Evaluating Ministry Failures: Autopsies without blame:
In the forthcoming book Future-Focused Church, authors Kara Powell, Jake Mulder, and Raymond Chang provide a very refreshing and helpful framework from which to evaluate unsuccessful initiatives. I plan to record a podcast interview with Chang to discuss the book in more detail, but in the meantime, a little section near the end of the book called “autopsies without blame” stood out to me.
As I have been writing of late about some of my experiences with church-planting, and especially some of my feelings about how things ended and how I seemed to receive a disproportionate share of the blame, I found this model insightful and helpful. The sections in italics are direct quotes from the book. There are also several links to past posts disbursed throughout which speak in some way to each point.
Frame ahead of time that you’re not shaming but improving for the future. From the very first email, invitation, and opening words of your autopsy discussion to the conclusion of the process, clarify that you are not finger-pointing. Rather, you are figuring out a better future.
This is very dissimilar to my experience when my church plant closed down. As I shared in another post, “For reasons I still don’t fully understand, I found myself reading a resignation letter to denominational figures weeks later, bearing all the blame for what had happened. It felt profoundly unfair…” The very purpose of the meeting wasn’t to have an open discussion but to instead have me essentially fall on the sword.
Early on, include yourself as part of the problem. Whatever your role in a group, and especially if you are a senor leader, you lower everyone’s defensiveness when you initially acknowledge that you are part of the problem. You are not the sole problem; no one is. But your actions or inactions have contributed to the problem.
A few weeks back, the University of Illinois had a halftime celebration during a men’s college basketball game to honor a former player be retiring their jersey. Unfortunately, when it came time for the big reveal, the jersey was hanging upside down. Oops! But, rather than blame others or lash out, the Athletic Director made a very refreshing and forthright statement:
"Before we get into the substance of the game tonight, obviously, we had a regrettable situation at halftime with the jersey around [Shannon's] celebration," Illinois athletic director Josh Whitman said after the game. "Obviously, a really regrettable moment. It's a shame that it happened that way.
"Of course, I didn't hang the jersey, but I'm ultimately responsible for everything that happens in this building and ultimately that means that was on me tonight. We need to make sure we understand that in life, mistakes happen. But there are also certain moments where mistakes can't happen. And tonight, we stole that moment from [Shannon] and that's on us and something that we have apologized to him for, apologized to his mom. We want to make sure that we apologize to our fans and everybody who was excited to be a part of this experience tonight."
Assume others’ good intentions. Default to believing the best about the intent of your coworkers until you get solid evidence to the contrary.
I think one of the biggest challenges of the last several years has been the breakdown in societal trust and the assumption of nefarious intentions in nearly all instances. In my context, there was a decision I made near the end of the church life that I made in consultation with my on-the-ground, church leaders. This decision was not well received at all and seemed to be taken with offense. In my mind, it was an obvious misunderstanding. Maybe I had given certain leaders “evidence to the contrary” in the past, and the reaction towards me was warranted. But, even still, a default to believing my actions were an honest mistake could have made things so much easier, especially at an already emotionally fraught time for myself.
Celebrate what went well. Don’t rush past naming victories and successes. You want to repeat them in the future.
This seems pretty obvious and straight forward. Despite all the hiccups, there were a lot of good things from that church start. I write about those here:
Break down the problems step-by-step. Get as granular as you can in identifying what isn’t working. What steps in the process broke down or failed to accomplish what you expected, and why?
This step could have been hugely impactful, especially for me. I did write upon request a “Church planting exit report” (see below), but I never heard anything about it beyond my submission. At least for my own healing process, hearing how my mistakes and missteps could be altered or adjusted to help guide more successful efforts in the future would have been hugely beneficial.
Brainstorm potential better future processes. Collaboratively dream up multiple ideas that could have worked better and can be tried next time.
There are so much better ways to evaluate ministry “success.” I wrote about that in the past too. Again, collaboratively dreaming about what could be tried next time shifts the entire perspective.
