I’m too busy to make all the mistakes

A few years ago, I took a number of our key leaders on a “Church Crawl”. Our church was a lot smaller then, about 250 people, and we organised to meet with the leadership teams of some big churches (with around 900 people). One of my leading questions was “What’s a real clanger decision that you’ve made in the last five years?”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have enough time to learn everything first hand! There was the church that got a ‘nice’ congregation member to do the building project – and found it really difficult to have conflict with him! Or the church where one leader turned to the Senior Pastor and said, “Would the fact that every one of us on the leadership team have had a breakdown in the last two years be classed as a clanger?” Yes, I think that might fit…

My leadership style is reasonably daring. I’m not afraid of making mistakes. Probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever done was wearing those stupid hats at Guru time in our old Sunday Nite Live service! (I had a different hat each week. Once I wore a gorilla head tissue box cover… sorry…) Or how about not checking local slang? I seriously offended one family for swearing rather badly in a sermon… (I used an expression that means something very different in Sydney than it did back in Adelaide. I won’t print it here. Let’s just say it was R-Rated! … sorry…) Or how about asking one of the teachers at our School in Nairobi when she was due to give birth? (She wasn’t pregnant…)

I’m happy to make mistakes, but honestly, I’d rather learn from others’ stupidity. But even still, guess what? Despite the mistakes, the church grew, we learned some good lessons for the future, and we discovered that God’s committed to us and our church, so long as we remain humble and willing to have a shot.