Where are the failures?

I don't know about you but I learn most from my failures.  I remember as a teen spending hours and hours and hours trying to get the right bend on a free kick so that it would sail over the wall and nestle in the top corner.  I failed thousands of times, but over time each failure led to an adjustment and gradual improvement, though I've now regressed dramatically.  Failure teaches us.  It is not the enemy it is our friend.

But I wonder if we've lost that perspective.  I think in the church in the UK we are afraid of failure and that it is paralysing us.  Have you ever been to a church planting seminar where the speaker had tried to plant a church but it hadn't worked and yet he was humble enough to share the lessons he had learnt so that you didn't repeat it.  Or where the organisers thought it was vital we heard that story so that we could learn.  Or do we hide failure like a dirty secret we don't want to get out?  When was the last time you read a book or saw a blog post on how bad an evangelistic event was, or how a church had gradually plateaued and then declined before closing its doors due to a loss of outward looking evangelism.

We simply aren't very good at sharing our failures.  And yet everywhere else in life we learn so much from them.  Why is that?  As Christians the gospel liberates us to try because our standing and status is not dependent on our achievements but on Christ's.  But the fear of failing produces paralysis, it's mantra is "I can't!  We can't!  It might not work!"  Or "We came, we saw, we failed, we must keep quiet about it."  But there is so much to learn from our failures.

One of the things I love about Grace Church is that the church families grip on, and grasp of, grace is big enough that they are prepare to try and fail.  We've tried all sorts of things; evening church in homes in two locations without children with discussion groups, an early evening church with children, currently an afternoon church with children in and involved.  Evangelistic events in pubs and various other places, Easter Egg hunts, Holiday Clubs, Easter Explorers, various forms of toddlers, Impromptu nativity's, a joint carol service with the school, a change of location for Sunday mornings.  What leads the church to be able to try even though failure is a very real possibility?  I'd love to think in part it's a trust in the leadership, but I think predominantly it's that we are prepared to try, fall, pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, evaluate, learn and go again because we know we are not saved by our success, or condemned by our failure, God isn't shaking his head when we fail like a critical parent.  We want to risk, in fact I'd love to see us (especially me) risk more because the gospel must be heard and we are God's means of declaring it to those around us.

Lots of those things haven't worked, they have failed in terms of what we set out to do and so they are reviewed and learnt from and assigned to the archives labelled 'Lessons learnt'.  Others have worked for a period of time.  Some have worked well and been repeated, though with tweaks each time.  And we want to keep learning, so we rigorously review because failure is another lesson learnt about what works and what doesn't.  And grace liberates us to risk and even to fail and to share the lessons learnt with others.

When Church Plants Fail

We know the success stories, churches planted which grow phenomenally quickly and go on to become established churches which reach their neighbourhoods.  But I guess we hear and know fewer stories of planted churches which struggle and then finally close their doors.  For every proclamation of the faithfulness of God in the successes do we find ourselves asking whether God was unfaithful in the failures, or do we simply choose not to think about the questions such things raise, or put it down to poor leadership?

Doncaster tragically has multiple tales of failed church plants and closing churches.  I was reminded again recently of the difficulty in planting churches in Doncaster, when hearing of churches struggling, pastors short of other leaders and key workers, and of churches potentially shutting their doors for the last time.  What ought we to make of such things?

The Bible is not afraid of failure but we as a Christian culture are.  I wonder if that is why we don't take the time to learn from or listen to stories of places where churches have shut.  Is that why we don't like to be associated with small churches, or to leave a student or young professional city church to labour and serve in a small non city or university town church?  Is that why pastors can tend towards careerism?

I wonder if its time we formulated a biblically robust theology of failure, rather than simply transferring cultural norms to our thinking about church?

What is failure?

I have just been reading an article in this months Evangelicals Now reviewing a book on church planting. It contained within it the scary statistic that 3 in 5 church plants fail.

But there was no definition of what it meant to fail as a church plant. For example would the Ephesian Church be a failed church plant because it ceased to exist? Is it failure to last 5 years? Is a church plant only successful if it becomes self sustaining and financially independent?

It made me think about why we plant churches - we plant churches to see the lost saved, discipled and reach maturity and thus complete the race. So when does a church fail? I think there are a number of ways that a church plant can fail. We fail when we do not preach the gospel or teach the Bible, we fail when we do not seek the lost, we fail when we do not disciple those who come into our church families.

This means that in terms of 'success' or 'failure', for want of better terms, a church plant that lasts only 12 months but sees the lost saved and then at its closure channelled into other churches where they go on and grow can be more 'successful' than an established church which lasts for years but never reaches out with the gospel or sees believers mature in the faith.

Church planting is about a gospel response to a gospel need. In Britain that gospel need is great but so is resistance to the message, so are misunderstandings about the Bible, God, Christianity and the gospel. This means that gospel work, establishing and planting churches is hard work!!! It takes a long time to build relationships, it takes a long time to demolish barriers, it takes a long time to correct faulty thinking and misunderstanding, it takes a long term commitment to establish that you as a body of God's people - the church - love the people and the area.

Church Planting is a long term commitment to hard work but it is worth it to see someone won for the gospel.