Faithfulness to Mission in the Mire of Failure

Jul 6

This piece was originally posted in the Resonance Theological Journal in the Summer of 2019.

The carpet of my dorm room in Welch Hall at Central Bible College had been well-worn through the years. The footsteps of past students going to and from the classes where they would receive their biblical education to equip them for pastoral ministry had contributed to a Brillo-pad texture on the floor of my room on which I often prayed as a wide-eyed college student preparing for ministry. I had soaked the carpet on more than one occasion with prayer-filled tears as though I were still “tarrying at the altar” of the Pentecostal church of my upbringing. I certainly was not the first student to make use of this carpet in such a manner. Hundreds of ministers and missionaries had prayerfully and tearfully received their calls to ministry outpost and mission field alike throughout the college’s history.

I was no different. It was in a prayer-filled, face-down-in-the-carpet session in January 2005 that I felt a call from the Lord to plant a church in my home city of Flint, Michigan. Flint has been well known over the past 30 years as a place of tremendous struggle, the latest and most severe of which has certainly been the ever-persisting Flint Water Crisis,[1] a poisoning of the 100,000 person population’s water supply with dangerous lead and copper levels brought about by failure of government at multiple levels. In 2005, however, the struggles of Flint were not quite as infamous, though certainly present.

But the call to plant a church? To make a difference? That was going to be a game-changer for Flint. I assumed that if God would call me to such a work, surely he would ensure its success. Answering this felt call from the Lord, I identified with our college slogan: “It’s all about the call!” I was sure that one day that vision would be realized and that I would be another in a long history of Welch Hall carpet-intercessors who lived that slogan with devoted lives.

Ten years later, my wife, Tara, and I indeed returned to Flint to launch a new church plant called The Cathedral. However, “success” quickly shifted from an anticipated, confident reality to a pipe dream eclipsed by hardships of almost every conceivable kind. We began to be hit with the harsh realities of church planting, in general, and our chosen location as one of America’s poorest and most crime-ridden cities, in particular.

The church plant ultimately did not survive. After three years of what felt like chiseling through rock with a spoon, we merged our congregation with a larger, healthier church in the suburbs. I began to struggle with feelings of failure. The church had been a failure. I had failed God. I had failed those who believed enough to financially invest in us. And if, as I learned in Bible college, “it was all about the call,” and I had failed at the call––I, too, must have been a failure.

During this season I began a writing project that took me on an in-depth study through the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel, too, received a call from God; Ezekiel, like me, was called to his own people. But Ezekiel’s call stuck out to me. It was not so much of an “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage” kind of promise (Ps. 2:8), but rather quite the opposite: “Son of man, go to the house of Israel . . . [they] will not be willing to listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me” (Ezek. 3:4,7 ESV).

What a calling event! God told Ezekiel up front that he would fail at the task for which he was sent. As one reads on, God gives Ezekiel an uncommon resolve to withstand the rejection (3:8-11), which is exactly what Ezekiel did. His ministry was filled with pain. Ministry came at a significant cost to the young prophet and, ultimately, seemed to produce no lasting fruit. Jerusalem was still sacked by Nebuchadnezzar, the Jews were still taken to exile and the promised hope of a future remnant seemed far off. Yet, Ezekiel was aware that it was going to be this way when he answered God’s call. And he signed up anyway.

I’ve given Ezekiel’s call a lot of thought since the “failure” of our church plant. We often ask ourselves and others, “What would you attempt for Jesus if you knew you could not fail?” as a way to inspire toward missional action. But Ezekiel’s calling compels us to ask of ourselves, and indeed others, “What would we be willing to attempt for Jesus if we knew we were destined to fail?” What, in that scenario, would we really be willing to do for God in faithful trust, knowing that failure is a certainty?

This all seems a bit depressing, but we find within the Scriptures many people who were called to “fail.” Job was “called” to fail as he lost all he had. Paul’s ministry was characterized by blowing from shipwreck to snakebite. We see, perhaps most acutely, the destiny toward (what appeared to the world to be) “failure” in the ministry of Christ himself, whose crucifixion seemed to be the grandest failure in the cosmos.

Yet, in each of the biblical characters we are able to see God’s plans come to fruition despite, and often because of, the pain and hardship they endured. Job’s faithfulness was rewarded in the end. Paul’s long, hard slog in ministry was the premier catalyst to the evangelism of the Gentiles throughout the Roman world. And what seemed to be a great failure in the death of Christ proved to be anything but in the gloriousness of his resurrection.

It’s no grand secret that God has a different measure of success than humanity. Where Israel was drawn to Saul’s kingly stature, God found success, not in the appearance, but in the contrite heart of a shepherd boy named David (see 1 Sam. 16). So then, what of these feelings of failure that still persist in ministry? Knowing that God looks at the heart doesn’t necessarily remove the stinging sensation that we sometimes feel when we believe we’ve let God or his people down. But this “failure” has a function. These “failing” times or seasons are indeed formation points where God reorients us to committed missional resolve, not despite of perceived shortcomings, but through and because of them. I believe there are at least four principles we can glean from as we consider reframing the world’s understanding of “failure” in light of the promises of Christ.

