Credentials

I attended an online leadership conference recently. It was a fairly intense day. I watched the keynote speakers passionately share their inspirational messages and research and insights while I casually gnawed on carrot sticks and freely got up for bathroom breaks at will. An introvert's dream conference.

But the thing that really struck me was the speakers' credentials. Before every talk a female voice fit for radio would run through a list of things the orator accomplished, a couple of the multitude of books the person has written, the awards he/she has won and the nearly unbelievable influence and reach the person has. The credentials gave a sense of security and trust that whatever is about to come out of this person's mouth will be worth listening to. Especially the one-liner phrases that was conveniently and trendily jotted down in the downloadable e-resources pack.

And it got me thinking about how we measure the value in people.

The thought occurred to me that if I (who have written no books, received no awards since the silver star I got for a drawing I did in primary school, and who have just under 250 Twitter followers) had to be a keynote speaker at that conference two things would probably happen:

1. There would be more carrot sticks being chewed on loudly and an exponential increase in bathroom and/or coffee breaks during my talk.
2. Google searches for my name would increase by some magnitude during this time, but with little success.

It's not just me, though. I suspect the same would happen if they got a vicar from a church with 37 members in rural Wales to do the talk on church growth. Or a person with an Instagram following of 63 people to do the talk on influencing the world. And the question is: Would I have listened to them? Would I have wanted to? Would I have valued what they have to share as much as I valued what the mega-church pastor or the Instagram influencer with more than a million followers had to say? The sad truth: probably not.

A couple of years ago a group of SW London worship pastors got together and wanted to put on a weekend of prayer, worship, encouragement and teaching for the teams we led. We wanted this to be a significant and inspiring weekend, so we asked an internationally acclaimed author and pastor to be the keynote speaker on one of the days. We got a reply from his organisation asking how many people we were expecting. We told them how many we're hoping for and didn't hear from them again. My initial thought was that between us we could do the talks and training. But would it carry the same authority? Would it be as powerful? Would it be as Spirit-filled and significant? Of course the answer is a resounding "YES!" (at least in theory...). But it is not so in practice. It's as if a celebrity saying something is more truthful than when a pleb says exactly the same thing. Truth can't be measured in numbers, I think. Or at least it shouldn't.

I dream of a world where people's worth is not measured by the amount of money they have, their number of followers on social media, their academic achievements, or the names they can drop in casual conversation, but in the truth and love that they have in their hearts. I would happily attend a conference (online or in person) where the lead organiser introduces the keynote speaker by saying: "Our next guest needs no introduction because they have no credentials. I spent an afternoon with this person over some coffee and conversation and I can tell you that they have a decent heart." I would even put away the carrot sticks.

Selah

Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash