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archives: february 2011
the joy & blessings of failure
by mike pilavachi
I recently heard a story about a group of high powered businessmen talking together. One of them was boasting about his recent skiing holiday. He was bragging that even though it was the first time he had ever been skiing he didn’t fall over once. The others ridiculed him. They insisted that he could not have been trying very hard or accomplishing very much if he hadn’t managed to have even one tumble.
I am sure this translates. John Wimber once called the leaders of the Vineyard movement together and informed them that in the past year something like 10% of their church plants ended in failure. (I can’t remember the exact figure). He then thundered that this failure rate was not good enough. He set a target of 20% as the failure rate for the coming year. The point he was making was they were not taking enough risks for the gospel because paradoxically, if they failed more, they were also succeeding more.
Michael Jordan, one of the most successful sportsmen in history recently said this;
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that’s why I succeed.”
J.K. Rowling spoke at Harvard University in 2008 where she said;
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, - in which case you fail by default. Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.”
This woman failed and failed and then she wrote Harry Potter.
The motto of the California state lottery is “You can’t win if you don’t play”. None of us would imagine we’d win the lottery just by talking about it and yet when it comes to something we are passionate about winning in, like evangelism, we seem to talk about it more than we get on with it.
The situation in our country is desperate and so should we be. Some of our team have recently been involved in missions where only one or two have become Christians. Praise God for the one or two but are we really going to be satisfied with a trickle of the unsaved coming into God's kingdom?
If that quenches our thirst then we cannot be that thirsty. We mustn’t get complacent or apathetic, we must be desperate because it is when we get desperate that we will be willing to take risks and it is then that we will see success.
Jesus tells a story about a man who has visitors at midnight. When the man discovered he had no bread to give them, he didn’t read books about bread making, he didn’t go to conferences on “effective bread making for today”, he went to his neighbour whom he knew had bread. He pounded on the door until he received his bread. Because of his “bold persistence” his neighbour got up in the middle of the night and gave him what he needed.
It is a risky business knocking on your neighbour’s door at midnight, and continuing to make a nuisance of yourself after you have been told to go away. Restraining orders have been taken out for less. But we need some of that bold persistence in prayer and in action.
Of course conferences and books on evangelism and how we proclaim the gospel in today’s culture have their place. At some stage, though, we must go beyond conversations to meaningful activity.
Because we discover by prayerfully doing. We learn from the mistakes. We grow in the mess. We develop in the failure. “Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything”. Let’s try every method of proclamation evangelism, presence evangelism, servant evangelism, friendship evangelism and power evangelism we can find. Then let’s reflect on what worked and what didn’t and see how we can mix them together to achieve more. Let us give ourselves no rest and give Him no rest until He establishes His Kingdom in our midst.
Let us contend for the gospel. Let us not grow weary in doing good. Let’s strive with all the power that God puts within us. Let’s shake off any complacency and apathy and bang on a few doors and make a nuisance of ourselves. Let us up our failure rate. The last word from Winston Churchill:
“Success is going from one failure to another without any apparent loss of enthusiasm!”
About the author
Mikey P (that's his Gangstar name) is a nice chap who heads up all things Soul Survivor-ish. He's a church pastor, speaker, writer and Facebook addict. He supports Man United (booo!), likes cooking and is good at panicking.
Soul Survivor is a Christian charity that puts on events for young people. Our registered charity no. is 1080720. We are also a company limited by guarantee in England & Wales. Our company registered number is 03991111, which is nice. Thanks for caring.
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