Dennis Peacocke comments

Dennis Peacocke

God and those who live with you are the only ones who really have the opportunity to know the real you. Fragmentary as even that vantage may sometimes be, it is usually who we are at home that is who we really are.

Let me illustrate the point.

Some years ago I was working with a broad-based religious coalition of appointed leaders from Catholic and Protestant circles. On the senior leaders level only, there were no women. I was asked to go to another much smaller local religious coalition in San Francisco to represent our own coalition and to invite this other group to join with us in a community - wide celebration.

When I was ushered into their meeting room, there were about eight or nine women and two or three men representing a number of historic denominations. The woman chair-person cautiously granted me time for a short presentation of our goals and a request for their participation. She then demanded to see the list of church leaders chairing our project. None were women.

Upon discovering this, which I honestly had never even thought of one way or another, she demanded in a harsh voice to know of me, "What kind of male-chauvinist organization is this anyway?" Stunned and amazed to have their spiritual leader confront me with such hostility, I prayed under my breath, "God, You'd better give me a good answer to this one and quickly!" I then opened my mouth to see what I would say. "As to the chauvinist nature of our organization I cannot say, because so many women are involved, but, as to me personally, only my wife could tell you if I am indeed a chauvinist." The response invoked a kind of hushed and self-examining reality, for it moved the issue out of the realm of philosophy and organization down into the grit of who we truly are behind closed doors.

My wife and children see the real me. If my children are "preacher's kids" because I am a preacher, that would usually mean they reject the church and rebel against what they have been taught. Why? Because the "preacher's kid syndrome" means the kids see the real person at home and can't endure the contradictions between the pulpit person and the real person. Am I a chauvinist? My philosophy and speech won't really tell you. What tells the real tale is how I care for and relate to the woman who governs with me in our home and my children who live with me.

I have come to the point over the years where "anointed preachers" do not impress me very much. I want to meet their wives. Their wives will tell me more in five minutes about who their "anointed preacher husband" truly is than twenty hours of the husband's impassioned preaching. What I see in her eyes and countenance and what I hear in what she speaks or doesn't speak will surely tell the tale. And what she reveals or conceals will usually be quickly highlighted if I can meet and spend but a few minutes with their children. It's who we are at home that preaches loudest and produces the fruit that cannot be hidden.

If I were a businessman, I would never want to enter a significant business arrangement with someone wherein trust and character were essential without first meeting their spouse. What they are and what their word is worth is usually self-evident in their family's faces and demeanor. Talk is cheap, and mistakes are often expensive. The best safeguard or "due-diligence" is the person who lives with the potential partner. They're the most reliable witness. They will reveal what's there and what isn't, and that's the bottom line.

Reprinted by permission. This article is excerpted from Dennis Peacocke's book "The Emperor Has No Clothes" available at www.gostrategic.org