Have you heard the one about the rabbi, the priest, and the minister? The minister was new to town, so the rabbi and priest decided to take him out fishing so that they could get to know him. The had just gotten to the fishing spot not far from shore when they realized that they had forgotten to bring put the bait on the boat. The rabbi says “No problem, I’ll get it” and he hops out of the boat and runs across the top of the water to shore. He picks up the bait and comes back the same way. The minister is awestruck, but the priest doesn’t seem surprised so the minister says nothing. Later the priest says, “Anybody thirsty? I think I’ll go gets some drinks from the cooler.” He hops out of the boat, runs across the water, gets the drinks and comes back. An hour or so later they decide it is time for lunch. The minister, believing that he has as much faith as these guys says “I’ll get it.” He hops out of the boat and sinks like a rock. The priest turns to the rabbi and says, “Do you think we should tell him where the rocks are?”
This is the second in a series of 10 sermons about Building God’s Church. This series is loosely based on a book by Bob Russell called When God Builds a Church. Last Sunday we talked about truth. Today’s is about faith and risk.
When we talk about faith as part of the foundation of the church, people are less than surprised. Of course faith is important. In fact, it has become fashionable to refer to folks who believe in God as “people of faith.” It has become the PC term because it makes no reference to what that faith might be and it avoids the use of the word “religion” which some see as having a negative connotation. Of course the church should be founded on faith. Duh.
Obviously, our personal faith is crucial to who we are. The whole goal of the church really is to make disciples and that centers on the experience of personal faith in the saving work of Christ.
What Bob Russell is talking about here is not personal faith. He is not even talking about personal faith expressed in a corporate setting. He is talking about faith as the foundation of mission. That’s why I chose the Great Commission from Matthew as the text. I know this is a familiar text, but there is a line that is often overlooked here. Listen to these words.
When they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.
Have you ever noticed that before? Here are the disciples, Jesus closest followers, with the resurrected Christ standing in front of them, and still some doubt. All of these guys are going to give the rest of their lives to the mission that Jesus is about to give them. Most of them will be martyred in the process, but here on this mountain top they still have doubts.
Normally we talk about faith as a relationship. That is certainly true. But faith as relationship can be viewed as totally passive. In fact, that is how many of us in the church view our call. We see ourselves as called to live in communion with Christ. We construct sanctuaries where we can spend time in meditation and where we can sense the presence of God. The Greek word for “church” means “called out” and we view ourselves as being called out of the world. We seek the peace of God and we go on retreats to find it. We invite others to come along with us to find what we have found.
The truth is that there is nothing wrong with those ideas as part of the Christian experience. Jesus himself of went off alone to pray. The problem happens when this “me and God against the world” view of faith becomes our dominant view of faith.
Let me switch gears for a minute. We are often told that the best way to achieve something is to set SMART goals. SMART is an acronym for “Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time.” If you are setting a goal for yourself, if it is clear what you want to accomplish, if you can measure your progress, if it is within your ability to achieve, if it is relevant to your objectives, and if you have a specific timeframe in which you plan to accomplish it – if you do all those things you maximize the probability that you will meet the goal. One of the keys here is achievability. Setting a goal that you can’t reasonably expect to accomplish is just setting yourself up for failure. Right?
But, businesses also talk about BHAGs too. That is a term that was coined by two Stanford professors, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras. Officially, it is an acronym for big, hairy, audacious goals. I confess that I’ve always heard a different word for the “A”. What these professors noted is that businesses that make a huge difference, business that are wildly successful, are businesses that set ridiculously high goals for themselves. They seek to accomplish what seems impossible and they do it. Or at least they come close. What happened to achievability?
Just to avoid confusion here, there is a difference between a mission statement and a BHAG. Mission statements offer a general sense of direction, a BHAG is a clear statement that a specific outcome will be achieved within a clear timeframe. One observation is that BHAGs work, even when they are not achieved, because they spur the organization to do much more than would have been done if no audacious goal existed.
BHAGs are dreams with specificity. As Travis White said, Dreams can often become challenging, but challenges are what we live for.
