Michele Aikens
Michele Aikens is president of The Joseph Company Consulting, a management consulting targeted towards non-profits, churches and women-owned businesses. Aikens has over 20 years of experience in training and development, coaching, publishing, and leadership development. Michele Aikens is also a published author and playwright. She can be reached at: MAikens@thejosephcompanyinc.net
Making Failure Count: Take Inventory
- By Michele Aikens
- Published 01/7/2011
Making Failure Count: Taking Inventory
by Michele Aikens
When I left my job as publisher of a national women's magazine, it marked the end of a ten-year period where I worked for a large ministry. There was no severance package, no generous golden parachute, no opportunity for unemployment compensation (by the end of the tenure I had been working at a "salary" that would have left little over were I not a 1099 employee). I left the job-church bitter and questioning God's direction of me there, the beginning success and resultant shut down of the magazine. It was a dark period for me spiritually and emotionally and I felt alone in attempting to deal with my struggle.
What angered me the most was the feeling of having wasted a decade of my life in what I believed to be the service of God. During the first five years when I served as Director of Christian Education, I saw my spirituality slip from the place where I could literally ask God a question and get an answer, to where I felt I was groping in the dark for Him. I groped personally while I implemented programs that helped many grow in their own faith -- it was a contradiction on an ironic level. The following five years were spent putting together a magazine that got national attention, but lackluster support from the church that birthed it. In spite of the response, I ignored the obvious signs: the salary cuts, the ongoing crisis management, the two other eliminated businesses under our parent company's umbrella -- you know, THE SIGNS. I ignored the signs because I thought I was showing faith -- that is my fault, not the company's or the ministry's. I believed I was operating according to God's plan.
And in spite of the failure of the magazine, I still may have been.
What prompts this latest musing is you. It is the dawning of a new year, full of possibilities, that you won't see if you focus on what looks like a failure. In a place where we may appear to have failed, the bitterness and anger must be left behind or we will remain stuck in a place of hopeless regret. You won't move forward if you keep focusing on the part of the experience that feels like failure. Like me, your initial response might be, "I came out of the experience empty -- I have nothing." If you will look from another perspective, however, you may be surprised at what you actually have in your heart, and your hand, if you choose to use it. I didn't come away with money, but I did get something that will serve me much greater in the future: I have knowledge that I could only have gotten through the process of the last ten years.
As you ponder this year and what you want to do next, you may be wrestling with some additional challenges. In spite of looking desperately for work, you didn't find a job last year...or in spite of your best efforts a relationship failed, a foreclosure happened, or a loved one died. I challenge you to faithfully open the cupboards of your heart and Take Inventory. Ask God to show you what you came away from the experience with, and how you can use that to make someone's life better. If we believe in the Sovereignty of God (and I do), then what appears to be a failure did not go unnoticed by The Almighty. What do you have now that you didn't have before 'the fail'? Use that knowledge you have gained to propel you forward. Do you want to know what that looks like?
Following is a partial list of some lessons that a lifelong church girl learned over the past ten years:
I learned:
Even the experience of what seems like a failure today isn't wasted if we trust God who can make it all count.
Change a life. . . .
Michele
by Michele Aikens
When I left my job as publisher of a national women's magazine, it marked the end of a ten-year period where I worked for a large ministry. There was no severance package, no generous golden parachute, no opportunity for unemployment compensation (by the end of the tenure I had been working at a "salary" that would have left little over were I not a 1099 employee). I left the job-church bitter and questioning God's direction of me there, the beginning success and resultant shut down of the magazine. It was a dark period for me spiritually and emotionally and I felt alone in attempting to deal with my struggle.
What angered me the most was the feeling of having wasted a decade of my life in what I believed to be the service of God. During the first five years when I served as Director of Christian Education, I saw my spirituality slip from the place where I could literally ask God a question and get an answer, to where I felt I was groping in the dark for Him. I groped personally while I implemented programs that helped many grow in their own faith -- it was a contradiction on an ironic level. The following five years were spent putting together a magazine that got national attention, but lackluster support from the church that birthed it. In spite of the response, I ignored the obvious signs: the salary cuts, the ongoing crisis management, the two other eliminated businesses under our parent company's umbrella -- you know, THE SIGNS. I ignored the signs because I thought I was showing faith -- that is my fault, not the company's or the ministry's. I believed I was operating according to God's plan.
And in spite of the failure of the magazine, I still may have been.
What prompts this latest musing is you. It is the dawning of a new year, full of possibilities, that you won't see if you focus on what looks like a failure. In a place where we may appear to have failed, the bitterness and anger must be left behind or we will remain stuck in a place of hopeless regret. You won't move forward if you keep focusing on the part of the experience that feels like failure. Like me, your initial response might be, "I came out of the experience empty -- I have nothing." If you will look from another perspective, however, you may be surprised at what you actually have in your heart, and your hand, if you choose to use it. I didn't come away with money, but I did get something that will serve me much greater in the future: I have knowledge that I could only have gotten through the process of the last ten years.
As you ponder this year and what you want to do next, you may be wrestling with some additional challenges. In spite of looking desperately for work, you didn't find a job last year...or in spite of your best efforts a relationship failed, a foreclosure happened, or a loved one died. I challenge you to faithfully open the cupboards of your heart and Take Inventory. Ask God to show you what you came away from the experience with, and how you can use that to make someone's life better. If we believe in the Sovereignty of God (and I do), then what appears to be a failure did not go unnoticed by The Almighty. What do you have now that you didn't have before 'the fail'? Use that knowledge you have gained to propel you forward. Do you want to know what that looks like?
Following is a partial list of some lessons that a lifelong church girl learned over the past ten years:
I learned:
- That pastors and church leaders are subject to the same emotional struggles as everyone else, and those struggles tend to be magnified in the eyes of the people because of their position.
- That church staffers are a complex blend of ego, anointing and gifting that on a good day reflect Christ and on a bad day reflect us.
- That anointed leaders are given the ability by God to identify who is best suited for jobs under their area of influence if they ask Him. This means you don't have to reward the person who hangs around with a ministry position if he or she is not anointed to do that particular job.
- That love can also be expressed through honest confrontation.
- That love really does hide a multitude of sins.
- That Jesus' ministers are His responsibility; He is the one who calls and sets them in The Body, so I don't get to judge them as people.
- ...but I do have a responsibility to covenant relationships to hold up the mirror of God's Word to both myself and my brothers and sisters whose actions may cause harm to themselves, others, or to the cause of Christ.
Even the experience of what seems like a failure today isn't wasted if we trust God who can make it all count.
Change a life. . . .
Michele
