The curse of ‘It’s never worked before’

August 20, 2018

Tim Gough is on our blog today, discussing how you can improve your ministry with a simple shift in your perspective. 

My mum in-law is what’s known as a ‘twitcher’ – she loves bird watching. I’m guessing that living in California comes with a level of novelty for birds that we don’t get here, but if I’m honest I just don’t understand it.

Once, when driving my car around London, a pigeon landed on my rear window. To humanely remove said pigeon, I turned on the window wiper. This pigeon, however, thought it would be big and clever and stick its clawed foot into the wiper blade, getting itself stuck in the process. It spent the next few minutes flapping like a crazy thing and moving side to side with the wiper until I reluctantly got out to rescue it.

Another time whilst driving, I noticed a huge kestrel sat by the road side. It took one look at my car, cocked its head, then flew – beak first – right into the windscreen. Wham! It hit the window with a thud, its wingspan covering the entire view, then it rolled over my car roof, flying off in a drunken daze behind.

Then there was the blackbird that flew into my wife’s shop squawking loudly and toileting everywhere. This thing had two choices when it found the exit: open door or closed window. It chose the latter, knocking itself out in the process.

My conclusion from these experiences: all birds are stupid!

That’s Not Fair

I’m guessing a few of you have clocked my fallacious logic. A small handful of very particular experiences doesn’t provide enough evidence to realistically write off an entire species. It’s entirely possible that not all birds are stupid... just the three I met, and honestly, they could have been just having a bad day.

I wonder how much we do this in ministry. Do we think over a small handful of bad experiences, then write off ideas because of them? Do we say things like, ‘the last holiday club we tried was a disaster, we’ll never do one again’, ‘staff always leave within six months, let’s stop hiring’, or even ‘the last pastor wasn’t up to the job – we don’t want another.’

You’ve probably heard it said that the four deadliest words for church growth are it’s never worked before. Sometimes our own limited experiences of failure are enough for us to reject healthy innovation and inspired ideas. The curse of ‘it’s never worked before’ is that when something knocks us back we won’t try it again. ‘Shan’t’ becomes our mantra.

Throwing Our Caps Over the Wall

I think we’ll do better as churches and ministers when we shake off the ball and chain of what hasn’t worked start taking some risks again. In my favourite TV show, The West Wing, President Bartlet gives a speech where he tells this story:

"My father was very fond the analogy of the Irish lads whose journey was blocked by a brick wall seemingly too high to scale. Throwing their caps over the wall, the lads had no choice but to follow."

Ministry was never meant to be risk-free or easy. We’re in the business of saving souls and we’re pushing against the raging current of popular culture. We could do with throwing our caps over the wall; dreaming big, trying things out, and taking risks for the Kingdom. We’ll make mistakes, sure, and we’ll get things wrong – probably fall down – and we’ll need to try again.

Youth Work in Every Church

I believe this is particularly important for youth ministry. Over my years consulting for churches I’ve often heard the phrase ‘youth work just doesn’t work in this church’. Usually there has been some rough experience with a previous youth leader, an overly-raucous youth club, or just attempts at projects that fizzled out.

I recently wrote a book called Rebooted to encourage us to rethink this. I believe working with young people is a biblical requirement and that raising kids in the knowledge of God should be the joy of the church. I believe the whole church – all of us – needs to be equipped and released to look after young people, and that getting it wrong in the past should not be a roadblock to fresh attempts.

I’d really encourage you to grab a copy and look for how your church can engage in mission and ministry among young people – no matter what background you come from or how you’re resourced. We’ll make mistakes, but young people are worth it.

Let’s get on this together and see young people connecting with God again!