Fail more, quit less
We could use a lot more failure in the church right now.
Last week, two Episcopal Dioceses I am not a part of - and know virtually nothing about - did something that broke my heart.
The Episcopal Dioceses of Northwestern Pennsylvania and Western New York announced that they’ve decided to end their 6 year partnership. This generated a bit more news because our newly elected Presiding Bishop had been the bishop of both dioceses while they were in partnership.
It seemed ridiculous to me that I took it so personally. This had absolutely nothing to do with me.
But then I reconsidered.
First of all - there’s just not that many of us anymore in the Episcopal Church. This event may have seemed far from me, but I am still invested in how we move forward into the future of church together.
Also: it felt like they were quitting when things got hard. And I don’t think we can’t afford to do that right now.
As someone who promises ‘practical ideas and wildly optimistic theories about how the Holy Spirit is transforming the practice of ministry’, I’m taking this personally.
We want things to change, but we really hate the changing part.
We all know how many Episcopalians it takes to change a lightbulb - the punchline is ‘…and someone to talk about how great the old lightbulb was’.
It’s funny because it’s true. And it’s painfully funny these days.
I have complete compassion for these two dioceses, and all the work it took to create a partnership in the first place. I looked up the statements they made when they started - in 2018 - and how full of vision and hope they were.
the President of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Western New York said then:
“… this partnership is about more than sharing a bishop. It’s about having the courage to experiment and adapt to new realities. Our two dioceses have complementary strengths and we face similar challenges. Together, we are well aligned to respond to what God is doing in our corner of the church.”
It absolutely took courage - and I’m sure, a whole lot of logistics - to create a new way of being.
And six years in, they’re tired. Completely understandable. AND - they wanted to go back….
A commission was created to assess how things were going, and a few things in it stood out to me:
”many members remained focused on “what has been lost” rather than “what could be.”
and:
’What both dioceses do share, however, is a common experience of decline.’
And that’s the heart of it:
This change - creating a partnership of two dioceses - was taken on because each diocese was struggling. As lots of dioceses are - as lots of churches are.
It was a leap of faith taken out of necessity. And the truth is: you can’t leap back.
The change has been made, the road has been chosen. If you go back the way you came, you’ll still find you’re in a different place.
It’s more than ok to fail…
A spokesperson for one of the dioceses said, in a statement about ending the partnership:
“Failure is not even possible, for the very meaning of the word ‘experiment’ is to try..and we have definitely done that.”
I agree this wasn’t a failure - and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
I think we could use a lot more failure in the church right now.
’Fail fast’, ‘fail often’, ‘fail forward’ - these are all mantras for business - and for any passion. Find out what’s not working so you can learn what is. The Wright brothers failed many times before they finally got a plane to fly.
And this is the question I’m left with - for this diocese, for all of us - is: where will you go from here?
What’s the vision moving you forward?
If this were a failure, you could pick up the pieces and see where they led you try again. To quit in the middle - to try, then just stop trying - means abandoning the vision that brought you there in the first place.
Read more about ‘Cage Free’ Ministry:
Here’s what I see:
Churches (congregations, dioceses…) see that things have to change. We make plans and take great leaps of faith to go in new directions.
Then it gets hard.
Then we quit - we lose the vision that brought us this far, and don’t want to keep trying when things get hard.
Then we don’t know what to do next.
We resist the adventure - and the glory - of truly failing, and truly learning how to move forward next. And keeping the vision. And maybe - after a few dozen failures - we find our way to new life.
Fail big, fail often - but don’t quit.
What is your church’s vision for what the future could look like? What’s your plan for sharing the Gospel that involves doing things differently? Not just for the fun of it, but because the old ways are not working - are not bringing you the joy and abundance you expect from a communal life of faith?
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Center your life - or your congregation’s life - around following Jesus the way the first Christians did….
I once came home from a vestry meeting and said to my husband "starting over with an empty church would be easier than trying to get these people to realize that they way they have been doing things obviously doesn't work". At that point I was ready to just throw everyone out of the church and start over with just the liturgy and a pocket full of hope.
I am very saddened by the decline of “the church”, because I was raised in it and because I still believe in its purpose. For me, the church should be about outreach - into the communities where the church is planted. It’s about outreach and community… sharing and spreading the Love of God. But so many churches have become introverted, cliques of people caring for themselves, excluding certain others, and keeping resources for themselves. The church could be such a powerful support for those in need - any kind of need. It was not meant to be a club in which only the members benefit.