Failure: Getting through the inevitable

Whlle browsing in the self-improvement section of a bookstore, I came across a rather odd sight: a solitary book on failure, placed right in the center of a vast array of books on success. The title was provocative: When Smart People Fail.¹

Soon after arriving home, I delved into the book. And there they were, scattered like windswept debris over the pages, deeply painful stories of sharp, brilliant, and gifted people who had failed. I trudged through the book, searching expectantly for a neatly wrapped package of "seven secrets" for avoiding failure. It wasn't there. Instead, what emerged was a disturbing message that failure is neither avoidable nor discriminatory. It's going to happen sooner or later to everyone.

Ministry and failure

To deal with failure is difficult for any one, and more so for pastors. The very thought of it plays havoc with what might be an already embattled sense of self-worth and confidence. Most pastors struggle regularly with feelings of inadequacy and personal value. The very nature of their work promotes these feelings. Much of what we do relates to people, and the job is laborious, tiring, very public, and uniquely frustrating. People's lives can't be fixed in a 9:00-to-5:00 workday. Consequently for the pastor, there is rarely a sense of completion, the feeling of a job well done. Coupled with this is the fact that people can project onto pastors their own issues. Thus the daunting task of ministry can seem overwhelming, heightening the feelings of personal inadequacy. This prompts the inner questions: Am I making a difference? What did I really accomplish? So before any particular act of failure occurs, pastors already exist in an environment in which failure on an emotional level is never far removed.

Failure and the call to ministry

Another complicating factor peculiar to ministry is the theology of the "call." Part of this theology is the belief that "God has not called us to be successful, He has called us to be faithful." While that sounds well and good, it gets a bit messy when a much-anticipated church project has failed, and the blame is falling disproportionately on the pastor-leader. And people have creative ways of reminding the pastor of what happened!

The truth is that the theology of the "call," as it is sometimes described, does not prepare one for failure. In our thinking we don't associate the call to ministry with the inevitability of failure. I'm not suggesting that one should have an obsession with failure, but one should be able to recognize that even in God's work, it happens, and faithfulness to the call doesn't preclude it. So since it's going to happen, how do we deal with the inevitable?

Moses: A study in dealing with failure

When you think of leaders who have had their share of failures, Moses stands out at the top of the list. What exacerbated his failure was the fact that a few thousand people were always in attendance. He never had the luxury of pastoring some quaint little church in the hills, shut away from the masses, so that when he messed up, only a smidgen of folks knew. Instead, Moses did ministry under the hot lights of constant scrutiny, censure, and criticism.

It all started with Moses being a passionate protector of his people. But in a series of events that eventually spawned out of control and resulted in a murder, Moses found himself a fugitive running for his life. He was a victim of the "law of unintended consequences." He thought he was helping but ended up short-circuiting his leadership. It was a simple error of judgment in which Moses led with his heart instead of his head.

But the majority of the people, no doubt, branded Moses a major hotheaded disappointment. And it probably didn't matter to them that it was one of their own that greased the skids in the premature col lapse of his career. A broken man, Moses fled Egypt.

Many pastors can identify with Moses' plight. That of being passionate and well-intentioned as one promotes some cause but having to endure the agony of a decision gone awry: seeking the termination of a church school teacher with questionable competence but neglecting to gather all the facts; changing a stale order of service with out first testing the waters; convincing the congregation to spend money on a "can't-miss" undertaking that ultimately crashes and burns, or any of a million blunders that you wish you could take back. Most of the time, a bad decision does not result (such as in Moses' case) in having to leave the church, especially if the stumble was not terminal. But there does arise, more often than not, a haunting sense of personal failure that is endemic to those in ministry.

Pastors need to forgive their own failures

Pastors are most often extremely sensitive and forgiving when it comes to their members' failures. We are adroit in helping people put even their worst defeats in proper perspective. We understand grace, especially as it relates to others, but regrettably are reluctant to partake of it ourselves, especially when it comes to some public mistake made in the actual practice of our ministry.

Ministers are notorious for engaging in torturous introspection and self-flagellation. Why did I do it that way? How could I be so stupid? When am I ever going to learn? Pastors as a group do not handle failure very well. Edward Bratcher terms it the walk-on-water syndrome. That internal notation that perpetually insists that "I've got to have it together at all times."

The pressures of leadership and our passion to be an example "to the believers" can lead us to place unrealistic expectations on ourselves. I think that was exactly one of God's concerns in pulling Moses offstage and into the desert. The lonely desert experience was an excellent opportunity to bring him to understand that the work was the Lord's and that he wasn't responsible for carrying all its weight on his shoulders.

