Learning How to Fail

The title of this blog may seem a little ridiculous. Who needs to learn how to fail? Every human being seems to come by it rather naturally. Nobody is perfect right?

But I want to suggest that the church has a role to play in teaching people how to fail well.

This week I was reminded again that the church isn’t different from the rest of the world when it comes to causing harm. There are plenty of examples to choose from. Churches are going to be communities where people hurt one another. They are made up of human beings.

If you haven't been hurt at your church yet it is only because you haven't been there long enough or haven't gotten very involved. God’s hope for the church is that it would be different from the rest of the world in the way that it responds when hurt happens. This is where we must “learn how to fail well.”

Because of Jesus and his Spirit living in us, we can learn to fail well. We can admit when we are wrong and cause harm – either intentionally or unintentionally. We can speak the truth in love to someone who has hurt us. And we can forgive. Forgiving means we make a decision not to get even. We choose not to hold a grudge or nurse bitterness. It doesn’t mean we say, “What you did doesn’t matter.” It doesn’t mean that we “forget.” And it doesn’t mean that we begin to immediately trust the person who hurt us. Forgiveness means that we no longer hold the offense against someone by continuing to bring it up and thereby allowing it to continue fracturing our communion with one another and with God.

These two gifts, confession and forgiveness, are really what makes the church different from the rest of the world. Followers of Jesus do well to use these two gifts from God to show the world how God wants us to fail.

I believe that it breaks God’s heart when we fail and do not use the gifts of confession and forgiveness. I believe that because I know that the reason God sent his son into the world was for the purpose of reconciliation.

“God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” 2 Corinthians 5:19

I found a great resource for helping people who want to get better at this and other practices that reveal God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. It is called, “Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals” by Claiborne, Wilson-Hartgrove and Okoro. It is a book to strengthen the prayer life of the church and a book that has helped me to learn how to fail well. I recommend it highly!

Here is an excerpt from the book on the topic of confession that I’d like to share with you:

Confession

“The Scriptures have much to say about not coming to the altar if we are holding something against a sister or brother. We are told that we will be forgiven inasmuch as we forgive. The early church was known for its public confessions of sins. Many traditions of Christianity have practiced public confession, and many great revivals have been sparked by folks beating their breasts and confessing sins to one another.

Consider ways of creating a space for confession to happen. We have built in some space for confession in each evening prayer office, but there may be other community rituals you want to practice. One practice used in some communities is “Prouds and Sorries,” where each person is given the space to share something they are proud of and something they are sorry about. Just as we confess things that are wrong, we also need to be reminded that we are better than the worst things we do. Reconciliation is one of the fruits of confession, and it is worth thinking about ways of speaking into each other’s lives as we hope to restore whatever may have been broken or lost. (Some communities respond to confessions by saying together, “We proclaim to you God’s forgiveness and ours.”) Confessional prayer assumes that our worship takes place in a deeply flawed community. The church has always been a worrisome and dysfunctional place. But by grace we can take small steps to restore trust. Maybe it is writing a note to someone we have offended or calling up someone we have murmured to (or about) and asking for their forgiveness. Maybe it means each week choosing to do something nice for someone it’s hard for you to like. Sometimes we call this “doing penance.” It’s not that we have to do an act of penance to earn God grace; it’s the opposite – because we have experienced God’s grace, we can’t help but do some act of grace toward another person.”