In recent years transparency has become a value of increasing importance. In relation to safeguarding, transparency guards against abuse. Where abuse in church settings has come to light, a lack of transparency in leadership is often one of the factors that allows the abuse to persist. Making transparency a key value in church life guards against this.
Moreover, there are good theological reasons for transparency. The apostle Paul urges the Ephesian Christians to ‘have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them’ (Eph.5:11). This echoes a comment in John’s Gospel that ‘whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God’ (John 3:21).
In the end, everything will be made known. ‘[The Lord] will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and expose the motives of the heart’ (1 Cor. 4:5). And in the context of a warning against hypocrisy, Jesus Himself declares ‘what you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs’ (Luke 12:3).
