This morning I spent my entire two-hour train ride from Oceanside to Los Angeles working through chapter 4 of the workbook Learning to Lead, which was an assignment due today for my Biblical Organizational Leadership class at Fuller. The chapter dealt largely with the concept of failure in leadership, an idea that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Consider the following quotation:
“For a lot of people, the word “failure” carries with it a finality, an absence of movement characteristic of a dead thing, to which the automatic human reaction is one of helpless discouragement. But for the successful leader, failure is a beginning, the springboard of hope.”
The book then took me through a variety of questions that encouraged me to recall failure in my own life. I thought about times when I’ve failed, times when others have told me I failed, and how I felt in those sorts of situations. The overall idea of the chapter was to learn to embrace failure as a type of growing experience that, when properly understood, can in fact be a sort of springboard to hope.
I’m inclined to think that in society at large we suffer from being failure averse. That’s not necessarily a bad thing (I don’t recommend pursuing failure), but what is destructive is the fact that as a society all too often we are conditioned to be unwilling to admit failure.
Instead, whether from a personal or organizational level, there is tremendous social pressure to always have things together, to never admit weakness, and always show how we’re better than our competitors (yes, I realize I’m straw-manning here, but hopefully it makes sense).
That sort of thinking has crept its way into the church, and I believe it is wildly destructive. There is pressure to always present one’s church, book, article, ministry, small group, whatever as good, better, and best. Self-promotion within the church is nothing short of an epidemic, and I believe it compromises authenticity in leadership.
I would suggest that one of the most valuable skills a leader can have is the ability to comfortably be authentic with those whom he or she leads. Rather than leading from pressure to be perfect, a Christian leader ought to lead from a position of humility and dependence. When we fail, instead of trying to cover it up, we should be comfortable enough with ourselves and those we lead to be able to own it. Perhaps we can even laugh about it. Furthermore, it is my deep conviction that leaders ought to be completely honest with those who they lead. At my church I have the privilege of working with two very talented young worship leaders on a regular basis. I’ve worked a little bit with both of them on helping them get more comfortable speaking to the congregation in between songs. One thing I’ve made clear to them is that at our services we will not, under any circumstances, tolerate people saying things from the stage that are designed to elicit a reaction out of people. I simply can’t stand that sort of inauthenticity. For that reason I’ve told both of them, “don’t say what you think is going to get a reaction out of people…speak from your heart.” I should note that both of them do a very good job of speaking from their heart, something that is difficult when getting used to speaking in front of people. Such speaking and self-disclosure forces any leader to lead from a place not of self-promotion and pride, but of authenticity and humility. It allows for failure, and it allows a leader to admit that his or her program maybe isn’t the biggest or the best and that’s ok. It also, in my opinion, encourages increased dependence on God.
To be honest, I don’t want the pressure of trying to prove how great my church or ministry is all the time. Also, at the end of the day, I don’t really care what people think of Seven24, because we’re not trying to convert people to Seven24, we’re trying to help them know, understand, and authentically follow Jesus. If God sees fit to let Seven24 play a part in helping people do that, what a humbling honor that is. I also don’t want the pressure of trying to always look cool and relevant. I’d much rather be authentic. It may not always be popular, but at least it will allow me to sleep at night knowing I’m being faithful in being who God made me to be. The great irony, that I’ve noticed, is that often when churches abandon authenticity in the name of appearing ‘cool’ or ‘relevant’, it is then that they unfortunately become uncool and irrelevant.
For leaders out there, do any of you feel pressure to ‘put on the happy face’ and promote yourself or your ministry? To what degree should the church consciously pursue ‘relevance’? Am I totally off base in what I’m saying? For others, do you want that sort of a leader? Are you uncomfortable with a leader admitting failure? I’d appreciate any other thoughts you might have…and sorry that this post is all over the place.
