A stands for Admit that I am wrong

Do we really want to know if we are wrong? My suspicion is that most of us don’t. We (I) would rather go on assuming our rightness than have someone challenge us to evaluate our assumptions, our actions, or our ministries. Does this mean that we will fail to grow as individuals? Probably. But sometimes the pain of honest evaluation seems too much to bear, no matter the benefits.

I have never been a part of a church that has seriously evaluated how they do church, but then again, perhaps I have never been prone to seriously evaluating what I do either. If I took a closer look at myself, I might find more areas for growth than would make me comfortable. But how vital is self-examination and learning from our failures to growth as believers? Tim Harford in his book Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure argues that failure, feedback, and rigorous examination are all necessary parts of the growth process.

As with The Upside of Irrationality (see previous post), Harford’s book is thoroughly secular, but once again, I think we can glean some principles from the basics of his analysis. First, we must be willing to hear honest feedback; in fact, we should probably demand honest feedback if we have any desire to grow. Call it accountability, call it constructive criticism, call it whatever you want, we need others who will challenge our deeply held convictions, traditions, and self-images. As church leaders, we are often hesitant to hear honest feedback. After all, shouldn’t a seminary graduate know much more about how to do church than a “simple lay person,” equipped only with the meager tools of God’s Word and the Holy Spirit? But the hardest part of hearing constructive criticism is often not in hearing the criticism, but facing the possibility that we might be wrong, or at the very least that we might need to change. This fear of change is likely what keeps us from evaluating what we do as churches. If we looked hard enough and found that our methods aren’t working, we would be forced to stare change in the eye, a daunting prospect for any church. But if we refuse to ask the hard questions, like are we really succeeding in fulfilling God’s mission for us as a church, we will continue to meander through life blithely unaware of our many shortcomings.

Second, Harford suggests that we must provide room for the bad ideas if we want to get to the good ideas. Many churches have become places of conformity. We group people together by age, area of interest, preferred style of music, etc. When people or ideas that are risky, different, or threatening appear, we often try to squash them before the rest of the church gets “infected.” Harford argues quite to the contrary that really great ideas come about when diversity is prevalent. We don’t get to the best ideas by weeding out anything that is different or challenging to our preconceptions. In more Christian terms, orthodoxy is often strengthened when confronted with heresy, not when orthodoxy is shielded from heresy.

To apply these thoughts to the church, we need all kinds of people to help move our churches in the right direction. We need people with ideas that seem crazy, and we need to listen to them long enough to understand their perspective. We need people different than “us,” who think differently than we do, who have different gifts. Or to use Paul’s image, it takes a lot of different parts to make up a body.

So what can I learn from Harford? I need to learn from my failures, but I can only do so after I have admitted that I might have failed in the first place. And often I will only see that I have failed if I am willing to listen to honest feedback from others. Finally, I must be willing to learn from people who have a different perspective than mine. When I think that other ideas are crazy or impractical, I am often saying more about my own limited perspective than the actual merit of the “crazy” idea.