The Pains of Leadership (Part Three)

This week we are considering the kinds of realities that bring pain to those entrusted with leadership in a church. We have considered to this point the factors of stricter judgment, hard work, standing alone and enduring criticism. Today we close by acknowledging we don’t always get it right… that sometimes our pain is the result of our own…

5. Failure.

We all fail at times.  Count on it.  One of the next projects might not go well.  Many of us have started an extra service or a new ministry at the church, only to see it decline or flop.  Finally we pull the plug.

We started a Saturday evening service way back when in the style of a “seeker service” as we used to call them, even though we believed that no one “seeks the Lord” (Romans 3:11).

We stared with hundreds and ended with “pulling the plug,” as they say.  We did not do it right.  We did not help people really “own” the service and make it their main service for the week.  We made mistakes.

But that was not the end.  And neither should your failures get you down too long.

I like Teddy Roosevelt’s grand paragraph about leadership:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done 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 up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

The nice thing always is that ultimate success belongs to the Lord.  He will not fail in the end.  No question at all about that.  He will conquer the world.  How can we say it more dramatically – every knee will bow!

But in the mighty little things where we lead ourselves, we will fall down and get up again.

I repeat the story related to Mike Singletary, the great linebacker for the Chicago Bears, when he was asked on national TV by the reporter how he sometimes made the tackle when he had been clobbered in the middle of the field by a double team or a really good block.  “And yet you go over there and make that tackle – how do you do that?” was the question.

And the answer was pretty simple:  “I get up.”

We should all say it at once:  “I get up.”

I draw on God’s grace and His Holy Spirit.  I call on Him in my weakness.  I seek His face.

I get up.

I didn’t mean to be so negative.  I just think sometimes we can be naïve and think we’re the only ones who experience these pains.  Ask any other strong leader.

And stay with it.

Because the greatest of leaders will stay with us.

He will never leave us or forsake us.

Sometimes when I felt like I was walking alone, I turned to Him, and He gave me strength.  I walked with Him in sometimes dark and lonely moments and I found peace.

And I can look back over two score and four years of pastoring, and see His hand and His kindness and His renewal.

And the joys of leadership go way above the costs and the pains!

Keep getting up.