Failure

Fear of failure leads to an inability to learn and grow.  A prerequisite for discipleship, on the other hand, is the acknowledgement that we are in need of help from Jesus to become fully functioning human beings.  Even more so, when we step into ministry leadership, we must be willing to embrace failure as a necessary part of the process.

As Christians and as leaders we should be constantly seeking to grow and improve, not out of some sick sense of God's displeasure, but quite the opposite, out of the knowledge that God is completely for us.  In our society there are certain people we allow to see our weaknesses, foibles, and failures.  They are our coaches, our doctors, our psychologists, our lawyers, our accountants, our personal trainers, or our beauticians.  We let them see our failures because we know that they have a vested interest in our success, they only succeed as our coach, if we succeed in the athletic arena.

For some reason, however, we balk at bringing that same level of vulnerability into the church.  I believe that God wants us to know His deep and abiding pleasure and affirmation, precisely so that we can then enter into the process of receiving and responding to His discipline and training!

This is practical for us!  Will we respond to our present efforts with an ever watchful posture of growth and improvement?  Or will we respond to our present efforts by defensively maintaining the status quo?

I believe that God has a future for us as a church that is much more glorious than anything we have ever seen!  We must be willing to embrace failure, however, if we are going to see that glorious future.  Below is a TED talk and a short article that I found encouraging on this topic:

Forbes Article on the Importance of Failure in the Marketplace