How do you define success in ministry? It is interesting how much time we spend dreaming about succeeding in our calling, yet we rarely pause to define what that success actually looks like. It is easy to borrow someone else’s metrics or feel like a failure even when positive growth is happening. As a student of leadership and a coach to ministry leaders, my perspective has shifted toward valuing resilience and the courage to start again.
True success in ministry is rarely about striking gold on the first attempt. Those who have “made it” share a common trait: the determination to keep getting back up after a fall. This resilience is the foundation of long-term impact, ensuring that a leader’s vision doesn’t crumble under the weight of initial setbacks or unexpected challenges.
This ability to persevere is the primary key to sustainability and longevity in leadership. By managing leadership expectations and limits, ministry leaders can move past the fear of failure and focus on the consistent faithfulness required to fulfill their unique calling.
Lows and Highs
Defining success is tied to defining failures. Letting someone down, missing goals and making the wrong move could all fall under the umbrella of falling down in ministry. Some examples could include:
* Missing a deadline
* Reacting poorly to someone (again)
* Launching a program that no one signs up for
* Saying something you regret in a sermon (and getting those Monday emails because of it)
* Losing congregants or team members
* Getting your proposal denied by the elders or denomination
* Being passed over for a role or position you were excited about
* Showing up to a church meeting when no one else does
Getting back up may look like:
* Apologizing and making it right
* Moving on to another idea or tweaking an old one
* Investing in new people or investing deeper in the people you already have
* Addressing the weakness that is holding you and your team back
* Waking up early and attacking a problem while no one is watching
* Regrouping or rebuilding for a season
* Taking your next risk (and doing it scared)
* Shifting careers or getting a side job
* Asking for honest feedback
* Making the Sabbath a discipline
It is in the getting back up that we develop resilience.
We Will Fall Down.
Many of us were raised getting participation trophies. We were told we were special—and we are—but that doesn’t mean we get to skip a ride on the struggle bus. We are just not smart enough to figure it out the first time around. That’s not the way life works.
Success is like a football game—you will be sore from taking hits and getting knocked down. You might make a few big plays, but mostly you will be scrapping to go forward a few yards at a time.
I am inspired as I coach leaders who take significant blows, process them, learn from them and get back up. They define success as faithfulness and fruitfulness, and call out where they were trying to win instead of to serve. They fall down, get back up and learn from the experience. It never gets old to watch leaders formed and shaped in the painful, yet necessary, crucible of struggle and come out the other side more resilient.
The ministry leader who is successful is not the one who is right, but the one who is resilient. They just keep getting back up, no matter how sore and scared they may be.