Aus­tralian cul­ture is renowned for tall poppy syn­drome — we love cut­ting down the exalted. We’re a sea of laven­der with no place for sun­flow­ers. It’s the same in Chris­t­ian cir­cles as it is in the real world. We do it, but it seems we increas­ingly feel guilty about doing it. Is tall poppy syn­drome a bad habit? I have to admit its one of my favourite things about our cul­ture. We don’t like pre­ten­sion. We don’t like big not­ers. We try to avoid blow­ing our own trum­pets. But because we’re aware that this is a cul­tural foible it seems we’re try­ing to stamp it out.

When I posted about Mark Driscoll’s Face­book over­ad­e­quacy (or per­haps short man syn­drome) a cou­ple of peo­ple imme­di­ately responded that this was “tall poppy syn­drome” and that it was wrong. I sus­pect Driscoll him­self would see it that way (except he pays no atten­tion to blog­gers or criticism).

Fun­nily, “tall poppy syn­drome” was one of the 18 prob­lems Driscoll diag­nosed Aus­tralia with — could this be a self ful­fill­ing prophecy? He knew we’d crit­i­cise him for being (metaphor­i­cally) big, loud and arro­gant, so he cir­cum­vented that cri­tique by mak­ing it a prob­lem. With­out really putting the case against it together. Here’s what he said:

“You suf­fer from tall poppy syn­drome. You need to work this into your preach­ing and teach­ing so that peo­ple see that the tall poppy syn­drome is a sin. Think­ing that 1000 peo­ple in church is a high water mark is unhealthy. The cul­ture gen­er­ally chops down peo­ple who rise up, and the church does the same. That’s a sin. My church gives 10% to plant churches—$1.2 mil­lion this year.”

I don’t think tall poppy syn­drome is about suc­cess. Aussies love a suc­cess story, espe­cially a rags-to-riches suc­cess story. What we don’t like is peo­ple who brag about it. We don’t envy megachurches — we don’t like peo­ple who equate their suc­cess with their supe­ri­or­ity and tell us about it. In short, and par­don my slang, we don’t like “wankers”… tall poppy syn­drome is an issue if it’s just thinly-guised jeal­ousy, and it often is. But when it’s point­ing to some­thing not quite right about somebody’s self pro­mo­tion I think that’s ok. I think it’s bet­ter than that, I think it’s use­ful. Espe­cially for those of us who aren’t perfect.

The impor­tant ques­tions I think Chris­tians need to answer before chop­ping a tall poppy to its knees is “who gave the growth” and “to whom is it being attrib­uted” — I think if the answer to both those ques­tions is clearly “God” then we should avoid tall pop­py­is­ing. But if the answer is any­thing less — if there’s a sker­ric of self pro­mo­tion involved with somebody’s “coach­ing” or in what they post online — I think we’re right to be a lit­tle cyn­i­cal and to make a lit­tle noise.

On the ques­tion of Driscoll — God has clearly given him gifts, and his church is clearly grow­ing, and he mostly attrib­utes this appro­pri­ately. But it’s when he says stuff like this that I begin to ask questions:

I wrote this book while father­ing five kids, pas­tor­ing Mars Hill, pur­su­ing my wife, lead­ing Acts 29, grow­ing The Resur­gence, trav­el­ing, doing media, and so forth. So, it was writ­ten in large part late at night, at Lit­tle League games, and on air­planes. In many ways, I guess I did my writ­ing much like the apos­tles did their epistles—on the run, doing ministry.

Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

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