Measuring Success
This is an except from Fail: Finding Hope and Grace in the Midst of Ministry Failure by J.R. Briggs
In our culture, it has been said that failure is the unforgiveable sin. We’re filled with an incredible yearning to be known, to garner respect, to be applauded and patted on the back. Though called to live a life hidden with Christ, many of us have a deep fear of being an ordinary pastor. Cicero said we are all motivated by a keen desire for praise. We struggle with the scarcity complex where we find the mental tapes constantly playing in our heads, I am never ______ enough.
The lure of success is not limited to the secular world. No, sadly enough, it is just as strong in the church. This strong current of the Hollywood narrative of ministry is seductive and destructive. It is this bigger, better, faster, louder, more impressive and more inspiring mindset we are tempted to run after as church leaders. The opportunity for justification of our pride and blindness of self-deception are dangerously high. We are never in more danger of glossing over our pride than when we are in the spotlight.
Ironically, this striving for bigger, better, faster, loud, more impressive and more inspiring is polar opposite to the Philippians chapter two description of the life and motivations of Jesus. Most pastors would admit this – we may have preached on it scores of times – and yet few are willing to admit that we live a double ministry life. Jesus spent approximately ninety percent of his years on earth living a scandalously normal life as a Jewish man. Even when his ministry was public, he proactively sought ways to escape the crowds, oftentimes seeking to remain anonymous, even going to great lengths to silence people from telling anyone what he had just done. What is worse in our motivations and behavior as pastors, we can mask all of this in smooth- sounding spiritual language, justifying our pride and greed and lust for more, dressing up our idols in a way that look like it honors God. But it doesn’t honor Him - and deep down, we know it.
I remember the first time I heard Annie Dillard’s story of nineteenth century British explorers on their pursuit to discover the North Pole. They anticipated a two- to three-year treacherous journey, but each ship carried a coal supply of less than two weeks. Ironically, instead of bringing more coal, each ship was filled with superfluous items (such as a 1,200-volume library, a hand organ, numerous settings of fine china, fancy wine glases, pastries and numerous sets of sterling silver). Even more ironic was the fact that they brought no special clothing to protect them from the harsh elements other than their official navy uniforms.
They froze to death. Years later when their bodies were found by Eskimos dressed up pulling sleds carrying mostly sterling silver, china and chocolate. How chilling that discovery must have been and yet how close this story resonates with many pastors. How many of our souls are in decomposed states lying alongside of ornate church buildings and thousand-member attendance roles. When I first heard the story my mind immediately went to the chillingly rhetorical words of Jesus: What good is it if a man gains the whole world and yet forfeits his soul?
What I find incredibly tragic is, despite the power of the cross, we shrink from risk and play it safe. Ironically, there are other sectors leading the way in breakthrough and innovation because of their inherent willingness to take risks and experience failure. More often than not, venture capitailists won’t even consider offering tech startups in Silicon Valley seed money who haven’t had at least one failed startup story to speak of. There’s not only permission to fail; there is an expectation for it. It is impossible to be creative and to be a part of something new and different if we refuse to put ourselves in a position to fail. Unfortuately, we as leaders deep down know that while we desire the success of a large and vibrant church almost all of us will refuse to take risks because we believe failure will eliminate us from ministry. Our systems are messed up and ultimately cancel out each other.
The emphasis on the cult of charismatic personality wrecks biblically true community. It may not be evident on the surface, but it eats away at leadership – and congregations - and causes dependence upon a person rather than upon Christ himself. My friend Geoff Holsclaw, who serves as one of the pastors of Life On the Vine in the suburbs of Chicago once said wisely, the kingdom of God depends more on our obedience than our skills, on our integrity than technique and on what the Holy Spirit will do than what we have figured out. In his early years of leadership, King Saul was the exact model of successful spiritual leadership by every standard of the ancient world – and yet, Saul’s life was a disaster. So much so, Scripture records God’s regret in placing him in leadership in the first place. We yearn, dream and plead for leaders like Saul – many of us even desire to lead with charisma like him – and yet this mindset saddens God’s heart as it runs counter to His message.
Randy Alcorn writes, “Why do we take consolation from celebrity Christians who judge success by the standards of the world? Why do we take our cues from people so conspicuously different than Jesus? Why do we listen to men who, had they lived in the first century, would have sold tickets to the feeding of the five thousand and charged a fee to watch the raising of Lazarus?5 We must ask another more striking question: why do we tolerate this in ourselves? The truth is, despite the pride that can creep in, we are not important in our role as pastors in the slightest way.
Many of us, however, might admit that we don’t struggle with pride as much as we struggle at the opposite end of the spectrum: low self-worth. We may wrestle with a life-long bout of ministry insecurity. Because of our deep insecurities, and the subjective nature of greatness, Steven Roy points out we run to the more objective bigger category as way of measurement to alleve our feelings of ambiguity. We can use the bigger category as the sole metric of our success because at least it is measureable.
It seems our most widely accepted ministry metric of success is based widely on the three B’s: buildings, bodies and budget. This way of thinking goes like this: if our facilities are large (and we are undergoing a building campaign), if our attendance is up from last year and our budget is reflecting a percentage increase, then, by all means, our church is successful. We focus on attracting more people to our church, encouraging more giving and developing the next capital campaign – all the while neglecting the task of discipleship, feeding the poor, clothing the naked and caring for those on the fringe of society. Our scorecards are completely backwards; additionally, we are exhausted. Many of us work ourselves to the bone to get to a place where we can show something of our efforts. What often results is burnout – a form of suffering that occurs when there are long period of time of intense exposure to personal, mental, emotional and relational stress. Henri Nouwen so joltingly describes burnout as “a convenient psychological translation for spiritual death.” The damaging and unmistakeable consequences of burnout include depression, despair, numbness, apathy and exhaustion. Oftentimes, it is not a major catastrophic event that brings a pastor down; it is the ongoing, unrelenting, oppressive stress on the treadmill of ministry life where they simply cannot keep up the pace. This type of burnout is oftentimes the type that everyone else can see in pastors long before they themselves are able to recognize it or willing to deal with it. When they at least acknowledge it to themselves, they secretly pray, Lord, I’ll do anything. – make deliveries for UPS, sell insurance, work in a warehouse, work construction, substitute teach – anything except ministry...
In their book Reclaiming God’s Original Intent for the Church, Wes Robert and Glenn Marshall ask a series of provocative questions that may give us fresh perspective on the current ministry success metric: Is something wrong with smaller churches remaining small? Is something incorrect if budgets don't’ significantly increase from year to year? Is something improper if we’re content with facilities that we currently own?
As you answer these questions honestly, what surfaces in your heart? What motivations are drawn out? What might that reveal that God would want to change in you? They may reveal more than we care to acknowledge about our own metric of success and how much of it has been defined by the culture in which we live.
Wes Roberts shares in the book when he was a young and inexperienced youth pastor, he joined his senior pastor for monthly denominational breakfast meetings. At every meeting, one particular pastor would meander over to Wes’ pastor and ask, “Well, Bob, so how big is your church now?” The response was always the same: “You know, Henry, it’s 37,000 square feet – just like the last time you asked me.” It is a brilliant response to a pastor seeking to size up the churches in the room with a scorecard not found in Scripture.