It is a constant tension in any kind of ministry leadership between desiring to see the fruits of our service (which is not a bad thing to desire) and trying to be faithful to our calling no matter what. We get discouraged when Sunday morning attendance dips. We wonder what we're doing wrong when our youth group doesn't grow as quickly as we think it should. And if we go down that road far enough, we will spend far more time and energy trying to create results than we will simply doing everything we can to be faithful. In case you're wondering, that's a bad place to be.
But aren't numbers important?
Yes, numbers are important, because every number corresponds to real people God loves. For the record, I get a huge smile one my face when I hear of a ministry somewhere that sees an unbelievable number of people come to Jesus in one day. It would be ridiculous for a church or ministry to see lots of people come to Jesus, lots of lives transformed, yet not celebrate and praise God from the rooftops. I find it a curious thing that in the American church, we're not really sure what to do with churches that seem to be making a big impact, numerically speaking. We speculate whether "it's about the numbers" or not. We blog about it (you're reading a post about it right now, aren't you?). We hesitantly affirm the fact that God just might bring people to himself by the hundreds, or even the thousands. But we do so by saying, "Yes, but..." (and usually, it's a BIG BUT).
We do just about everything with those big numbers, except for one thing: We rarely seem to simply praise God for those numbers.
But this post isn't about the numbers.
It's about failure. Or at least the perception of failure.
Many of us love to praise God when the numbers look good, but how much do we praise him when things don't go the way we want them to?
Listen, I know it can be discouraging when attendance numbers dip. And what ministry leader hasn't put a ton of work into an event or a service, only to have just a handful of people show up? One of my favorite pastors in our area often tells the story of his first trip to Utah. He came as a teenager on a mission trip. They met thousands of people over the course of a week, loved them, served them, and invited them to an event at the end of the week where the mission team would give a dramatic, life-changing, creative presentation of the Gospel.
The night of the event arrived, and no one came.
Not. One. Person.
He was so mad at God, he vowed never to come back to Utah again. Now, as a pastor of a thriving church (in Utah) that ministers to thousands of people that Jesus usually liked to hang out with at parties, he praises God for that experience.
When was the list time you praised God for a perceived failure?
Notice I'm careful to use the qualifier "perceived." Because God does not fail. Christ is our victor, death has been beaten, and heaven is open to anyone who would simply say "yes" to Jesus.
And yet when we don't get "enough" kids at youth group Wednesday night, we count it as a failure.
No one in the Bible was better at praising God for failure than Paul. I don't know if he took in a little too much water during those shipwrecks, but in his letters, he seems to celebrate his failures like he just won the Super Bowl.
In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul describes the many things that have gone terrible wrong in his ministry. He's been imprisoned, flogged, stoned, shipwrecked, imprisoned again. You think a small dip in Sunday attendance is bad? You've obviously never been run out of town by the very people you were preaching to. Yet about all those things he says, "I will boast of the things that show my weakness."
Here's the point: When things don't go the way you want them to, praise God for that. In fact, this week, when something goes wrong, just try it out and say, "God, thanks for this failure, and thanks for my weakness." I don't think that Paul was off his rocker for doing that. Paul knew that no failure could ever counteract God's victory.
My prayer is that one day I could have that kind of relationship with God.
That I would experience failure and praise my Savior. That things would go terribly, terribly wrong, and that I would take it as a sign that God is simply using foolish, foolish people (like me!) to accomplish amazing things. That my weakness is something to boast about, because it's just a sign that God's power is being made perfect.
So the next time you think you've failed, the next time you see a program, a Sunday service, or an event go the exact opposite as you hoped it would, know that for God, it's not a failure--it's just one more victory in disguise.
