Joel Young Blog.com

A lot of people ask me, “what has church planting taught you?” Often my response is something like, “Not to do it again,” or “That I really don’t know as much as I thought I did.” But all joking aside there is something that church planting has taught me that is invaluable in both life and ministry. Craig Groeschel captured that lesson in a very short an concise post this morning. Here’s what he said about, “Letting Go of the Fear of Failure.”

The fear of failure paralyzes too many people.

I’ve found one of the best gifts God can give a leader is the gift of failure.

Too many of us are not doing what we feel called to do because we’re afraid to fail.

As I observe the people around me, it seems the most effective have failed far more times than the least effective.

The people making the biggest impact seem to:

1) Try something outlandish.

2) Fail.

3) Learn.

4) Adjust.

5) Try something that works better.

Failure is never final. It is often the first step to success.

If you haven’t failed in awhile, why don’t you try something crazy and see what happens.

This one lesson we all need to learn. Thanks for the reminder Craig.

Sometimes people, knowing that I’m a preacher, ask me this question. “Why don’t you take Monday off?” I guess more than probing into my personal life they just want to know why I don’t take a “break” after my busiest and more stressful day of the week. So, for all of you who are curious and might ever ask me that question in the future here’s the answer.

I remember things on Monday that I won’t on Tuesday.

I’ve posted several times before about my weekly process and how I start my process of preparing very lightly every week, but I think it is very important for me to reflect on what has happened on any given Sunday before I forget. I don’t do any “heavy lifting” as I work on Mondays, but use it more as a day of light review and preparing to prepare for the coming week. Sometimes I even jot down little notes to myself throughout the day on Sunday so I can reflect on them the next day. Things like…

• [insert name here] is doing a great job on [task]. Send them a note of encouragement this week.
• You need to do [insert task] less.
• Leave more/less time for [worship element] next week.

It’s not that I’m naturally forgetful, I just want to be very sure that everything we do, and don’t do Horizon and everything I do, and don’t do, as a leader is on purpose. So, I don’t allow a lot of time to lapse between an event and the review of the event. I like to go over the rocks (bad) and rubies (good) while they’re still fresh in my mind (that’s some old school terminology that Mike taught me).

As a leader it’s very important to keep your eyes on what you are achieving and what you’re not. This can be taken this to awful extremes, as I know I have before, when we worry too much about the bad and don’t celebrate the good, but early review can help you to pinpoint problems and capitalize on a job well done.

One of the most useful realizations that I have come to in the past five years as a leader is that I can’t convince myself of anything. I’m a pretty confident, self-affirmed person, but I don’t do anything if I have to convince myself to do it. I know that my thought process can be skewed by the things that I desire and my ultimate reason for action may be purely selfish. So, I’ve adopted a rule for all decisions I make as a leader and pastor.

Let God do all the convincing.

• When God convinces you to do something, you don’t second guess.
• When God convinces you to do something, you don’t worry where it will lead.
• When God convinces you to do something, you aren’t suffocated with a fear of failure.
• When God convinces you to do something, you don’t care how much credit you’re going to get.
• When God convinces you to do something, you will eagerly await the next line of instruction instead of becoming complacent and idle in your work.

Maybe you need to take a step back in your decision making process and let God do the convincing for a change.

This morning I was reading a post from Clayton King’s Blog written to Pastors, Preachers, and Church Leaders who have a huge role in Sunday activities. The post was called “It’s Monday. Be Careful, Pastor.” In the post Clayton outlined why it’s important for Pastors to have some recovery time after the craziness of preaching, teaching, and leading that happens on Sundays. Here are some suggestions that he made that I thought were great.

1. You are most vulnerable to criticism and discouragement. Hold off on most calls and emails til Tuesday. They can wait unless they are a medical or spiritual emergency.

2. You are susceptible to sexual temptation, whether in person or online. Monitor your mood and your online activity everyday, but particularly on Mondays.

3. Fatigue from Sunday means you have less energy to focus on important tasks on Monday. Schedule, in advance, important meetings, including staff meetings (if possible) to Tuesday.

4. Hold off on making big decisions (staff, budget, family decisions) until you have had time to reconnect with God and regroup personally. Most big decisions can wait a few days and the extra time may bring greater clarity.

5. Plan margin on Monday. Create uncluttered space to read, reflect, pray, eat lunch with your wife, take your kids to school, go to the gym, or (gasp!) take a nap. You worked hard yesterday. Take some time to rejuvenate today.

Great advice if you’re a Pastor, and a great principle for us all to live by. You can ask yourself these questions.

What is the height of my responsibility and stress each week?

What sins am I most susceptible to after my body and mind are completely drained?

Knowing the answers to these questions and implementing some of the principles that Clayton talked about can keep us all strong and still allow us to properly recovery from those high impact, high responsibility, high stress situations we all experience.

I have been processing a lot of things inside my own head lately. I feel like I am finally getting what it means to let God do the leading, both in my life and in my work, and it has caused me to spend more time listening than I ever have before. During this season of listening I have come to some humbling realizations about myself, but none have been more real than what God gave me through Jenna, my wife, last week.

Sunday was one of the best worship experiences EVER at Horizon and we were trying to process it all as we came down from cloud nine that afternoon. If you know me, you know that I process out loud and therefore say everything that I’m thinking. On this particular Sunday I was elated with the response to the sermon God has laid on my heart. It was really one of those weeks where I had to pray ALL WEEK that God would say something through me because I felt so inadequate and unable to articulate His message, and boy did He. The Word rocked everyone there and caused many people to honor my delivery of that Word like never before.

