By Eddie Pipkin

Image by Christian Bodhi from Pixabay

I’m nerdy enough to have been among the excited online onlookersfor last week’s long-anticipated Starship launch.  Starship is the largest craft ever lifted from the planet’s surface by rocket engines, and it is designed to be fully reusable.  The goal last Thursday morning was to achieve orbital altitude before splashing down safely in the ocean.  This goal was not achieved.  Instead, the rocket experienced what engineers cheekily refer to as a “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly.”  That is to say, the rocket exploded midair.  And yet, the folks at SpaceX celebrated.  They literally cheered.  Their focus on defining an apparent failure as a necessary step to eventual success is instructive for ministry leaders.

I’ve written in this space before about embracing failure.

It’s one of my favored recurring themes – since, as they say, “write what you know” (smiley faced emoji).  As evidence of my dedication to the topic, I offer these blogs gleaned from the last five years, all of which deal in one way or another with the usefulness of failure, if leveraged as a learning tool: