd
This post has been viewed 1162 times and was added on March 18, 2007 by Todd Rhoades. Filed under: Leadership Issues Leadership Development Share this post with a friend right now! View reactions to this post at other blogs... You can really help us out by subscribing to our free RSS feed with your favorite feed reader, or here at Bloglines. Also, you can add us to your favorites at Technorati.
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My name is Todd Rhoades, the 'behind the scenes' guy here at MMI. I'm also on the team at Leadership Network (although that doesn't mean that they endorse everything I write here). In my past life, I was the developer of a of a website called ChurchStaffing.com. I hope you'll enjoy your time here and tell all your colleagues about MMI! 
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Monday, March 19, 2007 at 8:24 AM
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Post Your Comments:Sites like this are not new, and the ones that have come before have gone away.
One could simply go to AOL, or other carnal chat rooms to hear negative gossip and slander directed at Church leaders. (Good and bad ones alike.
The Church already has it’s own spiritual Gorb.
We should be doing more praying, and become less opinionated about others.
My opinion of you Todd, is I think you are a smart guy, yet you spend too much time on the internet, turn it off and pray.
How can we justify a system of “church rating” or “teacher rating” in light of this:
“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” Luke 6:22-23
Unless, of course, we want to figure the churches with the low ratings are the ones that are actually bothering to point out that people are unworthy sinners whose righteous acts are filthy rags—and then go to those churches instead of the high-rated ones. I can envision exactly who would rate highly on this kind of system—and it’s not the folks who are preaching orthodox Christianity.
Bishop’s words “My opinion of you Todd, is I think you are a smart guy, yet you spend too much time on the internet, turn it off and pray.” are exactly why I think this WOULDN’T work. Many people’s work can be judged externally, however, in church work your work and spiritual life get all wrapped up together.
Bishop has NO idea how much time Todd spends in prayer on a daily/weekly basis, and yet has categorically decided that it’s not enough.
I think my church would rate high, btw… There’s not much “bad” here. I’ve been here 1.5 years waiting for the other shoe to drop. It didn’t. I’m pretty blessed. Thanks, Jesus!
Hey Todd,
I realize you make your living using the web, providing sites like this, helping people see what else’s is going on but come on, do you have to spend so much time on the web… I would like the president not to spend so much time at the oval office, I would like congress to not spend so much time in Washington, they should just pray. and if those darn baseball player would not spend so much time at the ball field and those mom’s would not spend so much time at home and those lawyers in court, they should all just go pray.
Hey we don’t need a GORB, were Christians we can criticize anywhere. It is our God given right to judge and condemn those we don’t know but are sure do not measure up.
Okay, rant over.
Bishop, way out of line.
Thanks for the post Todd.
The problem with a system like this is it doesn’t take account for growth. A pastor and/or church may have been a negative candidate two years ago, but the pastor may have learned and grown, the church turned around and started reaching others for Christ.
And what if the church hiring you is bad, but God wants you there specifically for the purpose of turning it around? Would you say no because of an online rating, cancelling the plan God had for you?
The problem with your exegesis, David B. (and the exegesis of like-minded fundamentalists), is that you are not considering who Jesus is talking to. This is a common error among those who make prescriptive doctrine from descriptive history. Jesus addresses the disciples specifically in this case, and prophesies what will happen to them, confirming this prophesy by telling them about what their FATHERS did in the Jewish tradition in times past. This is not a lisense to go around inviting the scorn of unbelievers or discounting the importance of reputation. Please consider other verses in the epistles:
“And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.” (I Tim 3:7)
“… Giving no cause for offense in anything, so that the ministry will not be discredited.” (2 Cor. 6:3)
“Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (I Peter 2:12)
The good works of a justified Christian are not “filthy rags” (again, this quote is from an Old Testament verse, indicating your particular denominational persuasion). We have been given a “new commandment” - that we love one another (John 13:34). Thus, true religion is not inviting scorn, but ministering to the most downtrodden in their distress (James 1:27) and serving the needy, because when “I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.” (Matt. 25:35) We do these things, not because we have to, but because we want to emulate our Saviour.
David B., when reading Scripture, I encourage you to try to discern who is being spoken to and the purpose of the words. I also invite you to change your perspective about God’s Kingdom and good works as the evidence of the Holy Spirit. Is the fruit of the Spirit “filthy rags”? No, it is love, joy, peace, longsuffering.... A new way awaits you.
Troy, good points. Thanks for sharing them!
Fascinating stuff. It sounds vaguely like an online after church coffee hour. Or justified gossip,eh? We seem not to be comfortable with trusting our own discernment process, the lessons we learn from making mistakes that lead us forward in our lives and the deeper relationship we create with God when we rely on Wisdom as our guide. With GORB we really don’t need to rely on our faith. People seem to be more comfortable with that these days.
If you assume i’m a fundamentalist, you’re pretty far off the mark. Aside from that, Luke 6 does not in any way disagree with the passages you quoted. Most certainly we are to do good works. In fact, believers *will* do good works—they cannot do otherwise.
But you’ve raised a couple of straw men. I did not say the fruit of the spirit is filthy rags. Merely that our own works are filthy rags. The good work the Spirit does in us is holy and perfect, yet we remain sinners, so that even when we do good, the old sinful Adam is nudging us in the ribs, saying, “Hey, good job on that, buddy. You sure are holy today.”
Secondly, I did not say we should invite scorn. Jesus makes it clear that scorn is coming, with or without our invitation. Whether that is a prescriptive or descriptive passage, it doesn’t change the fact that the scorn is coming. As a matter of fact, I would even grant that this passage is decsriptive. It describes what happens when people preach the truth of God’s word.
The question of our good works, of course, is quite a separate issue from whether Christian teaching can be popular in the world. Scripture describes the teaching of the cross as a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles (1 Cor 1:23). The church that doesn’t teach law and gospel will always be more popular in the world than the church that does. Jesus was speaking to the apostles—the ‘church.’ I don’t think it’s a novel or fundamentalist interpretation to say he was addressing the church beyond the apostles themselves.
To put it in practical terms, Joel Osteen’s going to always win a popularity contest in the world over someone like Luther or Hus or Augustine (or even Billy Graham). The question to ask is, “Who’s speaking more of the truth of God’s word?”
Good Question and Post Todd;
Cudos to Troy, Excellent points. I just want to add one thing. It seems we’ve thrown out the time honored pursuit of discernment in our decision making. The scripture gives us guide lines and many ways to come to right-spiritual decisions (fasting & praying, counsel of the wise, waiting on the Lord, etc.) I’m sure you can come up with a lot more.
With all of the internet dating services, trying to match people up, it hasn’t lowered the divorce rate, spousel abuse rate, nor the fascination with crimes of cruelty.
I agree with Troy, going to a bad church or a declining church may be exaclty what God is asking you to do. And church, perhaps you’re supposed to get a medocre pastor or even a bad one so you can train and equip him to be God’s man.
My opinion is that GARB is like a dating service, at best it helps with overall, peripheral information. At worst you can put too much faith into it and miss the real person or church God wants you to be serving at.
It could be a tool, but realize it’s no shortcut for intensivily seeking the mind, heart and will of our God. God has granted to us HIs spiritual gifts, I would encourage us to exercise those spiritual gifts in decision making situations. Easier said than done, but that’s my point, it’s not easy and we should labor and strive to find the Spirits direction and will.
Thanks for todays blog, Todd and everyone’s input.
Speaking personally, I would like a place where I could have periodic objective view of how I am perceived. One of the most helpful things I have in the ministry is my annual 360 evaluation. But it is rarely objective because we are family and they do not always get enough people involved. This might be way to have a clearer picture presetned. I know there are all kinds of way this can go bad, but still, I woul welcome it.
I would also think it would be good for our chruches to have objective eyes evaluate our congregations.
Todd, go wander and see and learn and bring back what you find. Oh go ahead, by all means pray, but go wander.
I wonder if those who think that this type of rating system would be compleatly unspiritual have some fear of what their score would be. Personally I would love to have that objective opinion of myself, and our church.
We attempt to recieve that at our church, I conistantly ask my wifes honest opinon, we ask staff to share freely, and try to draw out from our congregation how they are feeling. But we all know that in the church setting people who live under the same roof as you, get their paychecks signed by you, or are sitting under your spiriual leader will rarely be totally honest. So I think an objective community survey would be great.
I wonder how many of our churches the community could rate? How many churches have even made a big enough impact (good or bad)to get an oppinion from the average community member?
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