Everyone stumbles. The graceful regain their balance.
I heard it through the grapevine: twenty-three members, pained at the changes I had made during my first days at The Chapel, had secretly met to pool their frustrations.
I immediately called the de facto leader and asked for a meeting. He said he had a list of what the group had prayed (and complained) about.
“Let’s get all the concerned people together,” I suggested. He agreed but wanted to meet with the trustees, not me. I contended the grievances were with me, rehearsed the clear guidelines of Matthew 18:15-17, and we agreed to convene.
I also invited all the trustees and other leaders. We scheduled the meeting in the Fellowship Hall, and as I stepped in I was hoping it would live up to its name. But frankly, it already felt like a no-win, no-way situation.
The group fired away. I listened to their criticism-some fair, some unfair (from my vantage of total objectivity!). Some of the complaints related to music, others to the way I closed my sermons and appealed to people to come to Christ, and still others to program changes. I neither argued nor made promises but clarified their points, some of which were based on misinformation or rumors.
Four hours later, I emerged from that meeting a little shell-shocked, more aware than ever of my vulnerability as a leader.
I felt rejected-my best efforts slammed back in my face.
Such feelings of defeat and disappointment should not surprise us, but they usually do. My regular aches have resulted from bad sermons-especially when I knew it during the first service and dreaded having to preach it again-or counseling that wasn’t heeded or was refused.
More painful are the defeats of rejection, when people leave the church because, they say, “We’re not getting fed.” Or when a major program initiative bombs. Or when a spreading rumor is increasingly believed and can’t be stopped.
I often say I’ve been blessed with the two nicest daughters and the greatest wife, and I’ve pastored two terrific, balanced churches. But sometimes those gracious gifts from my Father fade into the background when I’m trying to figure out how to avoid or cope with defeat and disappointment.
The Turmoil and Its Temptations
No one likes to lose, especially we pastors who eat and sleep the local church. When I face a setback, I have to process a surge of emotions.
Certainly disappointment tops the list, like the time an alternative worship service at The Chapel struck out. The night we launched “Saturday at Six,” a service designed for the unchurched, 670 people showed up. The staff and I were thrilled; the future looked bright. Several months later, however, attendance was plummeting, and by the time we buried the service, only seventy people were showing up.
Anger and fear are other opponents to face after a loss. Both battered me when we recently called the police on one of our part-time interns for allegedly sexually molesting several of our junior high boys. On his application he had lied about his past, so he had sneaked through our hiring gates. And though he had worked only three months at The Chapel, the news of this tragedy made it to the media (which, by the way, treated us fairly).
I was angry at the potentially sustained hurt inflicted on these boys, angry that this person had slipped through our security, angry at myself that it had happened under my watch as pastor. Anger gave way to fear when it struck me that it could happen again.
Naturally, discouragement can also set in. Several years ago, I invested much of myself into an alcoholic whose life was collapsing around him. I was the messianic pastor on a mission to save this man from his “demon of drink,” as he called it. We had a pattern to our relationship: I’d receive from him a blubbering phone call, go pick him up from a local bar, and then drive him home, trying to convince him that his lifestyle was dumb and that there was yet hope for him.
Once when he called me from the bar, too drunk to drive, I refused to pick him up.
“Jed,” I said, “I can’t help you. I haven’t helped you yet, and I’m not coming tonight; I’m staying in bed.”
Jed exploded into anger and slammed down the phone. A few days later, he was drunk again. This time he got a taxi and asked to be driven to my house. On the way over to my place, Jed told the taxi driver his plans to kill me. Fortunately neither my wife nor I was home. (The driver happened to be a casual member of our church, and as he told me this story later, I asked him the obvious question: “Why in the world did you drive him to my house?” He hadn’t thought of that!)
A few years later in his late thirties, Jed died of an alcohol-related illness. His continuing addiction and eventual death were a personal letdown. I felt discouraged that all my efforts were in vain, that perhaps I could have done or said more, or convinced him to see a professional.
