Holy Failure - Lee Nicholson

First I want to explain that I have been doing youth ministry for 15 years, grew up as a preacher’s kid, I have a 1st degree black belt in Soo Bahk Do karate with which I did a lot of fighting, I have been married to a wonderful woman for 12 years, we have two wonderful kids (one boy and one girl)…and oh yeah, I’m a follower of Christ who has fallen short of the grace of God daily. Within all that I have failed numerous times, more times than I would wish to remember. But within all those categories I have been successful. In fact, I would say I have been more successful because of the failures.

One of my favorite and painful memories was when I purchased my first car back in 1984. It was a rusty sky-blue Ford Pinto station wagon and it cost me $500. I remember this so well because it was one of the few times that I heard my mom and dad argue. My mom was annoyed that I was wasting my money on a very poor choice of a vehicle. But my dad had this “that will learn him” mentality. Well, in the end I did purchase the car and it was the most glorious six months of driving that I ever had before it became a monument in my backyard. Yes, I did learn that I need to be more frugal with my money and select cars with a little less road wear on them. But what my dad taught me was that I needed room to make mistakes, and that mistakes weren’t horrible as long as I learned something from them. In fact, after my realization that I was swindled on this purchase, I remember my dad saying , “Well, did you learn something?” I said, “Yes.” “Then it could have been a lot worse. Now take my keys and go get us some KFC.”

In youth ministry I have learned, too, that I need to allow youth to fail. I’m not talking about allowing them to run down the highway with naked abandonment, but encouraging youth to try new challenges. As a dad, I have had to watch as my kids fall when they first learned to walk, for if I held them up all the time, they wouldn’t have learned how to pull themselves up and try again. I have seen too many youth afraid to try again after failure; they have given up on themselves and have become hollow shells of what they could be. In fact, that hollowness becomes filled up with fear and anxiety regarding new experiences or planning for their future. They become so controlled by this anxiety that they end up making poor choices that result in the lifelong scars of negative consequences.

When I have seen youth be successful is when they have been empowered to try some aspect of leadership where it allows them to stretch themselves. They start seeing spiritual gifts that they never knew they had. In Durham, England, the youth wanted to start a worship service for their fellow peers. They all went to the same school but they either went to one of 15 churches in the area, or were curious about Christianity but had no forum in which to ask questions. I did the ground work in setting up a worship service in an 800-year-old church, with a band, data projector and screen, drama, the whole nine yards. But I didn’t do it myself; rather, I walked with them as they took turns leading. One area was leading worship. Once a month a new person had a chance to coordinate the music and practices. I would show up for the practices and support them to let them know they were not alone. They learned to plan, communicate that plan, listen to their fellow band members, reevaluate the plan using input from their peers, and sometimes manage conflict.

Things didn’t always go smoothly. One youth, we’ll call him “Nigel” (’cuz that’s a good British name!), was very talented at drama, but he often didn’t show up for the drama team’s practices and when he did, he didn’t remember his lines. I sat down with Nigel and asked him a series of questions: How do you think it went this week? What do you think you could do to make it run better? And so on. Nigel came to realize that he had been taking the gifts God had given him for granted, he had let the team down, and he hadn’t been a very good example of a Christian leader. We came to the agreement that he was going to take a few months off from the team and spend more time working behind the scenes. Over time he ended up being the first one at the church to set up for the service and the last one of the clean-up crew to leave.

Why is it called Holy Failure? Because, to be holy is to be other, other than what society expects one to be, other than what we expect ourselves to be. We have a relatively short amount of time with youth before they head off to sights unknown. So, what if we as youth pastors encourage a track record of not only succeeding, but also a track record of learning through mistakes? The mistakes would be in a safe place in the light of God. What would happen in the future? Only God knows.

Is this hard? Anything worthwhile is going to be hard. There is a certain mindset that is required to do this. That mindset is to:

“My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1:2-4)

May 6, 2008 | Filed Under Youth Pastor 

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