I think that one of the biggest indicators of how successful your ministry will be is reflected in how comfortable you are with the possibility of failure.
Failure in ministry is a painful experience because we feel like it is a measure of our worth as Christian leaders. Failure seems to scream to the world: "I don't know what I'm doing!" It tells those who follow us, "You can't trust me. I have let you down."
But really, although sometimes the failure might be a result of our own lack of responsibility, preparation or training, or a gap in our skill set, many times failure in ministry is due to reasons beyond our control. To illustrate my point, I want to share 3 areas of ministry over which we have no control... and are therefore susceptible to failure.
1. Other people's reactions: Although this is a self-explanatory observation, I feel that it needs to be stated, for the simple fact that we so often take responsibility for autonomous adults! As Christian leaders, we must understand that our responsibility is to love people and minister to them in the ways that God has uniquely gifted us. Beyond that, their response to what they have heard and experienced is entirely their own decision and they are responsible before God. We mustn't feel like we have failed when we have done our part someone else has not. God gives us free will to chose how we will act, and the least we can do is extend that same freedom to others.
2. Circumstances: Let's face it, sometimes we have everything planned weeks in advance and then on the day of a ministry event everything goes wrong. Not only does Plan A fall through, but Plan B, C, and D do as well! The electricity goes out, it rains on the picnic, there is a blizzard, a virus or a war breaks out, all computer hard drives get wiped by a hacker and you lost your USB. There are a million things that could go wrong. And for those moments, God gives grace; we just need to learn to give ourselves--and those around us-- that same grace.
3. God's purposes: The Bible says that "Many are the plans of a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord will stand." (Prov. 19:21) There are times when we give it everything we've got and things just inexplicably don't work out. It may be in those cases that God has another purpose behind everything that we just can't see. Sometimes He might let us fall to understand that we need to depend on Him. His strength is made perfect in our weakness. Other times we will never understand what His reasons are, but we must trust that He knows what He's doing... and when we have been faithful and obedient in what He called us to, we shouldn't feel that we have failed just because things didn't turn out the way that we were expecting. If things went according to God's plan, then our ministry was a success!
I hope that if any of you reading this have been struggling with feelings of failure, that these reflections have been an encouragement. Please rest in the peace that what we are called upon to merely be faithful to what God has called us to do... and then be gracious when it might seem to others that we have "failed."