Selfishly, here’s what I was thinking, and what I said to my wife. “When did these people begin to respect me, and the Word that God has put inside me, so much? It’s not like they didn’t before, but today I really felt the weight of their respect for me as God’s instrument to lead His church like never before. Why/how did that happen so suddenly?” As carefully as she could my wife articulated to me what was crystal clear to her. She answered, “Because now you believe you can lead this church.”

WHAT?!?! At first I was taken back, and a little angry. How dare she question my confidence in following God’s leading. I seriously thought to myself, “She just doesn’t get it. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” I mean, confidence has never been something that I have lacked before.

Then, after a few minutes of silence I came to this humbling realization: SHE WAS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT! I had been leading this church and trying to follow God’s prompting for over a year, but up until a month ago I really didn’t have confidence that God could do the job through ME. I don’t know what I was thinking, but the way I lead was telling people that I had doubts about God’s ability to use ME.

It’s a humbling thing when you realize that the only thing standing in the way of God radically blessing His calling on your life is YOU.

For some reason I have been talking about and reading about age all day. It’s like God is trying to tell me something. Listen to what Perry Noble had to say recently when he comprised his list of the top 5 leaders he would most like to meet with. His #4 guy was Matt Chandler of The Villiage Church. Here’s what Perry said about Matt,

“His series on Ecclesiastes is one of the best freakin series of messages I’ve ever heard.

Pride is the thought behind that statement! If people actually think that more years somehow equal superior knowledge…then they cut themselves off from some of the greatest leadership instruction that is out there.”

Sure, this benefits someone like me who leads many people who are decades older than I am, but it also benefits me in that I need to be looking at the courage and passion of those who are even younger than me to see what I can learn. Ask yourself these questions.

Are you closed off to learning from, or receiving guidance form someone who is younger than yourself? What have you missed out on because of this attitude? What will you do to ensure you don’t do this in the future?

I have been learning a lot over the last couple weeks. It’s like God is giving me what I’m praying for, but I was never ready for it to happen, stupid I know. I’ve been praying for him to clear a path that will lead our church to change the community we exist within. I want God to change the world through us and I knew he could do it. What I didn’t count on was that this path would lead me to so much adaptation.

Over the last month we have restructured, restaffed, and reevaluated everything we’re doing. Through it all I have seen that the mark of a true leader isn’t how well he/she executes the plan they have set into motion, but rather how well they adapt to the inevitable changes that will need to be made along the way.

What kind of leader are you? Are you unwilling to change your path or thinking because it will make you look like a failure? If so, you care more about your ego than whatever it is you are leading. Leaders of the church can’t afford to live this cliche. We have to adapt and change our strategies and methods to follow God’s path for our ministry WHENEVER HE ASKS US TO.

What do you need to adapt?

One of the most unavoidable and dangerous things for any church, or leader, to do is compare themselves to someone else. Comparison can place the expectations of another place and time on your current situation, which can often unjustly inflating or deflating your passion.

As a pastor I struggle with this. Though I love getting together with friends and acquaintances who also lead churches its sometimes had to avoid the comparison game that some seek to play. You evaluate their age, to their success, or the beauty of their situation and comparison quickly turns to envy. It’s a very slippery slope yet it’s a position that many leaders constantly put themselves in.

Since the situation of a church planter is a constant comparison game from supporters, church members, and your ego I thought I would share some of the things I have been doing lately to keep myself from comparing Horizon to any other church or situation. I’m not always successful in doing these things, but I know they help when I do practice them. These can work for so much more than just church leadership.

Make sure you’re not holding back progress. Live your life in such a way that you feel confident that you have access to the full measure of God’s ability. Seek HIS will, HIS vision, HIS direction, and HIS timing.

Constantly remind yourself of your achievements. There is never a victory too small to celebrate. By remembering the things that have gone right you are more likely to forget about the things that have gone wrong. Feeling great about the progress you are seeing eliminates the need to compare.

Remember why you do what you do. Do you do what you do for the praise or approval of others? Do you do it for yourself? Or, do you do it for the glory of God? Never measure something done for God by human standards. Remember God’s standards for your work.

Stay away from people who force you to play the comparison game. If you know a friend or a colleague that constantly wants to compare your work against his/hers? If so, you need to guard yourself from that situation. Some people only want to compare work to make themselves feel good. Don’t puff up their ego and deflate your confidence simply to maintain that relationship. Either let them know you don’t want to talk about it beforehand, or don’t go around them.

Leaders get a lot of feedback on what they do, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned through the years it’s this. There are two people that every leader needs to ignore.

#1: People who ALWAYS agree with you and do nothing but sing your praises. It’s nice to have people who will give you the confidence you need, but these aren’t the people who you should be looking to for that confidence. Their unbiased approval can be your undoing if they lead you to believe that you are never wrong.

#2: People who are NEVER happy and only complain. If the squeaky wheel always gets the oil, it’ll just keep on squeaking. It’s good to have people that are going to give you criticism to help make you better, but these aren’t the people you should be taking that criticism from.

Even though it’s impossible to remove these people and their influence from your life completely, leaders need to distance themselves from these people. The people that leaders need to keep tight are the people who are going to always love and respect them, their hard work, and their leadership, but aren’t afraid to properly offer advice and criticism to them when it’s warranted. Balanced support builds great leaders.