How To Survive After Your Greatest Failure?

When Harold Camping failed on his prediction for the world to end my heart went out to him because at that moment I realized that he was about to face his greatest failure. Failure is humbling.  What do you do after your greatest failure?

What do you do when the world now laughs at you and mocks you? Sure your failure may not have been public and your failure may not have affected hundreds of thousands of people…but you do what every successful person who has ever failed before has done.

You get back up, learn from your past, do not repeat your mistakes, allow God to make your mess your mission, show others more grace than you yourself received in your failure, treat others with respect and learn to laugh about it.

What else can you do after failure?

Pay The Price

“Don’t wish for the success of others because you have no idea the price they paid to get there.” Not sure where I heard that quote but it has rocked me several times as I think about it over the last year.

Success doesn’t happen overnight.  It takes time and there is a price to pay.  Too many times nobody wants to pay the price.  We want instant satisfaction.  We want instant success.  We are so used to pushing a button and getting what we want right away.  The problem that I have learned the hard way is if it is easy it is usually not worth a whole lot.  There is something about fighting though your faith or working hard to achieve a goal.

I’ve always envied the success of others.  I see leaders like Winston Churchill and Barack Obama in the world and I see leaders like Andy Stanley, Perry Noble and Steven Furtick in the church world and I catch myself saying I want what they have.  Here’s the deal I’m not them and I will never be them.  The best I can be is me.  The best part about that is that is all that God requires of me.  He didn’t create me to be them.  He didn’t create me to experience their success or their blessings, I have my own prepared for me.

With more success is more problems on a different level.  God gives us what we can handle when we can handle it.  There is no way I could run a church of 20,000 people or run a multi-million dollar company.  But what I can do is my best.  I have had to learn the hard way.  God has been working on stripping me of all pride and measure of what I valued and thought success was.  God has been taking me back to the basics.  Because of that I have learned an entire new respect for authority, serving and what true success in His eyes looks like.

Nobody was asking the church leaders that I mentioned to speak at conferences when they had a church of 20 people.  However they trusted God, were faithful and because of that they are seeing success that is not the norm.  If it was easy everybody would do it.  Truth is though, whether they have a church of 20 or a church of 20,000 it is not the size of the church that matters it is their pursuit of God and how that transcends into their everyday lives and into their everyday relationships.

So the key is pay the price by doing the little things.  Do what you can do.  Don’t wish for the success of other because you have no idea the price they paid to get there.  Just remember with others success comes others problems.  Learn to enjoy the journey and not rush the season of small beginnings.

Is Your Legacy Forgettable?

It’s more than what you make or what you do its what your made of.  Our self worth gets wrapped up in our successes or the compliments we receive.  Our self worth sometimes comes from the size of our check to the title we have that identifies us.  The truth is all that stuff is nice but really doesn’t matter.  Our self worth comes from what were made of.  The character that we possess and the integrity in which we live out that character.  Something that takes a lifetime to develop and earn can literally be gone in seconds leaving us with questions and scars.  So focus on who you are and not so much what you do.  Only one of those will truly leave a legacy people will talk about in the way you want them to.  The question is: forgettable – easily forgotten, would that define your legacy?

Redefining Success In Coaching

What makes a good coach? When somebody says he or she is a good coach what does that look like? How can you gauge whether or not that coach is successful?  Reality will tell you that the coach is only as good as his team, right?  Nobody ever says that the coach who finished 0-30 is a good coach.  Nobody is knocking down his door to recruit him for another coaching position.  So really the coach is only as good as the players around him.  Of course a good coach can improve and challenge his players, he can put in a system that makes them more effective.  He can teach them the fundamentals and he can inspire them to new levels but at the end of the day it’s whether you win or lose that defines your success.

The same could be said about pastors.  Nobody is recruiting or knocking down the door of a pastor who took a church of 500 to 200.  A pastor is only as good as the team that he has around him.  Staff, volunteers and those who buy into the vision.  The pastor can teach them the fundamentals, he can challenge his church, he can put in new systems to be more effective.  He can inspire them and pray for them.  However there is a point where they have to grasp the vision and work together as a team to accomplish the one goal.  Multiple goals don’t work.  Multiple coaches don’t work.  Arguing about how it used to be or how it was different on your former team won’t work.  Trying to change the goals and vision of the coach won’t work.  What works is everybody understanding their role no matter how big or small.  In the end when the team wins and captures that championship, everyone from the towel boy and water boy to the assistant coaches to the head coach to the MVP player gets a ring.  Why?  Because they all played a part to reach the goal.

So how do you define success with a coach or pastor?  Do they buy into the vision and work together to accomplish the one goal.  If yes, then regardless of whether they win the championship or not, they are redefining what success is and at the very least they are heading in the right direction.

Make sure that team members know they are working with you, not for you.
– John Wooden

Leadership, like coaching, is fighting for the hearts and souls of men and getting them to believe in you.
– Eddie Robinson

Coaching is a profession of love. You can’t coach people unless you love them.
– Eddie Robinson

Returning To The Vomit

There is this verse that I don’t like in the Bible.  Romans 12:19, “Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do.  I’ll do the judging, says God.  I’ll take care of it.” But God it is easier for me to take care of it and I do believe it is more fun.  Luke chapter 6 tells us, “Forgive and you will be forgiven.” Forgiveness on the surface appears to be very easy but at the root it is very difficult.  I am currently on this journey with God where I am forgiving those who have hurt, betrayed or even destroyed my reputation even if they greet that forgiveness with smugness and skepticism.  Here are a few things I am learning.

• I don’t know if the forgiveness is as much for them as it is for me.  I am truly setting myself free.
• Forgiveness is painful because it requires you to face your past and your past choices.
• In many cases they may not even believe they did something wrong but that’s not the point.
• Forgiveness requires that we are happy for them not in their failures but in their success.
• Forgiveness may mean that you walk away still feeling it is unresolved from their end.
• Forgiveness gives us hope.
• We forgive not because it feels good or right but because Christ forgave us.
• We are all like children when it comes to forgiveness and non of us have it figured out.

I’m on this journey and at times it is uncomfortable but I know it is completely necessary.  All I can do is release them it is up to them to offer the forgiveness or accept the forgiveness.  The reality is that our past shapes who we are today but forgiveness will shape who we are tomorrow.

Backside Deserts

Winston Churchill once said, “Almost every leader goes through a time of the ‘backside of the desert’ before becoming what they were made for.”  I love that quote because it’s a quote of hope and there is almost a promise in there.  But that really depends on your perspective.  You can easily read that and only focus on the ‘backside of the desert’ part of it.  You can focus on the curve balls that life has thrown you.  The empty promises, damaged relationships and obstacles that seem to impede your process.  Or you can focus on the ‘becoming what they were made for’ part of it.  You can focus on what God is doing through you and in you when you are feeling like nothing in life is going the way you want or planned.  Winston Churchill finished that quote by saying, “Sometimes this even happens after some initial, lesser success.”  I read this and think for some of you life is good but it could be great.  You have a good marriage, good relationship with your kids, a good job and a good life.  There will come a time when you feel like it may all be falling apart but that could be right before you experience what you were made for on the other side of the ‘desert’ experience.  Keep your head up and your eyes focused and stay persistent.  God is not finished making you extraodinary.