If there’s one thing that most of us aren’t very good at, it’s admitting failure. Acknowledging weaknesses or struggles are much easier; doing so demonstrates humility and just contributes to the power of the eventual redemption narrative anyway. Failure is different though: it’s ugly and stigmatised. No one wants to be the person who leads a project into failure.
But the ugly truth is that not everything we try in youth ministry works out. We’ve all had that brilliant idea for an alcohol-free club night that attracted one loyal teenager who couldn’t dance. We’ve all had to cancel that trip or close that event through lack of commitment or interest. Sometimes we just have to hold our hands up and admit that our idea wasn’t quite right, our radar was off, or that for some other reason the project hasn’t worked.
So beyond a general sense or feeling, how do you know that the project has really failed - and what do you do if it has? Annoyingly, the best answer to that question requires some foresight back at the planning stages: if you’ve started your project with clear aims and targets, it’s fairly simple to evaluate success against them. In fact, lack of proper evaluation is often a key weakness of many youth ministries; we’re scared to ask the tough questions, and often settle for mediocrity instead. Even if a project seems to be going well, we need to be regularly monitoring and evaluating its progress.
The ugly truth is that not everything we try in youth ministry works out, but failure is a natural by-product of innovation
However, if you’ve not created a context for evaluation against predetermined aims, you can still ask some more generic tough questions about your project. Is it meeting a need? Are young people making use of or participating in it? How do they feel about the project; do the young people generally feel positively or negatively about it? When you’ve carved out time to pray, what have you felt God might be saying about it?
If the answers point to that ugly word, failure, then don’t be afraid to call time. This isn’t as easy as it sounds - there are definitely good and bad ways of doing this. Remembering that many people besides yourself could be invested in the project, take care in communicating your decision, and think about the order in which you tell people. I heard about a church which announced it was closing its youth football ministry; the heavily-invested volunteer coach found out at the same time as the players, who found out along with the rest of the church (obvious hint: don’t do this). Make sure you don’t only talk about what hasn’t worked, but take time to reflect on and celebrate the successes and achievements or a project. And even as you mourn the closure of a project, use the moment to cast vision about what you might be able to do with all the capacity that’s been created as a result. Always use death as an opportunity to talk about new life: that’s just good theology.
There’s an apocryphal tale attributed to the late church leader John Wimber (rapidly becoming the Mark Twain of Christian leadership quote attribution). The story goes that Wimber gathered the leaders of his Vineyard movement and asked them how many of the church plants they’d attempted that year had failed. When they proudly responded that only a handful had closed, Wimber was incensed. To him, a low failure rate meant that they clearly weren’t trying hard enough: if they were taking more risks; planting into challenging communities and trying new things; giving emerging leaders a chance instead of playing it safe, they’d have seen a lot more of their plants fail. And to Wimber, that would have been a good sign, because failure is a natural by-product of true innovation.
Youth ministry badly needs innovation: constant reimagining of what the church can be to young people in a culture that’s evolving faster than ever. Some things will work; others won’t. The courage to know the difference and act on it is a vital part of your leadership.
