Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

I have come to believe that fear of failure is at the root of many of our churches’ failures: failure to evangelize (we have to come up with the perfect plan first); failure to try new liturgies (we might fail to please everyone); failure to get along (we fight about who is at fault for that really bad whatever); failure to speak the prophetic word (we fear someone will get mad at us).

I have seen vestries and clergy leaders shirk from trying a new thing, not because it doesn’t look like it might be a faithful response to God’s working or because it might meet a need that we have discerned, but because we are not sure that it will work. Communities are held hostage to a few critics (who may also be serious donors or opinion-shapers) who want everything to succeed. Vestries shy away from trying something new because they don’t know if it will work. People turn down invitations to do ministry because they don't know how to respond.

Perhaps it is time to claim the faithfulness of imperfection. Perhaps it is time to know that if we succeed only half the time then we are really living life on the edge and trying to move into uncharted territories. Perhaps we can shift to a new mindset that says a 100% success rate is the real failure because we have tried nothing new, we have done nothing that depends on anything other than our own current self-awareness, gifts, and known track-record.

Maybe if we let go of the expectation that we will succeed in everything, we will not need to play the blame-game (which comes from trying to find out who is at fault for a failure). Embracing the fact that we are novices at this means we will no longer engage in parking lot conversations (that tend to be critical, secretive, and divisive). 

If experimentation is the norm, we will come to know that everything does depend upon God. We will live into the truth that loving neighbor and self is risky business. We will learn that we can thrive in the uncertainty of the untried and new. We will know that we must journey in that wilderness where we come to know God and to see one another more clearly as God’s image. Perhaps. With God’s grace, perhaps.

Formerly canon educator for the Diocese of El Camino Real, the Rev. Jan Smith Wood is dean of students at the ChurchDivinitySchool of the Pacific in Berkeley, California.