So which is it? Do we need SMART achievable goals or do we need BHAGs to challenge us. The truth is that the two ideas are not contradictory. We need both. We need those big audacious goals out there to motivate and inspire us. At the same time, we need to need to set SMART goals to keep us focused. SMART goals keep us moving. Big goals set the direction.
Most churches have mission statements and many set goals for the year, but very few create BHAGs.
When Linda and I came here a little over a year ago, we attempted to set a BHAG for Park. We announced a goal of doubling worship attendance within a year. We have seen increases, but we didn’t come close to doubling. Why not? Part of the reason was that it was our goal, not Park’s. We came to Park specifically because we felt a call to help reverse a downward trend and to restore the congregation to health. The congregation shared those goals and has made measurable progress. But the goal of doubling participation, something that we felt was necessary for real financial health, was ours alone. Since the church never owned it, it didn’t happen.
A year ago we asked another question. We asked, “When people in the community think of Park, what is the first thing that they think of?” Our answer was that Park is the church with the sign. Now it is a good thing that our sign is so well recognized. Putting thoughtful, profound, and sometimes funny messages on the sign is good for Park and exposes us to the community. Warren has turned the sign into a significant ministry. Still, when all that outsiders can think of when we mention the church’s name is the sign, we are in trouble. We have failed to connect at a deep level.
We said that we needed to find a way to make that deeper connection, but we had no idea what that connection might be. Today, we know. Park is increasingly becoming known as a church that cares about kids. Our children’s carnival was a big success and it was visible to the community. Our Christmas activities supported that view. This year, we have been selected to be the host church in this area for Vacation Bible School training. Other churches will be coming here to learn how VBS should be done. We didn’t explicitly set the BHAG of becoming “the Church that Cares about Kids”, but we knew that we needed to be a church committed to community ministry. The focus on children happened because that is who we really are. As we looked for areas of ministry, we kept coming back to young children. If I had said a year ago that we were going to have more than 200 kids show up at a church carnival or that nearly a hundred children would come to a Christmas party or that our high attendance Sunday for the year would not be Easter or Christmas, but would be the Sunday after Vacation Bible School, would you have believed me? Those would have been audacious goals if we had had the foresight to set them.
One lesson we have learned is that big goals can’t simply be proclaimed from the pulpit. They have to be alive within the hearts of the people in pews.
In our passage, the disciples came to worship the risen Christ, but instead he set a BHAG. He said that they needed to go make disciples of all nations. No wonder some doubted. I can hear them now.
“Make disciples of all nations. Say what? We barely got out of Jerusalem with our skin intact. What if we just set up a nice little church here in Galilee where we can be near our families and where we can get our fishing business going again? You’ve gotten some press now. If people are interested they’ll come to us. We don’t need to go anywhere. It is just too risky. You want 11 guys to go out and change the world. Not likely.”
And think about our Old Testament passage. We know “Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho”, but have you ever thought about what that must have been like? Jericho is the first city people come to when they are heading west after crossing the Jordan. Because of the rift valley there, there is only one east-west road and Jericho guards it. Jericho was a walled city because they stood guard to prevent invasion. This would not be an easy victory. And what was the plan? Let’s walk around the city, blow horns, and shout. These people hadn’t fought many battles, but you didn’t have to be a seasoned general to figure out that this plan didn’t make sense. How silly they would look. More than that, once the folks in Jericho stopped laughing and a real battle started, the Hebrew people would be totally unprepared. Prudent risks are one thing. Expecting walls to fall down on their own is another.
Strong churches are churches that are willing to take risks. We’ve talked about that a number of times this past year. We talked about Peter having the faith to come to Jesus on the water. We even did a Bible study called If You Want to Walk on Water You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat. We also studied Joshua crossing the Jordan. Faith for a church means a willingness to take risks. It means a willingness to fail, because mistakes will be made. It also is recognition that the mission we are on is not our mission. It is God’s.
