Five gifts of failure

Success is a wonderful experience. We all want it but it does not always help us grow and develop. Sometimes success can even get in our way. In success it is easy to believe our own press and to assume we are better than we are. The truth is that we learn far more from failure than we do from success which is why the most successful have often failed more than they have succeeded. Much has been written regarding success but what does failure have to offer us?

First, failure makes us stronger. It is tough to fail, especially the first time. We can feel that life is over and that we are in some way diminished. If we push through the experience we come out the other side stronger and wiser. In fact, rather than diminished we are enriched with information and experiences we did not previously have.

Second, failure makes us more thoughtful and reflective. You can accept success without reflection but few can accept failure without reflection. Its very nature causes us to think, ponder and ask "what if?" 

Third, failure tends to clarify both our strengths and weaknesses far more than success does. In failure we start to differentiate what we are good at and where we need others around us. Success simply makes us think we are good at most things which is far from the truth. We are good at a very few things and poor at most other things. Failure helps clarify.

Fourth, failure builds humility whereas success tends to build pride. I realize in failure the limits of my own capabilities and a need for others. Success on the other hand simply fuels my hubris and wisdom. 

Fifth, failure fuels learning and growth if we have the curiosity to understand why we failed in the past and how we can avoid it in the future. Success can do just the opposite. Why do we need to grow if we are as good as it seems?

Most leaders attribute far more of their learnings to failure than they do to success. So powerful a drug is success that some leaders who fail for the first time in their fifties or sixties are crippled by the experience because they have no context for it. Thank God for your successes as well as for your failures. Allow your failures to help you grow.

See also
The up side of failure
A leadership perspective of growth
When a great idea didn't work: Dealing with failure
The gift of failure and pain

How do you measure the success of your organization?

I recently had an interesting conversation with the leader of a homeless ministry in the south. The city he is in has a large homeless population living in hidden places within the city. Because the weather is fairly mild it is a good place for homeless folks to congregate. The ministry he leads has a stated mission of helping these homeless folks get off the streets and into a stable living and working environment. This is also his desire.

His board however, measures something much different. They love to tell folks about the 40,000 meals they serve each year. The more meals served, the more successful they are in their view. On one level this is understandable. Feeding the hungry is necessary and it is a ministry. Helping the homeless become stable with homes and jobs is very tough, especially with the prevalence of drugs and alcohol within the population, to say nothing of mental illness. It can take years to help an individual move out of one world and into another.

The problem, of course is that focusing on the number of meals does not get to the heart of why the ministry exists. But because it is easy to count, it has become the measure of success for the board. The result is that more and more resources are focused on meals at the expense of the ultimate goal of the ministry which is to help the homeless leave the streets. By measuring the wrong thing - a good ministry in itself - the board sabotages its ultimate objective.

What you measure is what gets the attention in any organization. if you measure the wrong thing the attention is focused in the wrong direction. And it is easy to do. Everyone in leadership should regularly ask the question: "Are we measuring the right thing to ensure that we are moving in the direction of our mission and vision?" This means that we must do the hard work of figuring out what to measure and how to measure in order to determine whether one is heading in the proper direction and seeing success?

This is especially important in churches where our measure of success is often attendance, giving and buildings. But these are truly peripheral to the mission of the church which is more believers and better believers: Evangelism and Discipleship. That is harder to measure but it is possible to measure. Remember, what you measure is what gets the attention!

How the internal quality of our organization impacts it bottom line results

I have had the opportunity on two occasions recently to interview the senior staff of business organizations. They were unusual in that they both had amazingly healthy cultures. Staff had collegial and cooperative relationships, they were focused on their mission, were innovative and were delivering results and serving customers in competitive markets. I gave them high marks for the engagement of their staff, their culture of results and the quality of their strategies. In both cases, the businesses were growing and their potential for the future was bright.

So why was I there? Because in both organizations there was a recognition that as well as they were doing, there were internal issues that if resolved could allow them to go to the next level of growth. These leaders recognized that the internal quality of their organizations had a direct impact on their bottom line results.

