Failing To Fail!

Success isn't possible without failure. This is a lesson churches, especially small congregations need to learn. Walt Disney once said a person needs to fail at least three times before they can succeed. He was speaking from personal experience. Even Jesus (the rich young man for instance) failed.

Failure is never the problem. Negative response to failure is the problem. The eight last words of the church; “can't do that it's never been done before,” have a close relative that's just as deadly to church thinking: “we tried that once and it didn't work.” Both of these attitudes are demonic in their attack upon the Christian church.

Understand that, if we are faithful, God succeeds through our failures. The Christian agenda is different from the world's agenda. Worldly success builds only within the worldly sphere.

When Jesus said 'what good does it do a person to gain the whole world but lose their soul?' he was speaking directly to the reality that worldly success can bring a defeat for God's Kingdom

I'm really something of an expert at failure because I'm very good at it. I have “failed” at just about everything my whole life. In my own defense I was kind of born into failure. From birth I have struggled with a personality disorder and probably depression. As a child everything about myself seemed wrong. And then, to make things worse, as I grew older I developed this “let's just do it” attitude. Plunging into things sane people wouldn't even attempt.

Don't feel sorry for me I don't (well most of the time anyway). I'm not writing this for sympathy but as a testimony. Although there has been a cost, there's always a cost, it seems to me I have succeeded more through failure than most folks have through success.

With the athletic ability of a doorknob I coached, played, and was league officer for 14 years of fast-pitch softball. I've always loved baseball. What over sport can you succeed only three out of ten times and be considered a superstar? There are players making millions of dollars in the major leagues hitting only .250. (That's two and a half hits for every ten times at bat.) Yet churches give up when they experience one failure!

Congregations that develop the knack of starting new churches fail with those new starts 7 out of 8 times. The Pacific Southwest Conference of the Church of the Brethren was recently forced , by the economic downturn, to shut down all seven church starts it had begun in recent years. The most church starts attempted at one time by any district of our denomination to my memory. And I'm 58 years old.

You see the thing is churches aren't failing enough to succeed.

I have a good friend named Jay. He is a classic nerd. We went to high school and college together. While the rest of us were trying to hookup with any female we could find, Jay would only ask out the most beautiful women. He was embarrassing his friends by his persistence. Wherever we went Jay was always walking up to good looking girls and asking for a date. We pleaded with him to stop. But Jay's response was it didn't matter how many times he failed he only had to succeed once

Guess what? Jay found and is still married to his beautiful women. If only we Christians were so persistent in the service of our Lord.

It's embarrassing how people, organizations, and governments will do anything to succeed in this world. And it's really embarrassing that a lot of these folks call themselves Christians. Last year's national elections made we sick to my stomach to see how low our presidential candidates would stoop to become our leaders. Success outside of a Christian life is failure. While failure, do to Christian character is a success.

One thing about failing a lot is you get involved in a lot of different experiences. For instance, over the years I have been a sports editor of a small daily papers, a co-editor of a weekly small town paper, a co-owner publisher of another small town weekly paper, sole publisher of a sports tabloid and then a business tabloid. Wait I'm just getting started here. Public Relations Director for the Bakersfield (CA) Chamber of Commerce, pastor of two Church of the Brethren congregations, and I'm leaving out the less impressive stuff.

In my last congregation we ministered together to increase attendance, giving went up, and most of the people even really liked me. (Hey for folks like me that's an accomplishment!) And I still got fired. Talk about crushed under a rock. All my life, being a good American, I thought if I just learned from my mistakes and did better the next time I would eventually succeed.

As I told the counselor I was seeing at the time, preaching is the only profession I know that is a no win situation. If you succeed the glory is God's, but God doesn't get the blame if you fail. But you know the same thing happened to Jesus. In fact I think Jesus went to the cross feeling like a failure

From what the world expected he was a failure. This Kingdom he promised still hasn't shown up 2,000 years later. And he said it would happen in the lifetime of his disciples. It was the messiah's job to deliver Israel. The oppressors he was supposed to banish killed him on a cross.

Of course you and I know Jesus was anything but a failure. His presence in this world has continued to grow through his followers. And the Kingdom he promised, although still not as complete as we'd like to be, blesses this world and our lives like no other source. And this has happened all through what could appear failure. Judging by recent studies a lot of folks consider the traditional church to be a failure. Yet millions minister in Jesus name through it. We just need to get out an fail more!

What I'm hoping you small church leaders will see is that failure is our only option. But if we remain faithful in Christ, and keep pushing our ministry forward, no matter how many times we fall God will stand. And if we get carried away and try to accomplish things in way that embarrasses God, as long as we keep trying to live faithfully, God will forgive. I don't know about you, but if I never succeed even once, but do my best to live faithfully in Christ, well that's going to be a beautiful life.

Monty Keeling
November 19, 2009