Editorial

I often wonder whether Jesus ever failed. Not on a macro level, more in the day-to-day. Did he ever give talks that bombed or illustrations which made no sense? Were there times when he didn’t feed 5,000 people? I guess we know about some of them – the rich young ruler walked away after Jesus conveyed the cost of discipleship, his followers definitely failed to grasp a couple of his parables and, most jarringly, one of his own disciples betrayed him to his death. However we may feel about any discipleship crisis in youth ministry, it’s pretty rare that one of our own young people gets us executed…

Someone recently suggested a regular slot to share youth ministry failures in the magazine. (Anyone thinking, ‘The whole magazine is a failure, Jamie,’ needs to take a long hard look at themselves and not be so mean next time.) It strikes me that there’s something in that. Not in a public shaming sense. Nor in a ‘pity party’ sense. Instead, as Martin Saunders shared in The Elephant Room last month, failure is breeding ground for innovation and learning. If you’re not failing, you’re probably not innovating. And, as we all know, youth ministry is in desperate need of innovation.

In his feature this month, Hillsong’s Dan Blythe shares some of his journey with innovation. I’d sum it up using his phrase: ‘progress the method, protect the message’. That, in essence, is what youth ministry seems to boil down to: we share an unchanging gospel with a head-spinning generation of young people. We serve a steadfast God in an ever-changing culture. We need innovation, but we need to innovate while holding firm to who God is and the message we’re sharing. Innovation is risky. Innovation will look different in every context. Innovation requires us to be open and alert to the needs of our young people and community. Innovation demands that we let go of the paradigms we’re comfortable in. But riskier than that, innovation demands failure, or at least innovation demands an acceptance that failure is a strong possibility. Which, in a culture of squeezed budgets, declining church attendance and pressure from every interested party to get this right, can make innovation pretty unpopular.

The thing to remember is this: it’s not on you. It’s not your responsibility to get everything right and to secure the current well-being and the eternal hope of your young people. That’s on God, and he’s big enough to cope with your failure. So take risks; try, as Rudyard Kipling put it, to treat triumph and disaster just the same; learn from mistakes; share lessons with others and perhaps most importantly, seek to journey in communities which embrace failure. If Jesus (occasionally) encountered failure, so can you.