If You're Not Failing, You're Not Trying

• Seeking to reach families who aren’t coming to their Sunday morning service, a new church plant in a rapidly developing suburb decides to hold informal outdoor worship services in a neighborhood park. Very few people attend. 

• A second career seminary student struggles in a few classes, and falls behind her schedule for graduation. Discouraged, she considers dropping out and returning to her previous career.

• A declining congregation in a small town starts a monthly Bingo night in order to meet new people and build up membership. The Bingo games are well attended, but it doesn’t lead to any new people visiting worship and joining the church.

• A pastor in a well-established urban church decides to spend time in a local coffee shop in order to meet and minister to folks outside his congregation. He puts up signs that say, “Free Prayer,” and “I’m a pastor, ask me anything.” But the only people who stop to chat are his own church members.

By traditional, numbers-based measures of success, each of these four real-life scenarios would be called failures. Goals and expectations were not reached. Worship attendance and membership did not grow. Progress was not made on achieving long-range plans and projections.

In the 21st century, however, these conventional standards need to be rethought. As I said in my first post on this topic, “Maybe success in this new era is not found in numbers, but in the willingness to try, and fail, and learn, and try again.” 

In some cases, this simply means celebrating a different kind of success than what was anticipated. The seminary student learned better study and time management skills. The small town church put on a fun and wholesome recreation activity for the community. And the urban pastor provided quality pastoral care for some of his church members and got to know them better.

In other cases, however, the failure just seems like failure. It’s hard to find any positive results that justify the time and resources invested. This was the case with that new church plant and it’s outdoor worship service, which happens to be my church. We made a huge effort, and almost nobody showed up. When this happens with a new idea or project, it’s reasonable to simply say, “Oh well. We tried, but this obviously isn’t the right direction. Let’s pull the plug.”

At least that is the reasonable response according to the old measures of success. But I was very encouraged at how my leadership responded with a new attitude. At the next meeting, no one suggested that we give up on the idea of going into the community to reach new people, or on the idea of informal, outdoor worship.

Instead, we sought deeper insight into why our idea didn’t work. We determined that advertising an event as a “worship service” is a big deterrant in this post-Christian era. Going forward, we are going to focus on what has worked for us - simple, fun events that allow us to meet people and build relationships. Then, once we have built up some community, we will explore options for designing worship and spiritual activities. Which might not work either. But we are calling this “new wineskin” a success since we have tried something new, failed at it, and are now learning and adapting.

In your ministry context, what “new winseskins” have you been creating? Have you been successful by the old numbers-based measures of success? If so, that’s wonderful! Keep doing it and share your story.

But if you have been failing by the old measures, take heart. Look for the new kind of success through perseverance, learning, and adaption. And please share your story as well.