Think about this. In a flat world, everyone has essentially the same access to information. But that does not mean that all can deliver the same results. To the extent that we allow internal processes or culture to get in the way of what we do we compromise our effectiveness. So paying attention to the internal culture, relationships, processes and the inherent disconnects within the organization becomes a key component of ongoing success.

In my experience, there are three key factors that ought to be paid close attention to.

One: Relationships that are askew. When relationships between staff are strained cooperation, communication and innovation suffers. Solving relational disconnects impacts the whole organization as well as the ability to be all that the organization can be.

Two: Processes that could be more efficient. In the competitive environments we all work in this is a huge factor. Ironically, it is often in our times of success and growth that we ignore this factor because we don't have the time to focus internally with the work we are doing externally. Yet, focusing on our internal processes is the key to future growth and effectiveness. The goal of efficient processes is to drive wasted time, energy and money from the system and foster cooperation and efficiencies that will give us a competitive edge.

Three: The quality of our services or products. In a recent conversation, I discovered that service calls needed to be done on about one third of installations from a well known and successful home product supplier. Driving down such time consuming service calls would obviously make a difference to the bottom line as well as to customer satisfaction.

The key to all of this is developing a system for ongoing analysis of the internal culture, relationships and processes of an organization whether they be in the for profit or non-profit sectors. This presupposes that there is as much attention paid to the internal quality of our organizations as there is to the services we provide to external customers. The first directly impacts the second.

The spelling of personal success

I saw this notice yesterday in a store I visited and was immediately struck by how much of our definition of success is dictated by our culture and how little by both common sense and Jesus. The other thing that struck me was how often we don't evaluate our own assumptions and definitions. It is why this blackboard is so striking. It visually shows what happens when we do and in doing so causes us to pay attention.

I took the time recently to rethink my own definition of success. It is an exercise that is worth doing. Think of the broad categories of your life and then consider what you really believe success looks like. You may, like me, find yourself crossing some things out and writing a better definition. 

In it for the Long Haul: The pastor's job is to find success when it's invisible from Leadership Journal

In It for the Long Haul

Forget metrics. The pastor's job is to find success when it's invisible.

TJ Addington (Addington Consulting) has a passion to help individuals and organizations maximize their impact and go to the next level of effectiveness. He can be reached at tjaddington@gmail.com.

"Creating cultures of organizational excellence."

9 EASY-TO-STEAL HABITS OF THE SUPER SUCCESSFUL

This is a very practical and insightful article from FC. You may be surprised at what these habits are.

9 Easy-to-steal habits of the super successful. 

All of T.J. Addington's books are available from the author for the lowest prices and a $2.00 discount on orders of ten or more.

Do fame and notoriety cloud one's thinking?

I have been mulling on a number of situations recently where Christian leaders have made really poor decisions in my view: Rich Stearns and World Vision's new policy to hire individuals in homosexual marriages; Rob Bell and his redefinition of heaven and hell and and the controversy over Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill who tried to manipulate the system to get his book on marriage onto the New York Times best seller list. I have another private list of individuals who have seemingly lost their way when they become Christian public figures. I saddens me and causes me to ask a question:

Do fame and notoriety cloud one's thinking and cause us to make decisions and pronouncements that are Biblically questionable? Does fame tend to give us more confidence in our own wisdom than in God's wisdom? Does it allow us to cross boundaries that we did not dare cross in the earlier years?

Fame and celebrity are a dangerous calling and few seem to handle it well. We see success and that success breeds pride and we begin to believe our own press which leads to the marginalization of those who don't agree with us and soon we become isolated and unaccountable - and eventually crash! Wisdom co-opted by pride! Youthful passion co-opted by ego! Jesus co-opted by us!

I am glad that I am not famous. I never want to be. To those who are I say this: There is never more important a time to develop a cadre who will tell one  the truth than when one is in the limelight. Because when the spotlight shines on us rather than on the One who created us, we have co-opted God and it rarely has a good ending.

