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.

A tale of two worlds

A tale of two worlds at least that is how it seems when you read Hudson Taylor's biography and then look at Britain today. The church in Taylor's day was sending young men out to the mission field by the bucketful - though by 1900 even he began to note more women than men were responding to the call to preach the gospel to the lost.

The story is very different in Britain today. When you study British history I want to tentatively suggest one reason why that may be the case: We are too worldly. In the 1950's couples and the British in general aspired to a comfortable lifestyle after the austerity of the post war years. This aspiration has continued being the norm for the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed with relatively few glitches along the way it has been the defining characteristic of the last 50 years in Britain and has morphed from from an aspiration to comfort into a desire to be wealthy. Indeed what we now consider as comfortable our parents or grandparents in the 1950's would consider opulent and lavish.

Consumerism has gone through the roof, advertising has given birth to a rapacious desire, we now live in a competitive society based not on your skills or ability but on what you have or can purchase. We find this hard to see in ourselves but the place where it may be most easily discerned is in what we desire for our children, nieces, nephews or grandchildren. We want them to have a comfortable life, to pursue a career or degree, to be happy.

We do not want them to risk everything by going to the mission field to face danger and possibly death. We do not live life by faith dependent on God and we are not sure our nerves could take it if our children were to.

Yet the call of the cross is to live that way. The contrast with Hudson Taylor's day is striking and it should make us repentant before God. It must drive us to prayer that God would change us and the church around us.

Millions are lost and facing a Christ less and Godless eternity in hell yet we content ourselves with the baubles of the world, with working for next years eBay-ables. May God change my hard heart, give us a passion for the lost and help us nail this idol to the cross.

Failure to learn from history

Tomorrow I'm sitting an exam on Early Church History. And to my shame have to admit to not really having worked that hard towards the exam until the last twenty four hours, since when I have tried to read everything I can get my eyes on about Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine Constantine and the like. As I have done so one thing has struck me; we really don't know our history.

Why is the church like it is? How have we arrived at the doctrine of the Trinity that we hold? How do we come to have the Bible as it is and why? How do we face up to questions that we face about penal substitutionary atonement and the character of God?

The answer is all there in Church History. Its just that we don't know it. But that poses a question how do we teach church history to people in a way that is engaging. Most of us want to know about what affects us in the now, how do I deal with this or how should I live in the light of that? Yet many of the questions we face are exactly those we would see the answers to if we looked back at those who have been there before us.

But how do we do so in a way that engages? Is it through short 2 minute slots on Sundays? Is it through interested people sharing there info? Is it through mentioning it when relevant in sermons and Bible studies?