Learning How to Fail: An Interview with J.R. Briggs

People who do ministry are going to fail. The question is: “What are you going to do about it?”

J.R., what made you want to write a book about a topic nobody likes to talk about: failure?

The book came out of a series of events we’ve hosted called Epic Fail Pastors’ Conferences. In these events we attempt to provide and facilitate a safe space for pastors to process the dangerous message of failure. What we found is that pastors desperately longed for these spaces. We saw God show up in undeniable ways to bring healing and relationships for broken and lonely pastors. Writing about failure was a way to faithfully steward these opportunities we’re finding.

You write a bit about struggles you faced in seminary and as a Christian leader. What unique problems with failure do Christian leaders face that others may not?

First off, every single person experiences failure and wrestles at some level with how to respond to it appropriately. This is accentuated in our American culture that worships at the altar of success – and the North American Church culture certainly isn’t immune to this.

But with Christian leaders, it can be especially difficult to be perceived as professional Christians who are paid to love Jesus. Many churches, consciously or subconsciously, can place burdensome expectations on their pastors, demanding them to fulfill a role that is more often defined by the business world than from the gospel. Many churches can come to expect their pastors to be super-pastors who are never discouraged, rarely sin and who lead with perfection, confidence and inspiring charisma.

In your chapter on the burden of success, you list a couple pages of startling statistics about pastors and the toll ministry takes on them. I’m a stats guy, so I’m interested, which stats troubled you the most and …