To be clear, I don't know the motives or hearts of those named above and am not passing judgement. I am asking a question that their actions prompt. What I do know that when our name surpasses The Name, something is wrong. And when our pronouncements are at odds with His pronouncements, the same is true. 

There is never more important a time to develop accountability and humility and to guard the shadow side as when we become important in the eyes of others. And believe that we actually are.

(Posted from Milwaukee)

Humility is the key to long term success

There are many advantages to cultivating a heart of humility. Among them is the truth that it is a crucial key to long term success whether personally, in our ministry or business. Think about this:

Without humility we don't grow personally because we are not open to the feedback of others or even the necessary introspection of ourselves. If we don't want to hear what we need to hear we cannot grow, change and become a better version of us. Pride can even keep us from hearing what the Holy Spirit wants to tell us.

Without humility we are not open to seeing new ways of doing things (unless we come up with them ourselves). Pride says that we don't need the ideas of others while humility says that we know we don't know a lot and have much to learn.

Without humility we are unlikely to resolve conflict and live in relational health. After all, if I am fundamentally right, why would I need to ask forgiveness or admit that I was wrong? This is why proud individuals often leave relational wreckage in their wake. Their pride keeps them from resolving what needs to be resolved.

Without humility we are unlikely to see the spiritual transformation and renovation of our lives and hearts. After all, that very transformation depends on our understanding of our need for it and the turning from our own way to His way. To the extent that we allow pride to reign on our heart's throne we will resist admitting our need for change.

Without humility I am unlikely to treat others with the respect and consideration that they deserve. After all, if I am wrapped up in me - my needs, my desires, my issues, how can I be sensitive to those of others. Humility opens our hearts to others while pride closes our hearts to others.

Without humility I am unlikely to create a healthy staff and workplace ethos. After all, that is all about serving others and proud individuals think that others ought to serve them. Pride is a fundamental barrier to healthy workplace cultures while humility is a fundamental builder of healthy culture.

Humility is not just a nice biblical concept. It is fundamental to our personal growth and success. And, it mirrors the character of Jesus, Philippians 2. 

What metrics do you use to determine success in your church?

The definition of metrics as a means of understanding how we are doing in local church ministry is one that is gaining far more prominence. How do we know if we are doing well? How do we catch areas that are sliding? Of course that presupposes that we desire to honestly evaluate our ministries as a means of sharpening our focus and our success.

One of the keys to using metrics is to measure all that you can (the more information you have the more you will understand) and then to determine what the key non-negotiable areas of measurement should be. Our metrics, however should be driven by a New Testament definition of success rather than a cultural definition of success.

Think about these areas in your congregation, take a stab at answering them and ask whether these "indicators" or metrics would be worthwhile evaluating on an annual basis. All of these go to the health of one's church. They are not listed in any particular order.

• What is our numerical growth or decline annually?


• What is our conversion growth annually?


• Do we have an identifiable disciplemaking pathway to bring people to spiritual maturity?


• Do we have clear statements regarding our mission, our guiding principles, central ministry focus and culture?


• Do these clear statements actually impact how we do ministry?


• What is the giving per attendee per year?


• What portion of the budget is allocated for outreach or missions?


• Do we have a clear leadership coaching/training paradigm for future church leaders?


• What percentage of our adults are in small groups?


• What focus do we have as a church on Kingdom Ministries - ministries focused on our community or region?


• What focus do we have as a church on ministry "to the least of these?"


• How many individuals has our church sent into full time ministry?


• What is our annual attrition rate (people leaving the church)


• Do our governance systems hinder or facilitate the making of timely ministry decisions?


• Do board and staff have a clear definition of what role each plays?


• Do staff members operate with annual ministry plans?


• Are Elders/Leaders clear or unclear on their Biblical function and role? It that role written down?


• Is there an emphasis on spiritual transformation and a plan for how your congregation seeks to help people see personal transformation?

• Are we seeing genuine spiritual transformation taking place among our people and leaders?


• Is there an annual intentional ministry plan being driven by staff and leaders?


• What significant ministry innovation has taken place in the past 24 months?


• Is there an intentional plan to develop greater diversity within the congregation. How many ethnic groups are represented in a sizable way? What are they?


• How many of your pastors have a mentor and how many are mentoring other pastors?


• Is there a high, medium, low or non-existent level of alignment among ministries of the church?


• In what ministries is the church finding its greatest opportunity for spiritual growth, kingdom impact or evangelism?


• Does the church have an intentional process for choosing leaders based on needs and qualifications?


• Does the board operate with a board covenant outlining commitments to one another and acceptable board behavior?


• What percentage of the church participates in local, national or international short term ministries each year?


• What percentage of the congregation's ministries are focused on disciplemaking and what percentage on evangelism?


• What percentage of the congregation are using their gifts in meaningful ways inside or outside the church?


• Is the Gospel held up as the central most important element in the life of the church?


• Could the majority of your people articulate the great truths of the faith?

What questions would you add?

What got you to here won't necessarily get you to there

Think about that phrase: What got you here won't get you there. Those of us who lead organizations, ministries and churches often forget that truth. We assume that if we simply continue to do what we have done in the past we will get to the next level of effectiveness. Here is the truth. What got you to where you are got you to where you are. But without thinking differently, one is not likely to get to the next level.

An example of this is that of boards and what they spend their time on. In the early days of a ministry, boards often get involved in management decisions because there are few staff. As the ministry grows, however, unless they start to focus on governance and the future, they will become barriers to growth. What got them here will not get them there. Transition is needed in order to go to the next level.

Leaders themselves must continually reinvent themselves for the next run. Time priorities, focus on building strong team, constantly evaluating methods and strategies, awareness of the ministry environment in which they work and ensuring that the right people are in the right place in the ministry all become crucial elements. What got them here will not get them there. Figuring out what will get them to the the next place is one of the most important jobs of a leader.

It is the difference between General Motors who thought one could just do what they always did and continue to be successful and Toyota who knew that could not happen. One ended in bankruptcy and the other weathered the economy. Those principles apply to churches and ministries as well.

Understanding what got us to where we are is important. Understanding what will get us to the next level of effectiveness is even more important. Just thinking that it will happen by itself is naive. It is worth taking the time to think, pray and dialogue about your team and what will allow your team to go to the next level. It will require change - it always does. It may require rearrangement on the team - it often does. It will require a new way of thinking in certain areas.

How the past can become a threat to your future

Every leader and organization faces the dilemma. How they did things in the past successfully got them to where they are today but will often not get them to where they need to go tomorrow. Yet the past is what they know and have experienced while the future is not known and has not been experienced. Good leaders thus live in a dynamic tension between the past and the future - knowing that their knowledge of the past is often a detriment to moving into the future.

I have seen this tension about what is known (the ways of the past) and what is unknown (the ways of the future) literally paralyze leaders from taking the necessary steps to lead their organization into the future. After all, the unknown requires measured risk while the known requires no risk at all (except, ironically, the very survival of the ministry). 

Healthy leaders understand this tension and also know that while we can and should learn from both our failures and successes in the past, we must always be moving the organization we lead toward the future with all of its unknowns. This requires courage because we know what the road behind us was but we don't know what the road in front of us is. Our GPS can take us to what is but not to what will be.

Therein lies the dilemma. When I drive home from work each night I do it by habit and without any thinking about where I need to go. It is familiar, comfortable and second nature. Not so the future which requires a lot of thinking, evaluating, looking at trends, emerging opportunities, and evaluation of what is currently being done. 

Churches get caught in this dilemma all the time, doing what they always did and then wondering why attendance and giving are down. Often they are simply not responding any longer to the needs of a new day. One church I know is known for its exceptional biblical exposition and preaching which is always excellent (and which I deeply believe in). But, there is no application of the Biblical truth to every day living. The pastor is living in the past when there was a general knowledge of the Bible and truth whereas today there is not and without helping people make application to their lives they are no longer meeting the needs of a different day. It should be no surprise that both the attendance and giving are down.

Leadership is about leading people somewhere and much of that has to do with leading into the unknowns of the future. That means deep thinking, careful exegesis of our context and being willing to risk new strategies and ways of thinking to respond to the needs of a new day. It is all about not allowing the past to become a threat to the future.

Success, resentment and criticism

It is an interesting phenomenon but it reveals something about our own hearts. The greater one's success in ministry the more criticism they receive and the more cynicism about their ministry. This criticism and cynicism says nothing about the one they are directed against. It says a lot about those who display the attitude.

I have had many conversations with pastors about large churches in their area. It seems as if there is a rule that we need to find something negative about them because they are large and influential. Sure there are times when we ought to have concerns (health and wealth teaching, legalism or teaching that is not Biblical). That I understand. But often, the real issue is our resentment at their success and a need to lower their standing in order to increase ours.

Here is an interesting question. Is it even necessary to speak negatively of other ministries? Usually not...and if we do what is our true motivation? Even Paul had strong detractors - those who didn't like his influence. If Paul did, it is inevitable that others will too. 

No leaders are perfect and none above criticism for some issues. But neither are we. They simply have more attention focused on them because they happen to lead a large ministry. In most cases they did not ask for the attention and may even resent it but it is what it is. Why should we follow the crowd in throwing stones? It was Paul's advice to use words that build up rather than tear down.

The bottom line is that our tendency to criticize those who are successful is most often a reflection of our hearts, our issues, our resentments and our desires rather than the success of others. If we are going to criticize we need first to look inside and ask what in our hearts creates that need.

A counter-intuitive idea for celebrating success

We love success in ministry or in our personal lives. It is a sign of God's blessing through the years and each of those blessings we can celebrate for He is indeed the cause of our success. But I have a suggestion that can make that celebration even more interesting.

Why do we celebrate our successes along the way? We do so to mark those places where God has been especially good to us and brought us to where we currently are. However, if we really want to understand God's goodness to us why not choose the greatest failures along the way and hold them up as the milestones of our journey. God was good in our success  but He was magnificent in our failures as He took those failures and made them into something we could never have fashioned from them.

In every failure there is some work of redemption. In every failure there is a work of God's grace. In every failure there is humble recognition that the failure that should have brought disaster brought something good after all, not because of us but because of Him. Think of your life from that perspective! Think of your church from that perspective! Think of the story of redemption from that perspective! 

Nothing humbles us and lifts up the Father than the way he takes our failures and redeems them for His glory. This is one place we cannot take any credit. This is one place we cannot share any of the glory. This is one place where He takes His rightful place and we ours. And it is a good place to be!

When success can be an enemy

It may sound counter intuitive but ministry success can be an enemy in at least two ways.

First, when a ministry has seen a great period of success in its past, it often spends the next decades either thinking they are still living in that glorious past when they are not. Or, they are trying to recreate that past when they cannot. This is often true of local churches who saw a "heyday" that people remember. That past success keeps them from making the needed changes to move into a different future since "it worked in the past and so should work in the future." 

Of course it rarely does and the ministry usually does not move on until it can bless the past as the past and embrace a new vision for the future. What got you to here got you to here: it will not get you to there. 

Success can also be a blinder in the present. Success does not mean that a ministry is healthy. It just means that for some reason it is seeing greater momentum than it has in the past. I watched one church move to a new location and quickly triple in size. Yet there were many issues internally that needed to be resolved. However, because of the rapid growth (from a move) it was assumed by some leaders that all was well (it was not). 

Momentum should not keep us from asking hard questions about the health of an organization for two reasons. First, because there may be other reasons for that momentum. Second, because momentum does not last forever and the most important issue is the internal health of staff, leadership and long term viability and fruitfulness. Momentum and "success" can mask issues for a time but not forever. Eventually they surface!

The moral is that past success is not the key to future success and present success is not a reason to let our guard down and assume all is well. That success, past or present can bring with it both arrogance and carelessness, each of which are an enemy.

