Self-Disclosure: How Far to Go?
Emory A. Griffin
For the early Christians koinonia was not the frilly fellowship of church-sponsored biweekly outings. It was not tea, biscuits, and sophisticated small talk in the Fellowship Hall after the sermon. It was an unconditional sharing of their lives with the other members of Christ's body.
Ron Sider
"There's no better way of building trust with a new congregation than through self-disclosure."
The speaker is Em Griffin, professor of communication at Wheaton College in Illinois. For him, self-disclosure opens the door to all kinds of relational progress. But there are ground rules. He explains further:
"My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me. Identification is the name of the game. And if I don't know you, I can't identify with you.
"Now there's always the danger that if I let you know me, you'll be turned off. For instance, if I share doubts on scriptural authority and you're high on scriptural authority, that will make trust unlikely. But if I don't reveal my attitudes, background, and fears, you won't have any handles to get to know me. Trust is filling in the blanks."
Em remembers an experience with a pastor friend that reinforced the lesson of self-disclosure.
"I always had a certain amount of respect for him, because I knew he served a difficult urban parish. But I didn't know him well until we were together at an Inter-Varsity conference. We ended up spending about six hours together in the conference, eating breakfast, riding a bus, even ducking out of a couple of sessions just to talk.
"As we grew closer, he told me about a close friend who had just moved away; he missed the friendship badly. He also told me about a time he was mugged outside his church one evening. Guys were lying in wait for him. ...
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