The Story We Long For

There is a wonderful organization that invites me to speak every April to men and women who are enrolled in their leadership development program. Every year their invitation makes it clear that they want me to say the same things I said the previous year.

So I try to do what they ask. I use the same introduction, employ the same outline, tell the same stories, and even repeat the same joke or two in the warm-up phase of the talk.

I did this for the eleventh time just a week ago.

My presentation is about how a leader handles his occasional moments of failure. Sometimes I start by saying that I feel as if I have an earned-doctorate in this subject because there have been more than a few failure-moments over my seven decades of life. Most of them are the simple, everyday failures that don’t even deserve a mention in my journal. But I go on to admit to the audience that there have been some bad experiences of seismic magnitude.

I usually relate the conversation I had with a New Yorker years ago after my wife, Gail, and I had moved to the big city.

“Been mugged yet?” he asked.

“No, I haven’t,” I replied.

“You will be,” he responded.

Having told this story, I say to my audience, “Failed yet? … No? … You will.” Admittedly, it’s a gloomy comment, but it gets everyone’s attention, and they laugh nervously.

Then I move on and highlight the exchange between Jesus and Simon Peter in which the Lord says, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

Most of us know that this conversation is a preface to Simon Peter’s humiliating performance in the backyard of the Temple’s high priest. Simon denies three times that he had ever known Jesus, much less been among his disciples. That was followed by the rooster’s crowing and a look into the eyes of Jesus. The two together—the crowing and the eyes—must have been more than he could bear. He rushed into a back alley and “wept bitterly.”

More than once I have asked myself this question: if Jesus knew so clearly what was coming, why he didn’t offer Simon counsel on how to avoid the upcoming bad moments? I would have. But then I often try to fix people before or after they make a jerk of themselves.

One chuckles at Peter’s brazenness in the upper room when he says, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.” Ready indeed!

Well, at least Peter was warned. But it appears to me that the Savior was far less concerned about his disciple’s upcoming collapse of character and far more concerned about what he’d learn and how he would act afterwards when he might get his act back together.

What occurs to me is that Jesus must have planned to use an experience of failure to teach Peter a lesson that he apparently could not learn any other way.

There’s a thought here. If the Lord desires that a person grow, it looks like he doesn’t mind allowing that person to make a perfect fool of himself or herself if the process leads to better things. Christ-followers who judge themselves or others by only a standard of perfection might want to consider this.

“I’ve been there; I’ve been in Peter’s sandals,” I tell my audience every April. I know what it’s like to say all the right words, make all the right promises and then cave the minute the genuineness of my words is tested.

In the moments that follow I describe to my audience of would-be leaders five moments in my Christian journey when I blew it completely, like Simon Peter. I describe the damage I caused on each occasion. I reflect on the necessity of deep repentance. I speak of the lessons learned. And finally I reflect on how, many years later, those occasions have helped to shape the man I have become today. Sometimes I say something about how much God enjoys playing tricks on one’s failure and how he graciously turns even our worst actions into something he can use.

It’s important to note how Simon Peter’s failure-story did not end in a dark alley. The man may have wanted to quit, but he didn’t. His story moves on to the empty tomb and then the early morning encounter on the Galilean beach. I imagine Peter and Jesus silhouetted in a campfire embracing as the failed disciple wonders if his shabby performance back in Jerusalem might be enough to cause his expulsion from among the disciples.

What a relief it must have been to get that second chance from Jesus. “Feed my sheep,” he hears. Three times. How reminiscent of the words spoken in the upper room: strengthen the brothers.

“This also has been my experience,” I tell my audience. “I’ve come to tell you that Jesus is the master of second chances.”

Herein lies an irony. Sometimes in our failures our Lord transforms us into what we apparently could not have become otherwise. Under this grace we become different people. We are softened; we are sensitized; we are humbled.

As I said before, I have given this talk for eleven straight years. And usually when I finish, a large number of people line up to talk. They want me to know that they can relate to one or more of my stories. They want to me make me aware that they too have been “there,” or that they feel in danger of going “there.”

Many ask for prayer, or they seek a further word of encouragement for their journey of personal reformation.

When I leave the meeting, I always find myself wondering if I’d entertained the audience with a few of my success stories (there are a few) rather than my failure stories, would they have listened as carefully? And would they have approached me with tears? And would they have thanked me for the hope I gave them? Oh, and would they have asked for my fatherly blessing?

Probably not.

Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership journal, and interim president of Denver Seminary.