For those fifty and over: think convergence

Much of our lives are spent learning who we are, what our gifting is, where our strengths and weaknesses are and through the experiences of life and work finding out our strongest lane. 

Ironically, it is often in our fifties and sixties and beyond that we have our greatest impact. No longer running on raw energy we are living with greater wisdom, doing less but accomplishing more and seeing greater results. Hopefully we are also comfortable in our own skin with nothing we need to prove and nothing to lose. It is a good place to be.

There is also the greatest possibility of convergence in our lives where our biography, experience, training, gifts and passions come together in a powerful combination for maximum influence and impact. I call this convergence and if you are fifty or over I would encourage you to think about what convergence would look like for you and then ask whether you can arrange your life and work in a way that helps you get there.

We accumulate activities and responsibilities in our personal and work lives over time and often don't take the time to shed those that are old, or that are not truly in our lane of effectiveness. It is like the stuff in our garage that just sits there, of no use to us anymore but we continue to let it accumulate.

Convergence comes when we are able to let go of those things that someone else can do and we are not truly gifted in to focus on areas of passion, skill and greatest impact. I often ask ministry leaders in their fifties what their greatest passion is and then, how could you arrange your life and work so that you spend the greatest amount of time in those areas of passion? Often they have never realized that they could actually do that.

But this is not just for leaders. It is for all of us who want to make an impact in whatever area of life we inhabit. We can declutter our lives for greater focus in areas where God uses us the most. And this is where we find our greatest joy and satisfaction anyway. 

Definitions of success: be sure to get it right!

I have been mulling for some time on our definitions of success in ministry. I think about these things because I am wired to win and to help the organization I lead make the largest mark for Jesus that it can. But where do the societal and biblical definitions of success overlap and where do they differ? Or is there a difference since often there does not seem to be any?

How we frame the question has a lot to do with the answer we get.

For instance, if my definition of success is doing better than my peers in ministry what I am really doing is competing with others according to their definitions of success. I see a lot of that among pastors and ministry leaders who love to compare attendance, budgets, staff, facilities and programs - which could simply be different language for sales, market capitalization, employee count, dividends, and new product in the pipeline. Again, where do societal and biblical definitions of success overlap and where do they differ?

Many leaders like visibility and believe we have something to say so we speak, write books, and often try to get into the "right circles" where we belong (of course) in our drive to accomplish great things. How many leaders do you know who run on fumes? If my definition of success is making a mark then I suppose these activities contribute to it. Leaders are visible, after all, and leaving a mark is often seen in that light. So in the business world, you might make the cover of Fortune and in the ministry world, a Christian publication, maybe CT! But these do not satisfy my soul nor do they seem to be consistent with Scripture.

Here is how I frame the question of success: When I see Jesus, what will He value and commend me for? 

Here is what I know about that question. What Jesus will (and does) value and commend me for is very different than what society generally values and might commend me for. So I need to make a conscious effort to focus on those things that are important to Him rather than those things that are important to me or to those around me. 

It seems to me that His definition of success will look something like this:

- A deep abiding relationship with Him that defines my life
- Being a Christ like husband, father and grandfather
- Focusing on becoming ever more transformed into His image
- Deep Humility
- Using the gifts He gave me to their fullest
- Having the greatest influence for Him that I can
- Being faithful in good times and hard times
- Treating those I lead with dignity, love and respect
- Being willing to suffer hardship for Jesus
- Developing, empowering and releasing my staff as He did
- Aligning my life priorities around His priorities

What is interesting to me about His definitions of success is that they differ radically from how success is defined in our world and by many who serve in full time ministry but are infected by a faulty definition of success (all of us are vulnerable on that). Jesus is deeply interested in the person I am and become, how I do what I do, the motivations behind it and how I interact and treat people.

It would be sad to get to the end and realize that what we had been chasing after so hard was not what God intended us to chase after. And that in succeeding, we had neglected the things that meant the most to God.