This is an especially difficult lesson for me because I am cautious by nature. That is part of the reason that it is good to have Linda and me working as a team, because she acts boldly. She wants to buy specific stocks. She would be a day trader if I let her. I want a nice mutual fund whose performance I review once a year or so. You get the picture.
For people in general, but for churches especially, the problem with risk is that it creates opportunity for failure. Churches get into a survival mode. They often see their greatest responsibility to be preserving what was passed down to them and passing it on to the future. That is especially true for churches with a long history. Park has been around for 170 years. What if the church did something really foolish? What if we got to a place where we couldn’t pay our bills? What if we failed?
There are several problems with an excessive fear of failure.
The first problem is that the risk is almost always overestimated. We assume devastating consequences from failure when that is rarely the case. For example, we took a risk and opened up our Thanksgiving Dinner to the community. One risk was that too many might come. What would we do? How could we feed them? The other risk was that too few would show up. We actually had about 80 people come. That was a good showing, but fewer than we had planned. Was that a devastating failure? No. Those who were there had a good time and the left over food went to St. Elizabeth’s Home. Let us give thanks for the blessings and do a better job of inviting folks next year.
Roughly 60% of all basketball shots made don’t go in. Only 25% of all batters make it to first base. In an oil company, only 10% of oil wells drilled hit oil. For actors, only 1 out of 30 auditions turns up in something that is of value. Two out of 5 investments are winners. Failure is all around us.
The second problem is that we forget that we often learn more from failure than from success. Maybe God has something bigger planned and this is just a training exercise or maybe it is part of a larger process.
The founder of IBM Thomas Watson says: The way to succeed is to double your failure rate. Or as Thomas Edison said There is only one good idea in 100 so I want to discover the 99 failures as quick as possible.
The third problem is that we assume that our mission is to survive. Don’t get me wrong. I hope that we do, but God never promised that. In fact, God called us to the opposite. We are told that we must lose our lives to find them. Making survival our primary objective simply means that we will stop growing and changing. We will just die at a slower rate. Our only chance to grow, both spiritually and numerically, is to put ourselves at risk. Remember, most of those disciples on that mountain really did lose their lives in the mission. If you want something safe and easy, a church committed to the kingdom is the wrong place to be.
The final problem with our excessive fear of failure is that it ignores whose mission we are on. God sets the goals. The risen Christ says, I will be with you always, even to the end of the age. Our telling God that the mission of the church is too risky is like a private arguing with a general. Faith means surrendering ourselves to God’s mission. The church of God will prevail with us or in spite of us. The church will prevail.
Edward Teller defined faith this way. When you come to the end of all the light you know, and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: Either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.
Michael McCartney said it like this.
To laugh is to risk appearing the fool
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental
To reach out for another is to risk involvement
To expose feelings is to risk exposing, your true self
To place your ideas, your dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss
To love is to risk not being loved in return
To live is to risk dying
To hope is to risk despair
To try is to risk failure
But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing and is nothing
They may avoid suffering and sorrow but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love or live
Charmed by their attitudes they are a slave, they have forfeited their freedom
Only a person who risks is free
The major reason for this series at this time is to raise issue that Park should consider in the search for a new minister. What are today’s lessons.
Look for a minister who has a history of setting big goals. Look for a minister who is willing to take risks. Look to a minister whose first commitment is the expansion of the kingdom of God.
Here is a question. Ask the prospective ministers about their biggest failures. Ask them what they were trying to accomplish. Ask them why they acted the way that they did. Ask them what they learned from the experience.
If the candidate you are interviewing can’t think of any real failures, you can be sure that they are the wrong person for Park. They have never been tested and they have never grown.
Similarly, you need to assure the new minister that Park is not going to play it safe. Park is committed to bringing the saving message of God’s grace to this community. Pastoring here will be a difficult, but rewarding job. Don’t pull any punches. You want a minister who is up to the challenge.
No vision and you perish; No Ideal, and you’re lost; Your heart must ever cherish Some faith at any cost. Some hope, some dream to cling to, Some rainbow in the sky, Some melody to sing to, Some service that is high. ~ Harriet Du Autermont