Remembering whose work we are doing

It's the same with us. When we forget who's really in control, we end up losing perspective and thinking the work hinges on what we do or do not do. Then when failure occurs (as it certainly will), we're sent reeling into the abyss of self-doubt and self-recrimination. It is for that reason that we must occasionally allow God, as He did with Moses, to pull us back from the fray long enough to gain needed perspective, and to learn, among other things, patience with ourselves. This time alone with God may be only an afternoon spent walking in the quiet of nature sorting out what happened, or, in some cases, there might be a need for an extended period away from the grind of ministry. But in times of reversals it is essential to take time to step back with God to gain perspective.

Failure and the wear and tear of ministry

Moses was on a roll. Beginning his ministry afresh after years of solitude in the desert, he enjoyed a long string of successes. To be sure, there were times of high stress. But for the most part things were moving in the right direction. A glance at his ministry during this period would reveal a momentum that any pastor would covet: He displayed rock-solid courage during the precarious hours at the Red Sea; communicated a clear, confident word from God in the face of the peoples' anxiety; solved some difficult organizational issues; handled courageously a tough church disciplinary matter, resulting in 3,000 members being "permanently" disfellowshipped from the church; and led the congregation into a multimillion-dollar building program, all the while chairing the capital campaign committee himself. Impressive!

But then things began to heat up. There had always been a measure of criticism against Moses' ministry, but now it became intense. A rebellion ensued instigated by several influential members that were bent on unseating Moses as leader. More than 14,000 people died as a result. If it hadn't been for Moses putting himself on the line, more would have perished. Not surprisingly, the wear and tear began to take its toll on the stressed-out leader. His frustration began to build to the point that he lost his temper and lashed out at the people. They wanted water, and "he" gave it to them the wrong way. The chapter heading (Num. 20) in my Bible simply calls it "Moses' Error at Kadesh." In simple words, he failed.

The spiritual dilemma for Moses was obvious. He didn't follow the instructions of the Lord. However, something else was being played out on an emotional level. What were the thoughts that ran through his mind as it dawned on him that he had failed? For most of us who fail, there is a plethora of thoughts and emotions that gather like dark clouds announcing the arrival of a storm.

Linda Gottlieb and Carole Hyatt, in When Smart People Fail, zero in on the conflicting emotions that accompany failure. "You feel pummeled, destroyed, violated, betrayed, terrified, angry, guilty, depressed, vengeful, lethargic, impotent and occasionally relieved and resolute.... Your mood swings wildly from hope to despair. It is a time of great confusion." ² Gottlieb and Hyatt go on to point out that in failure one has what psychiatrists term a "narcissistic loss" a loss of your very sense of self. "And the more closely you identified yourself with the job or endeavor that failed, the greater the loss."³

Distinguishing who we are from what we do

This is highly reflective of the experience of pastors. Our whole lives and identity can easily center around our ministries. And when we feel we have failed in an endeavor (striking as opposed to speaking to the rock), our whole sense of self can suffer. We head downhill emotionally occasionally into mild (or not so mild) forms of depression. In all this, our spiritual life may also take a dive. The problem is that we are of ten unable to separate our personhood from what we do as work. The fact is, we are not our jobs, and conversely, our jobs are not us. The last thing that means, of course, is that we should pastor at an emotionally safe distance, ensuring that we will never get hurt or make a blunder.

To pastor effectively is to pastor with passion. And pastoring passionately demands full engagement. The challenge, though, is to be able to make a full separation from what one may consider the job "failure" and one's worth as a person be fore God and oneself. God still considered Moses his friend, notwithstanding what had occurred. He still counted. His value as a person was never in question.

And neither is ours no matter what has happened. This salient truth permits us to be liberated from a self-defeating mind set so that we may constantly enjoy the successes of ministry, while we look at the failures in our ministry as growth opportunities.

Failure isn't final

Moses was at the end of his ministry. God had informed him that he would not be going with the people into the Promised Land the destination toward which he had struggled for so many years. Though God valued him as a person and a leader, he had to experience the consequences of leadership failure.

God allows His children to fail for the sake of the greater purpose He has in mind for them. God took Moses to an infinitely better Promised Land. What had seemed like a total washout, and no doubt a terrible disappointment for Moses, turned into the ultimate celebration. Why? Because God has this sovereign ability to do wonderful, unexpected things in and for us, even when things grow out of our worst failures and appear their bleakest.