Every ministry or project has a creation story (the dream brought you into existence), a redemption story (how God worked in the midst of failures), and a vision story (your view of the future in God’s economy). In today’s blog post, I’d like to focus us on your “redemption story." Think for a moment about one of more significant failures that you have had since beginning your ministry or project (if you have never failed then you aren’t aiming high enough!). What did that failure teach you?  What are the lessons that you bring into today that you learned from yesterday? Are the failures that you experienced yesterday being positively converted into life lessons affecting tomorrow?

We started a church and had a number of huge and visible successes. What was not as visible was the 13 week radio advertising campaign that we did in the beginning...with NO response. If you came to LifePoint today (now pastored by my successor, Pastor Bill McCready), you wouldn’t know about the times in the beginning when we disappointed people and were unable to fulfill their expectations for spiritual growth. Today, you wouldn’t guess that we actually experienced such great pain at times that we wanted to quit.

So why tell these stories? The truth is, we learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. Perfect people only want stories of success. Real people want to know that failure is not fatal. Failure is an experience of life that moves us from theory into reality. People want to know that your story is one of growth and redemption... that you serve a God who can take people, organizations, and relationships and put them back on track.

Effective leaders are people of dreams. Leaders are people of hope. Real leaders know that failure is not fatal.