Building Past Failure

The single sentence that came crackling through the radio signal from almost a quarter-million miles from Earth sounded simple, even routine. “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” The three crew members of the Apollo 13 spacecraft circling the moon knew that something had gone terribly wrong with their spacecraft after hearing the sound of an explosion and watching their electricity-generating fuel cells go dead.

The planned moon landing was aborted and emergency measures were put in place for the crew to coax their crippled craft back toward Earth. Three days later the capsule splashed down in the Pacific. NASA called the mission “a successful failure.”

Decades after the Apollo project, it was a film telling of the story of the “successful failure,” Apollo 13, that won widespread acclaim–not the success story of Apollo 11. Ron Howard’s movie gives the inside story of how three men trapped in a fragile, cramped spacecraft hundreds of thousands of miles from Earth were able to overcome a lack of oxygen, water, and electricity to limp back to Earth. They improvised perilous rocket burns to put them on the right trajectory. They rebuilt mechanical systems in the craft. And dozens of young engineers, computer programmers, aeronautics experts, and others worked together to move past the failure of the spacecraft.

Success is not about avoiding or denying failure. It is about building past failure. If “success” means little if any failure, then the only way to achieve it is to never try anything new.

Failures are inevitable. The question is: how will we build past them? And will other people let us move past them? Will others do what God never does: label us as hopeless “failures.”

We might not want to deal with failure–just focus on one accomplishment after the other, don’t let disappointments distract, and move forward on the path of least resistance. But this would not be good leadership. There are numerous reasons failure is not entirely a bad thing.
Admitting failure is to live in reality. Influencers who live with the fantasy that they have never made mistakes just look ridiculous. They have a hard time gaining credibility in the eyes of others because everyone watching wants to learn how to move past their own failures.

Dealing with failure is not the occasional distraction from our mission; it is the mission. The metanarrative of Scripture goes from creation to fall to redemption to glory. Living as we do in the age of redemption means that life is a continual battle to suppress sin, defeat ignorance, and restore relationships. That is, to build past failure.

Moving past failure is the norm in all biblical examples of leadership. A young Moses killed a man as a vigilante act. David committed adultery and had a disastrous family life. Elijah the prophet stood up to the prophets of Baal, but ran away from a wrathful woman. Peter denied Jesus three times. On his great missionary journeys, Paul experienced one success after another, but also had long periods when no one was responding, and had to deal with broken relationships with his fellow Christian leaders at every turn.

And in each case, God who is gracious, helped people get back on their feet.

There is an underlying biblical theology of dealing with failure, which shapes the purpose of spiritual influence. We are broken creatures living in a broken world. The evidence of that is as diverse as disease, war, child abuse, divorce, addiction, economic injustice, and earthquakes. In the face of such forces human leadership is incomplete. But the creator of the universe, out of compassion, is on a campaign of restoration. God is the influence; God is the leader. He uses people as his instruments in this great campaign. In taking up the task of spiritual influence, we join the battles against ignorance, sin, and inequity. And along the way we will have to deal with our own failures.

[to be continued…]