Principle 1: Faithfulness, not Success is the Barometer

Our realization that our church planting journey was not going to turn out as we had expected brought to us a wonderful pastor named Jim Wiegand, who pastored a church in the area and received our congregation as part of his own. During one of many conversations while I was processing all of the feelings of shortcoming and pain he said to me, “We are not responsible for success.” He then added, “We are responsible for two things: faithfulness and fidelity to God. That’s it.” While at first glance, this may seem a bit obvious, this profound truth deeply embedded itself into my soul. It allowed me to see for the first time clearly why Ezekiel was able to so eagerly embrace a mandate from God when he knew it was going to involve a lot of hardship. Ezekiel was able to endure pain and suffering in ministry, even the most severe, because he understood that faithfulness and fidelity to God was all that mattered. Results and outcomes were ultimately for God to decide. Throughout his prophetic critique of Judah, we see calls to his countrymen and countrywomen to embrace this same exclusive fidelity in worship and witness.

There has been much said in the field of missiology concerning the relationship between God and the missio Dei (the mission of God). One of the chief concepts that has emerged as a non-negotiable fact is that mission does not originate with God’s people but with God himself. It is “first an attribute of God before it [is] an activity of individual Christians or the church.” As Jürgen Moltmann has said, “it is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church, creating a church as it goes on its way.”[2] This means that mission is something in which we participate with God, not something we simply do for God.

How freeing to realize that the weight of the Great Commission doesn’t rest upon our shoulders. Mission in all the forms and contexts in which it exists is not a human enterprise co-signed by God, but rather a divine enterprise in which God’s people bear witness. I hadn’t “failed” God because the mission wasn’t mine at which to fail! Success and failure in the kingdom of God are a matter of allegiance and steadfastness, not production and results. These are foundational Western ideas of success, not biblical ones, but because we read the Bible through Western eyes, it is difficult at times to not fully embrace this truth. If the mission is not yours or mine, the responsibility of the success or failure of it is not either (nor is the responsibility for determining what success looks like). Instead, faithfulness and fidelity to Christ are the true barometer of what constitutes a successful Christian mission.

Truth 2: Our “Failures” Identify us with Human Brokenness

When we experience hardship or suffering, either by our own making or from the failings of others, we are capable of identifying with the brokenness of humanity in a way we previously could not understand. One of the great strengths of social justice movements like the Innocence Project, an organization committed to the liberation of wrongfully incarcerated inmates, is the experience of solidarity rooted in shared experiences of wrongful imprisonment. It is no coincidence that many who experience profound tragedy or injustice take up the call to activism with others who share similar stories.

In ministering to others, our ability to be a healing force in the lives of others is exponentially accelerated by our capacity to identify and empathize with human need. Henri Nouwen notes that for the pastor, “a deep understanding of his own pain makes it possible for him to convert his weakness into strength and to offer his own experience as a source of healing to those who are often lost in the darkness of their own misunderstood sufferings.”[3] He adds that we are to see our own pain and suffering as originating from the same common human condition that has marred us all by sin.[4]

Nouwen notes that our capacity as ministers and Christian leaders to be healing agents in the brokenness of peoples’ lives comes through 1) a careful attention to the uniqueness of each person as a person for whom Jesus died[5]––the sort of particularizing practice modeled by Jesus whereby he uniquely noticed a person[6] and 2) our capacity to be a source of authentic community for those to whom God has called us.[7] In other words, our pain possesses the potential to form us, not only into people who can identify with the brokenness of others, but an authentic source of testimony to Christ’s healing power that others can witness.

Truth 3: “Failure” Identifies us with Christ

The upside-down way of the cross compels us to view pain in ministry through the lens of the suffering of Christ. Christ is both our source of mission (since he is God) and our ideal model of participation in mission (since he is human). The ministry of Jesus proceeds to demonstrate concern for the poor over the rich; the outcast over the powerful; the seemingly godless but broken over the religious but haughty.

The atonement event is perhaps the most powerful demonstration of Christ’s upside-down approach of Christ in relation to the world’s view of success. Wilmer Villacorta notes, “Jesus, the ‘lamb of God’ is the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of the world. Those who follow him are called to emulate Jesus in this highest expression of gentleness, meekness, and surrender.”[8] Villacorta goes on to point out that the image of this “lamb that was slain” continues beyond the simple crucifixion event, appearing in the end-time depictions in Revelation, demonstrating God’s preference for a “downward pull in his work among humanity.”[9]

The “downward pull” means that when we experience loneliness, suffering, pain, hardship, etc., in ministry it is a means by which, as we respond with the character of Christ, we emulate Christ’s approach to the world around us. As participants in his mission, we are not powerful overlords sitting atop the mountain, but we “pull the power down,” so-to-speak, into the lowest places of human existence, breaking bread and pouring wine at a table where powerful and powerless come together.

