[Editor’s note: Mark Love leads the 1528 Collaborative and teaches at Rochester College. In today’s article, which was edited for space, he reflects on so-called ministry “failures” and invites us to discern more carefully where God surprises us.]
A church wanted to reach its neighbors. In this quest, they decided to host a neighborhood barbecue. Who doesn’t like barbecue? Despite their earnest efforts, none of their neighbors accepted their invitation. Undaunted, they hosted another. Who doesn’t like barbecue? And sure enough, their persistence paid off. Two visitors came. If you measure that in percentages, it’s an impressive outcome, but still far short of what they hoped. At the end of the evening they had the problem of deciding what to do with the vast quantities of leftovers. One of the visitors overheard their dilemma and said, “I know people who need food.”
And so members went with him to the homes of people who needed food, people for whom attending a function was an ordeal for a variety of reasons. But now, their porches and living rooms became the space of God’s hospitality, the church being hosted. They laughed together, heard stories about the neighborhood, and learned new names as they ate their food together with glad and generous hearts. And it didn’t end with eating together. One thing led to another and in a totally surprising way, the church became the neighbor that was reached.
This story is one I have become familiar with over time. A church tries something that doesn’t “work,” a failure related to their hopes and expectations. Something surprising, however, appears out of the ruins of failure. The unexpected, not the result of a strategic initiative or well executed plan, becomes a door to something new. The surprising thing creates a fissure–a crack–in our imagination of how things work through which a new way of seeing things might form.
Attending to the surprise is a theologically important practice. The surprise holds the belief that God’s ways are not ours, and that our best efforts are no guarantee that we are answering the call of God. If we mistake our own judgment with the will of God, we have entered idolatrous space. Openness to surprise produces and requires humility, trusting that the living God is larger than our plans. In my estimation, the surprise often is the work of God’s Spirit inviting us into a new future.
The organizational default in our efficiency-driven culture is the strategic. A five year plan abhors the surprise, constantly managing to the plan. The evaluative questions are always, “Did it work?” or if it didn’t, “What went wrong?” I wonder what kind of energy might be discovered if in year-end reviews the questions were, “What surprised you?” or “What did you learn?”
Don’t get me wrong, planning is important. So is trying things, like a barbecue. But when pursuing the living God who evades being kept by our well-intentioned plan, the surprise might be more important than the result. The “failure” might be more illuminating than the “successes” which elicit less curiosity.
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