Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Failure Is A Great Teacher
Sad fact of reality, isn't it? That headline is what I am talking about. Generally, failure is the only thing that gives us a good look at who we really are so we can begin to deal with it and be who we are supposed to be.
That's what I thought when I read this Out of Ur post selling the next issue of Leadership and featuring the creator of "Veggie Tales". In case you are out-of-the-loop, that great evangelical enterprise lies in ruins. The last Q&A of the post is instructive:
This poses a great dilemma, I think, for Christian leadership and specifically for the church. Are we to encourage failure? In some senses it seems we ought, and yet the resentment such can produce can be extremely counterproductive. Encouraging failure in others could very well, and often does, channel that failure in the wrong directions.
And yet churches are filled with people that have never experienced the kind of failure I am talking about and therefore seem never to get beyond the cusp of deep, genuine, and abiding faith. Do we simply rely on God's providence and mourn for the many that never get there?
I love the story of Jesus with the woman at the well in John 4. Christ doesn't encourage her failure, but He sure as heck helps her to see it. You see, as sinners, we are all failures, we don't need to encourage failure, we just need to see it. So no, we don't need to encourage failure, instead we need to help people see the failure they already have.
"But that just turns people off!" comes the rejoinder. Does it? Did the woman at the well walk away from Jesus ticked off and unhappy? Was she turned off? How'd Jesus get away with that? Simple, the realities of who He was made the confrontation with failure a turn on instead of a turn off. So, what we need is to become more Christ-like.
Which takes us back to the pull quote above, doesn't it? I can't help but think that if we get busy learning to be the church instead of simply how to add to it, we will experience success beyond our wildest imaginings.
Related Tags: failure, confession, church, evangelism, impact
That's what I thought when I read this Out of Ur post selling the next issue of Leadership and featuring the creator of "Veggie Tales". In case you are out-of-the-loop, that great evangelical enterprise lies in ruins. The last Q&A of the post is instructive:
What advice do you have for church leaders? How can we keep our souls healthy?"Self-assessment" strikes me as a kind way of saying "confession." But; however you put it, it seems to take failure, often dramatic, heart-wrenching, life-destroying failure before we are willing to take a truly honest look and make a truly honest confession. I know it did in my life.
I think we all have to start with a good self-assessment. That is what I did when I was sitting in the wreckage of my world-changing ministry reading the fruit of the Spirit and not finding it in my life. We should have peace. We should have joy. And that doesn’t mean we should force ourselves to have it, because we can’t. It will come from us when we’ve let go of our life, when we’ve let go of our ministry, when we’ve let go of any aspiration for having an impact. When it’s just us and God we’ll find the joy and the peace. Then, we can get back to work and help other people follow that path.
This poses a great dilemma, I think, for Christian leadership and specifically for the church. Are we to encourage failure? In some senses it seems we ought, and yet the resentment such can produce can be extremely counterproductive. Encouraging failure in others could very well, and often does, channel that failure in the wrong directions.
And yet churches are filled with people that have never experienced the kind of failure I am talking about and therefore seem never to get beyond the cusp of deep, genuine, and abiding faith. Do we simply rely on God's providence and mourn for the many that never get there?
I love the story of Jesus with the woman at the well in John 4. Christ doesn't encourage her failure, but He sure as heck helps her to see it. You see, as sinners, we are all failures, we don't need to encourage failure, we just need to see it. So no, we don't need to encourage failure, instead we need to help people see the failure they already have.
"But that just turns people off!" comes the rejoinder. Does it? Did the woman at the well walk away from Jesus ticked off and unhappy? Was she turned off? How'd Jesus get away with that? Simple, the realities of who He was made the confrontation with failure a turn on instead of a turn off. So, what we need is to become more Christ-like.
Which takes us back to the pull quote above, doesn't it? I can't help but think that if we get busy learning to be the church instead of simply how to add to it, we will experience success beyond our wildest imaginings.
Related Tags: failure, confession, church, evangelism, impact
