Freedom To Fail
A few years back, I was a part of a church whose leadership was terrified of failure. So they rigidly controlled meetings and carefully blocked any initiatives which were not guaranteed to be trouble-free (ie anything worth doing). They manipulated the congregation through a mixture of bureaucratic procedures and playing on peoples' fears. The result was a church which was inward-looking, hiding behind its walls, and slowly, slowly failing. But that was all right, because nobody could blame the leaders (well, except for trouble-makers like me), because they hadn't actually done anything wrong.
Now I'm in a church which seems to be fizzing initiatives. Probably most of them will fail - but the point is that we don't know which ones. If we start twenty new ideas and eighteen of them don't last, we will have achieved significant growth in two areas. I've just come back from the first session of one such new venture - a Hymn Café. This is a kind of combination of tea and cakes with olde hymns, played properly. The church was packed, and they'll be doing it again on the third Sunday in June. At some point in the next couple of months there should be some opposite extremes: guitar-led, lively contemporary music is promised in one set of sessions, and another - in our North Caversham building - is to be aimed specifically at young families in the North Caversham area. Meanwhile there are many other, less obviously visible, initiatives going on as well, including one I am involved in: trying to get our focus as a church to be more outward looking, through getting our preaching much more focussed on the real world.
One irony of all this is that, whilst I used to be one of the ones saying that we needed to try new things, to take risks, and not to worry if things didn't work perfectly, now I find myself having to bite my tongue, to stop myself from saying things like, "That'll never work", or "That's not being done right". There will come a time when we have to distinguish what is working well from what is just a drain on resources, but that time is a long way off yet.
Churches should be places that take risks. At the heart of the Christian Gospel is the idea that our mistakes are forgiven, and our successes are grown. So why would any church be afraid of trying and failing? Too often, I think, it's because many influential churchpeople either don't understand, or don't really believe, the message they are supposed to be proclaiming. Jesus died to set us free, we claim, so it's up to all churchgoers to live it.
Within every organization you have those in power that cling to the status
quo. It's most unfortunate that the doctrine these folks like to think
they adhere to, is treated as though it doesn't live today. Free will as a
gift from God seems difficult for many religions to accept. God talks of
finding Him as a voluntary act and praises the prodigal son. So for
churches to insist on rigid guidelines seems to be an exercise in fantasy,
rather than Spiritual reality.
I'm glad you found a place that encourages growth. Success and failure are
part of the learning process. The yin-yang of life.
Curiously the two pictures I painted are of the same church. Having someone
at the top who takes responsibility for change can help ease other leaders'
fears. That said, fear of change remains in the wider congregation, so
nothing is guaranteed. But then there are no guarantees in life anyway
(wasn't there a Meat Loaf song about that?).