Of course, I know better than to take these things personally (except the part about wanting to kill me-I always get offended by that). But what I know and what I feel are not always aligned.
Lamenting a loss, however, is healthy. When we love our people, we’re not simply going to shrug our shoulders after a disappointment. But ultimately I know that everyone does exactly what he or she wants to do, no matter what I say or try, and I must carry my own burden, not theirs.
We’re also tempted to get revenge, to manipulate people. I’ve heard of embattled pastors saying, “If we don’t make this program a priority, I’m leaving” or “If this doesn’t happen in two years, I’ll resign.”
Another tactic is to make people feel guilty by our open self-pity, wearing our emotions on our shirtsleeves or publicly lamenting the defeat.
Defeat is tough, but we make things tougher if we let emotions like these undermine our ministries.
Anatomy of Defeats
Rather than wallowing in defeats, I try to analyze them; that helps me get up after being down. It not only softens the emotional pain of defeats, it also helps me feel somewhat in control, as I see what went wrong and how I can do things differently in the future.
Sometimes defeat is a result of my not leading hard enough. We recently began raising money for another capital investment. When we did this five years earlier, we successfully raised $3.5 million over three years, and on the last Sunday of the campaign, we took in $159,000, the exact amount needed to burn our mortgage. Among the many calculated steps the leadership took to raise the money, a team of volunteers visited every member in our congregation, explaining the need and asking for help.
So we wanted to raise $3.5 million for the new campaign, as well. However, we skipped several important steps before launching the fund drive. Some were saying to me, “Don’t worry. We don’t need to visit every person again; we’ll easily raise the money.” So I backed off from demanding we repeat each step that contributed to our past success. And the church paid for it; we fell short of our goal.
Other times, an early negative vote or thumbs down on a project often points to a dearth of research and development. If I can’t create a chart or describe in detail the program I’m selling, saying, “This is why I think we should start this ministry (or build this facility, or whatever), and here are the needs it meets,” then I need to go back to the drawing board. Or if I’m the only one who believes in or banks on a proposal, I know the proposal is premature.
The way our church is structured now, few if any decisions are made at the board level that aren’t first proposed by a smaller group of four or five board members. That ensures that a specific issue-whether about finances, property, or missions-is thoroughly researched before the proposal goes to the floor.
Often pastors or church leaders present ideas that are defeated because ideas are sprung on the church, catching many by surprise. Then if we go down in a trail of smoke, it’s not so much because of opposing convictions but shock. People hate surprises.
After several years at The Chapel, I wanted to hire an executive pastor (a “director of ministries,” as we choose to call the position) to oversee the ministry to staff; up until then I had performed that function.
I gradually leaked the idea to the staff but received a cool response. Few were thrilled at the prospect of another boss; by this time, most of the staff were acclimated to my style of leadership.
Recognizing trouble, I backed off from my initial proposal and waited two years before I broached the subject again. During the interim, I set about to educate and inform the staff, allowing them to express their concerns and to feel the need for a change. Later most of them favored the addition, and it has worked well.
Some losses are unavoidable and simply come with the ministry territory. An Arizona pastor tried everything he could to salvage a staff relationship. The detractor quibbled and bickered with the leadership style of the pastor, and in the process disrupted the unity of the other pastors on staff.
The senior pastor tried three ways to resolve the tension. Finally both the senior pastor and the staff member gave up, saying, “This isn’t working out. One of us has to leave.” It wasn’t the senior pastor.
Losses like that happen.
Sometimes we lose members for no other reason than an honest difference of opinion. One woman who met with me to air her complaints said, “I don’t think I can continue to attend this church. People laugh too much in the services, and I don’t believe laughter should be a part of worshiping God.” I spent the next hour with her, listening and explaining our church personality and my own convictions.
It was a waste of time. Neither she nor I was planning to change. Neither of us laughed when she left.
