Will I Fail?

I fear failure. Do you? It’s not so bad that I don’t bother trying anything at all - that’s just choosing failure. Nonetheless, I still fear it.

It’s a funny thing though, because I’ve realized I’ve lacked a clear notion of what success even looks like. How do you measure success? As a pastor, my default assumption was that I had a handle on this. I thought it was enough to not measure success based on materialistic values. I thought I was quite progressed to not measure it by personal fame.

But can you see the problem? My knowledge of success was limited to what it was not. Success itself still begged for definition. And so I found that fear remained.

I asked myself a tough question:

“What if I invested all the working years of my life at a church and only oversaw a slow decline ending in closure? Would I be a failure?”

It’s a prospect that throttled my mind. It brought another word to mind - “wasted.” Could it be that I’m wasting my life?

Yet to say that it would be wasted would be to suppose there was something else I should be doing. At the same time, I would be supposing that for some other fellow it would not be a waste, even if resulting in the same end. Either that or it was okay to possibly waste his life.

I tried to name success in familiar terms, but couldn’t. Between closure and growing into a mega-planting church, I found the dividing the line between success and failure to be arbitrary. I also found it to be arrogant. Who was I to determine success or failure? Who is it that sets the terms?

It was in listening to Kenneth E. Bailey’s audiobook, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes that a humbling and yet comforting reality dawned upon me. In his commentary on the “Parable of the Pounds” as found in Luke 19:11-27, Bailey challenges the reader to consider capitalism’s influence on our reading of the parable. To quickly summarize, a master goes away to a far land to receive kingly authority and gives money to his servants to steward while he is away. When he returns, he accounts what each servant had done with what was given him. It’s at this point in the parable that our minds are liable to perceive success in terms of the capital gains won by the servants. However, Bailey points out the animosity of the citizenry towards this coming King and the possibility that these servants might prefer to avoid the master’s business amidst such resistance - especially if they thought he might not even return. Within this frame, the master would consider his servants successful if upon his return he found they remained faithful in their work. Thus Bailey concludes in his summary, “The master’s primary expectation from his servants is courageous public faithfulness to an unseen master in an environment where some are actively opposed to his rule.”(p.408)

This analysis both humbled and comforted me. I was humbled to realize that I may be called to a life that in the end would be called a failure by the standards of the world. I was comforted to know that it only matters if the Master counts me successful.

If God has called me to pastor my current church or any other, even unto death, how could I call my life a waste? If he sets the terms, how could I call it a failure? Success is simply faithful obedience to God. It is not based on my personal measures or the world’s measures. I may suffer many losses that will appear to be moments of failure in the short term; in the larger picture of the coming Kingdom these will shine as bright moments of success - if I remain faithful.

Faithfulness is not measured by outcomes. It is measured by obedience born out of trust. This trust rests on the finished and ever-sanctifying work of God’s grace through Jesus Christ and the promise that he is coming again to make all things new. I live and work with that end in sight. Victory and success in Christ - it is enough to rest my life upon, laying all fear aside.

Chances are that your pastor wrestles with this anxiety in his life’s work. And what about you? How do you define success? Would the failure you fear truly amount to failure in the eyes of God? It’s something to think about.