Made to Splat

I was in a twitter dialog with social media guru @MBStockdale (go ahead, take a moment and follow her) about the book titles out there. She was suggesting a new book about Duct Tape Church or Gooey Church and I went the other way.

We need someone to write a book called Made to Splat: Church Plants that had Glorious Failures.

It must be remembered that most of the books (and histories) are written by those that were “successful.” Sure there are aches and pains mentioned in those books. Geoff Surratt’s Ten Stupid Things Pastors Do was certainly a contribution in this direction as well.

As someone who has worked with Innovative Churches and Organizations for the past 16 years, let me tell you, I seen plenty of high dives into a dry pool. I’ve pulled some myself with some of our programs.

By the way, our 30 Second Leadership programs last week are all about failure.

What constitutes a Glorious Failure?

A Glorious Failure honors God even when it isn’t seen by others as “successful.” Perhaps you are reaching a hard to reach group or area. Perhaps it never becomes a part of self sustaining or self governing and whatever the other self thing is, but it tries to honor God anyway.

A Glorious Failure is when you work hard, give it all you got and try some new things that no one else is doing……..and it falls flat. Now if you learn, adapt and refine what you have learned for the next time you time, great. That was a glorious failure. If you keep on doing those things even when they repeatedly fail, well, that is insanity.

Glorious Failures help us unearth and surface terrible ideas that can be discarded.

Glorious Failures help us try new leadership skills and ideas that may not work with one team but later can be adapted with another.

Glorious Failures sift us as leaders and help shape our hearts for the future…IF we let them.

So – What are your Glorious Failures? What are you learning from them?

(cross posted over at Leadership Network – www.leadnet.org)

Comments

[Matt Steen]

Thanks for this, Dave! This post, combined with Skye Jethani's "The Perpetuity Problem" http://www.skyejethani.com/the-perpetuity-problem/731/ have been tinkering with me over the last few days and making me rethink what we typically consider to be successes and failures...

[cheap jerseys]

This is amazing brother - you are blessed. It seems so outlandish that you would think it is satire - esp the part about Jerry 'having his facts a little off' - that can't be true!