Graceful Defeats
Analysis gives only so much comfort. We still have to live with the reality that, for whatever reason, our ministry has suffered a setback. Sometimes the difference between a professional and a rookie is the grace with which they handle defeats. Here are a few lessons I’ve learned about that.
Get up. Mike Singletary, former linebacker for the Chicago Bears, was famous for initially getting blocked out of a play but still making the tackle. What happened after he got knocked down on the first block?
He got up.
There’s a lot to say for good old-fashioned grit. It’s probably healthy to take five minutes a day to worry and then get up and do something else.
Switch to something fun. The world has not ended with any of the defeats I have endured. So one helpful practice is to go play. For me that usually means basketball or jogging or a walk with my wife or a few minutes of sports talk or joking with somebody. Breaks are a big help and certainly intended by God for our mental health.
Some of the staff play basketball on Fridays at four. It’s a great way to end the regular office hours. It’s a time to lay aside defeats or challenges and become kids again, buffeting the body and sweating like nothing else matters.
Come at it from another angle. In my first church, we sported an official board of twenty-eight members, many of whom were elected by default-for example, the head usher and Sunday school superintendent were automatically board members by virtue of their offices.
I suggested several changes to the cumbersome board but was rebuffed. I then decided to take another tack. First, I prayed for the opportunity to make the changes and then went about studying biblical leadership with the board and other, unofficial leaders of the church.
Second, I started meeting regularly with the six-man deacon board, instilling in them my vision for the future direction of the church.
Over time these men grew into an informal cabinet of advisers, often taking the lead and proposing items to the official board. Several years later, after preaching on the subject and holding question-and-answer “press conferences,” the congregation voted to change the constitution and move to a smaller board of pastors and lay elders.
Find a shoulder to cry on. While I reveal most things to my wife-especially in the area of personal hurt-I don’t always tell her my latest defeat at church. I don’t want her to feel negative towards anyone, especially when letdowns are part of the normal routine of ministry.
So I share some of my frustrations with others. One of those persons is a man on staff with whom I can laugh as well as share my pain. Other times, it’s a pastor-friend with whom I’ve been meeting for twenty-five years. Sometimes I just need to talk through the defeat or vent some frustration.
Actually, God has been so good to me that at times, after sharing a concern with my friend, I will say, “Remind me not to take The Chapel for granted and to give God the credit.”
The worst defeat would be to forget who gives “every good and perfect gift.” Sometimes a defeat, when contrasted with other parts of my life, seems so insignificant. Rereading the grouchy letter and forgetting the four positive letters and three thank-you notes is so easy.
Better Defeat than Safety
I must clarify that my relationships in my two churches have been just plain wonderful. Most things turned down or delayed by the approving board were done for good reason, which I can see in retrospect.
But just as every missed shot in basketball is a defeat of sorts, so is the rebuffing of any of our plans. So every day in ministry has its setbacks or disappointments, though that says nothing about the quality of relationships between pastor and people.
The meeting I mentioned at the start of this article was long, tense, and painful. Still, those individuals, who all had good hearts (and had the normal hesitancy to accept the new pastor after a beloved and long-term predecessor), felt they had been heard. Sometimes that in itself is the biggest need. Twenty-one of the original twenty-three have become my friends; two ended up leaving the church. It turned out to be a discouragement that brought healing.
I rest in two assurances: God is sovereign, and people will do what they want to do. These two beliefs free me from the obsession to try to control everything in my life and ministry. After I’ve made amends, informed and educated those around me, allowed time for ideas to gel and relationships to form, I can punt to the ultimate grace and providence of God.
And while this is easier to preach than to feel, I know I must grow through defeat and the pain it inflicts on me. Theodore Roosevelt’s philosophy about risk taking, which hangs in my study, keeps me motivated through setbacks:
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is not effort without error and shortcoming; who does actually try to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
-Knute Larson is pastor of The Chapel in Akron, Ohio.
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