Snapshot Lessons: Failure

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”  I couldn’t have said it better myself, Henry Ford. Failure is a big, sad word – to most. I know because I use to be one of those people. But to me now, I believe that knowing who you are confidently and knowing in whom you place your identity in whole into changes that word completely. That word failure doesn’t hold any power against me or the things I haven’t accomplished. Like Henry said, “failure is simply [an] opportunity…”. And Christ, my identity and solid rock, is the cause of this word-changer. Learning more about Christ – and even myself – here at Adelphia Bible School this past year has been a bunch of “successes” and “failures” or maybe a better way to phrase it would be: a bunch of “good results” and “opportunities to try for good results”.  One of those projects that started on the right track for a great result was our Leading Up Conference that was going to be held the first week of April 2014.

The Leading Up Conference was going to be an end-of-the-DKS school year where the students of the 2^nd Year Diakonos (DKS) Leadership Program taught workshops on previous classes they experienced throughout the year. Leading Up was going to be about teaching high school juniors and senior the importance of young leadership and the power they have to influence. We had lined up a couple different power-house speakers and an amazing worship band to fill out our general sessions. Sounds like a great retreat, right? Well, here is where I “failed”. It got cancelled from a lack of effort, participation, and activity put forth from my class to get things done to make it happen to get high school students here. Don’t get me wrong – we made some progress. We had some things sorted out and established, but there wasn’t anyone signed up. Something I learned in the planning process of this retreat was the importance of marketing early on, yes, but also the importance of motivation. Being motivated to get something done is everything. If you lack the desire to see something through, most likely it won’t come to completion. People in this world who do the most and get the most done (whether in a secular sense or for-the-kingdom-of-God sense) are the ones who have a passion for what they are doing. They believe it in and run sprint with it. I did not have this sort of fire down in my heart for this conference, unfortunately. I made other things and opportunities in my life a higher priority than this project for school. It was hard to round a gang to stand with you to work on this conference project when you yourself were displaying so evidently an attitude of apathy. As much as I wanted to see this Leading Up Conference jump off our paper and become a reality, I didn’t truly have the faith or heart to see it happen from the beginning. It was too late.

Learning this lesson of failure, it was been a tough process. I haven’t been wanting to accept that I had any part in its lack of success. But I contributed just as much as everyone else in my DKS class. I’ve learned what it means to have a certain time frame to plan, advertise, and produce a full scale retreat and what happens when you wait too long to do (let alone start) these things. I’ve also learned that from what Henry Ford was trying to get at, I now have an opportunity to begin again but with some new insight, wisdom, and intelligence on how to better next time. If I were ever asked again to help make a retreat happen, I think I would take that opportunity. Thank you, Jesus, that you have allowed me to go through this sort of growth process. It was very much needed.