Failures

Here's a tidbit from Erwin McManus' book Wide Awake that I liked this weekend.

Several years ago one of the forerunners and leaders in the field of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, wrote a book called Learned Optimism. He observed that certain people have an extraordinary ability to overcome difficulties, obstacles, and even failure. They key, it seems, is that how they relate to failure is dramatically different from those who tend to be overwhelmed and paralyzed by their failures. The optimistic never see failure as personal, permanent, or pervasive, but others are constricted, paralyzed, or controlled by failures.

Lots of things ran through my head when I read that paragraph. First, I don't put a lot of weight on the positive psychology movement, or positive thinking, or prosperity movement, etc. It's where you think it and it will happen. I believe everything we are and everything we have is from God, not because of our own powers to think it into existence. Not to be confused with thinking of what is good and right and pure, which is just healthy, lest we become fearful and paranoid.

I also thought that I must be an optimist according to this description. I look at failures as learning and growth opportunities. Any experience is worth it as long as you learn from it.

If a person becomes paralyzed by their failures, by the end of their life, they will probably be the most ineffective person on the planet. With all the failures we experience in this life, a person wouldn't be doing a thing by the end of their life.
That's not the way God wants us to live. We're running a race, reaching for the goal, doing our best to the end.

I've learned that you just catalog your failure and keep going. There's always something new to do and to try. You can also learn from other's failures, but it's best not to occupy too much of your time doing this, as you can fall into the trap of ineffectiveness and fear again, just by thinking about all the failures of others.

I thought about parenting. If a child refused to learn to be potty trained, or to walk, or to feed themselves with a spoon because they didn't get it right the first time, what kind of world would we live in? We would be extinct, because these kids would never grow up and procreate. A world full of babies. Think about that.

Blessings on this breezy Monday!

Nuggets #25

An Unstoppable Force by Erwin McManus
Empowering Spiritual Entrepreneurs
If you can affirm everything that isn't changing, while highlighting something that strategically is changing, you'll more easily gain adherence and support.

Through pilot projects, an apostolic environment can be introduced and affirmed one layer at a time.

When a particular project fails and you acknowledge its failure but don't lose hope, it does two things. It teaches your people that you are more committed to the purpose than you are to the particular project. And secondly, it demonstrates to them that you have integrity when faced with failure and successes. When you acknowledge failure for what it is, you gain the confidence of others as you speak on God's behalf.

In many situations, failure is the very thing that restrains God's people from doing great things for God. They've been taught that failure is equivalent to sin, and so they'd rather not try at all than risk failing. When you face failure with humility and hope, you teach others how to risk. When you affirm those who risk great things for God and count them as successful even if their particular endeavor has failed, you have affirmed something far deeper than any particular project or strategy could every encompass. It is not so much the experiment that is of greatest value, but the affirmation of spiritual entrepreneurialism among God's people.

This is such an important truth and I think part of it has to do with trust. When you trust an individual to do what God has called them to do and let them do it, it gives them the freedom to soar and do great things for God. They're not working under their own power anyway, they have God on their side. Any failure is just an opportunity to learn. Any success gives glory to God. It's a win-win situation.

Nuggets #15

An Unstoppable Force by Erwin McManus
A Future of Optimism
People are looking for something worth believing in, somewhere to belong, and something to become.

Effective ministry is not the elimination of failure but the ability to thrive in the midst of failure. They mystery is that there are some churches that just can't be stopped. It doesn't matter how many times they fail. There's no problem too great for them to overcome.

Hope Never Gives Up
. . . there are three crucial dimensions to our ability to engage failure in a positive way. They are all related to how we understand failure and explain it to ourselves.

One style views failure as pervasive, another sees failure as personal, and the third understands failure as permanent.

Faith, hope, and love are the fuel that ignited the first-century church. They are the very essence of the apostolic ethos. They are the promise that the church of Jesus Christ is unstoppable and that even the gates of hell will not prevail against her.

I know this blog has statements that skip around a little. Let's talk about purpose, ministry, and failure.

It's no coincidence that as I was starting to type this blog, that my husband came up to me and read what he was reading in the book, In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day by Mark Batterson. In it, Mark cites Gordon Mackenzie's book "Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace". It struck his heart and supports the first statement above that people are looking for something worth believing in, somewhere to belong, and something to become. It says,
"My guess is that there was a time - perhaps when you were very young - when you had at least a fleeting notion of your own genius and were just waiting for some authority figure to come along and validate it for you. But none ever came."
How extremely sad is that? Everyone wants to have a purpose to thier life, to leave a legacy, to make a difference in at least one person's life, if not on society as a whole. I pray every church has a clearly communicated method of training up these future leaders.

Let's talk about failure for a minute. I think everyone has a different view of failure. I know those who wouldn't want to be caught dead doing anything wrong, less the sky would fall on them. I know those who have a slightly less dramatic view, but still avoid it at all costs, and in addition make sure others around them avoid it by manuevering situations within their control, less others' failures reflect on them. I think both these views are unhealthy. Having worked for a large corporation for 17 years (picture Dilbert), I discovered that failure was not something to be feared. The first few years I spent a lot of energy, calories, and sweat fearing failure. Then I came to a point when I realized that failure was bound to happen. I would always try and do my best, but noticed that worrying about it had absolutely no bearing on whether it happened or not. The odds were that sometimes it would happen. Sometimes it was my fault, sometimes it was a co-worker's fault, sometimes a boss's fault, or a subordinate's fault. And you know what? It was always okay. The healthy thing about that corporate environment was that everyone else knew things would crash from time to time, and when they did, no one pointed fingers (except one person, but that's another blog) but instead just pitched in to fix the problem. No big deal! It happens, move on! It's not the end of the world. Trust others will have the grace to not make you feel horrible about yourself, and if they don't, that's between them and God. We're all human, we blow it sometimes! Every experience is worth it, as long as you learn from it.

Once again I have to repeat one of my favorite mottos:
Don't use people to do ministry. Use ministry to do people.