We set them up to fail...

I have been back in ministry and school together for the past year and for the most part it is great to be learning theory while being in the practical.  I would say this is the only way to go through seminary or grad school even.

Through our school, we have a retreat format which means we have intense weekends one a month as opposed to weekly classes.  This weekend was one of those weekends, and usually I learn a lot of books stuff and also have a lot of fun in fellowship with many other youth pastors.  This weekend there was something else.  Something worth writing down.

Part of this semester we were broken up into groups and required to write together 6 youth group lesson plans and actual put on one of them for the group.  Friday night was one of the groups turn to share one of their lessons.  Through several different interactive small group activities and a wrap up time, we learned about how often we set people up as perfect, and when they don't live up to that perfection we look down on them or discard them altogether.  It is what we do with Pastors, Teachers, Coaches, people in leadership who are still just people in the end.

One of my peers in the group, Teddy, kept saying throughout the lesson the phrase "We set them up to fail, We set them up to fail,We set them up to fail"  I agreed with him, but did not realize how much more it would apply later this weekend.

So after two days of 10 hours of class each day, and a morning of 2 more hours, we finished our intensive weekend with a special conference with an author of a book we had read (details left out because they are not the point) this semester.  From reading a lot in school, you gain appreciation for authors in their books, but it is rare to hear one talk about the book you read to really hear it from them.  Needless to say, he had written a book, and that in itself is impressive, and it was pretty good a times too so even better.

So I was pretty excited, as I always am to meet and hear from the author.  I expected him to be something special that was a great and better example of what I wanted to be, not perfect but close.

As soon as we started, I realized I had a very wrong impression.  He was arrogant, brash,only allowed himself to speak for the most part, and at one point told me that he assumed that I just didn't care what he had to say because I was on my computer.

I was not happy, and really just stopped listening (even though some of it could be useful).  I had set him up as perfect and he had failed me.  "We set them up to fail, We set them up to fail, We set them up to fail."

We do this all the time in our lives, we build people up and then when they fail us in someway we write them off.  I think the better approach is to remember that we are all human and all fall short, ALL, EVERYONE, PERIOD.

The only one we can look to as perfect is God through Christ, for the rest of us, we need to come at all relationships with love.

"We set them up to fail, We set them up to fail, We set them up to fail."  Why don't we LOVE FIRST ALWAYS, knowing that we can always learn something from everyone and if we look for that as opposed to looking for perfection, maybe we can start Redeeming.

I have learned from this speaker, looking at it this way, that often I write off teen ability to lead or have the drive to do more.  I pray, I will be more open to learning differently from the teens I work with every week.

"We set them up to fail, We set them up to fail, We set them up to fail."  Why don't we LOVE FIRST ALWAYS, knowing that we can always learn something from everyone and if we look for that as opposed to looking for perfection, maybe we can start Redeeming.