Sometime ago, I received an article by William Easum entitled, "On Not Being Nice for the Sake of the Gospel." He begins by writing:

Throughout my consulting ministry, I have seen a disturbing pattern: Most established churches are held hostage by bullies. Some individual or small group of individuals usually opposes the church's making any radical change, even if it means the change would give the church a chance to thrive again.

Later on he makes this statement with boldface:

I'm convinced that one of the main sins of the Church is that we have taught ourselves to be nice instead of Christian. In spite of aspiring to be Jesus' disciples, we teach that the essence of Christianity is to be nice.

Near the end he states:

One of the basic lessons I'm learning as a consultant: Before renewal begins in a church or denomination, normally someone has to leave or be denied. Almost every time a dying church attempts to thrive once again, someone tries to bully the leaders out of the attempt. And almost every time a turn-around takes place, such persons are lost along the way because they are no longer allowed to get their way. When they can't get their way, they leave. Not even Jesus got through the journey with all of the Disciples. Why should we expect to?

Of course, we should not set out to intimidate the bully or to kick people out of the church. But a strong response means that we care enough about the future of our church not to allow anyone to stifle its ability to liberate people from bondage or victimization. It also means that we care enough about the bully that we will not allow him or her to intimidate the church, because we know the spiritual vitality of both the bully and the church is at stake.

I quote from him because I often think that "being humble" is similar to his description of "being nice." Humility becomes being passive. Letting others walk all over us. Jesus shows by his life that being humble didn't mean being passive, but, when necessary, it meant taking out the whip and driving the self-centered bullies out of the temple.