Truth 4: “Failure Prepares us for the Next Assignment

Sherwood Lingenfelter notes that the prevailing belief is that, “suffering of any kind is anathema to flourishing.”[10] Yet we find that difficulty is often opportunity in disguise. In our own limitations, God is able to lay the foundation to show himself strong and grow us to new heights and depths in relationship with him and participation in his mission to the places he calls us. An essential component to our own continued growth in Christ is the pain of the mire of failures and shortcomings because these are the places where God is able to produce deep transformative work in us.[11]

Shelley Trebesch describes these periods as “isolation experiences,” [12] where the Spirit calls us out to the “desert” for the purpose of preparing us for a new season of ministry effectiveness. These isolation experiences consist of four phases:

First, there is a time of crisis where God strips us of something old in order to prepare us to want to venture more deeply with God.
Secondly, there is a period of wrestling with God where hunger for deeper spiritual intimacy is cultivated.
Thirdly, there is a season of increased intimacy with God that will function as the spiritual reservoir from which the next ministry assignment will draw.
Finally, there is a release to a future season in which a person is freed to their next assignment while experiencing God in greater depth and with greater expectation of God’s faithfulness in the future.[13]

It is through these isolation experiences that God often forms in us the necessary maturity we need to move into a new season of ministry. It is through these seasons that God exchanges old wineskins for new in our lives, preparing us for the open frontier of his next assignment for us in his mission.

Conclusion

Ezekiel had unwavering trust in God and remained faithful to him as his difficult prophetic ministry unfolded. Ultimately, his message turned from the unpopular predictions of Jerusalem’s fall to a much-needed healing balm, promising a future restoration for God’s people who were experiencing tremendous sorrow at the fate of their beloved homeland. There is no “I told you so!” moment when Ezekiel’s prophecies come to pass. Instead, the formative season of painful ministry produced an empathy in the young prophet that enabled him to be a healing prophetic presence among a people of deep brokenness. I am not sure he would have possessed that mature empathy in the latter part of the story if he not endured the painful preparatory parts of the former part of the story.

While God uses pain and perceived failure as a means of formative preparation, his concern in molding us is in the transformation of our internal motivations, not simply readying us for the next task. Throughout this formative season in my own missional calling, I have felt a deep conviction to steward well whatever growth is produced from it. We have not stepped into the fullness of the next season God has for us, but I have come to recognize that the value in God’s formation in our lives is less about the assignment at hand and more about the growth produced in the preparation for that assignment.

Deep spiritual growth comes to us forged as a prized possession from the anvil of hardship. It behooves us, therefore, to treat that newfound growth as a gift from God. Irrespective of positions and titles, the calling God has upon our lives is one where, in God’s hands, deep seasons of pain are opportunities for growth and eventual seasons of fruitful effectiveness. Through the formation produced from ministry’s hardships, we can approach our American ideas of success and failure through the lens of Ezekiel. Encountering success is cause to give God glory as the source of provision and sufficiency. Encountering failure is an opportunity lean upon God’s faithfulness knowing that in his kingdom, pain is never wasted.

Whether you are on the mountain top of ministry or entrenched in the mire of the valley, I encourage you to press your face close to the nearest well-worn carpet and let God form you anew as you renew your faithfulness and fidelity to him as you participate in his mission.

Endnotes

[1] CNN Library, “Flint Water Crisis Fast Facts,” CNN, December 6, 2018 https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/04/us/flint-water-crisis-fast-facts/index.html

[2] Stephen Seamands, Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2005), 160-161.

[3] Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: In our own Woundedness we can Become a Source of Life for Others (New York, NY: Image, 1972), 87.

[4] Nouwen, Wounded Healer, 88.

[5] Nouwen, Wounded Healer, 89-92.

[6] Randy D. Reese and Robert Loane, Deep Mentoring: Guiding Others on Their Leadership Journey (Downers Grove: IVP, 2012), 182-183.

[7] Nouwen, Wounded Healer, 92-94.

[8] Wilmer Villacorta, Tug of War: The Downward Ascent of Power (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017), 22.

[9] Villacorta, Tug of War, 22.

[10] Sherwood G. Lingenfelter, Leadership in the Way of the Cross: Forging Ministry from the Crucible of Crisis (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2018), 142.

[11] Labberton, Called, 137-138.

[12] Shelley Trebesch, Isolation: A Place of Transformation in the Life of a Leader (Altadena, CA: Barnabas, 1997), vii.

[13] Trebesch, Isolation, 44.