Why Betraying Your Instincts Might Be the Best Thing You Could Do for the Work You Care About

By Derek Penwell

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

—Michael Jordan.

I’ve been thinking about this Michael Jordan quote a lot lately. That’s a lot of failure.

There are so many things to hate about failure—that feeling in the pit of your stomach you get when you realize that once again you didn’t do what you set out to do, that voice in your head that says, “I told you you could never do this,” the realization that if you’re going to succeed, you’re going to have to risk failing all over again.

But the thing I hate most about failing is being embarrassed. Missing 26 game-winning shots means that you have to stand before the world, and admit that—at least at that moment—you’re the one everyone counted on to come through … and you didn’t. I hate, hate, hate being embarrassed. But according to Seth Godin, not wanting to be embarrassed is encoded in our DNA.

Actually, it’s not just the avoidance of embarrassment that is buried deep within us; it’s the fear of standing out from the crowd.

Why?

Evolutionarily, we’ve developed an extraordinarily sensitive threat-detection system, which in the past used to protect us from predators. And in a predatory environment, the ones who get eaten are the ones who stray too far from the herd. Sticking with the pack is the safest place to be, since the pack is much more difficult to attack than the lone individual. Wander too far from the safety of the group and you’re a prime target.

Unfortunately for us, the finely honed survival instincts calibrated to keep us safe from lions and tigers are much less practical now that we live in environments without those kinds of predatory threats. We still have these threat detection systems that continually tell us to keep our heads down, not to stand out, not to get too far ahead of the herd. Only now, the threats come more in the form of disapproving looks in a meeting, or the more subtle but no less devastating “no-that-was-fine-really-it-wasn’t-that-bad” consolation from people who are trying to be nice, or the now ubiquitous public shaming and unconstructive criticism on social media.

Consequently, nowadays most of us live our lives afraid of saying something that will draw negative attention to ourselves. In our world what many of fear most on a daily basis isn’t being eaten by a hungry tiger, but being eaten alive by an angry troll. And so we hedge our bets in an attempt to remain safely hidden in the pack.

Of course, what suffers when we hew too close to the middle for fear of drawing attention to ourselves is creativity. The impulse to remain invulnerable from attack, which Steven Pressfield calls the resistance, is what keeps most of us from doing the creative work we were put on earth to do. The resistance is that voice in our heads telling us not to put ourselves out there, not to do anything too new, too dramatically different. Because when we separate ourselves from the conventional, from the ordinary, from the expected—that’s when we’re most vulnerable.

But as both Godin and Pressfield point out, the resistance, if we’re brave enough, can become our friend. Because art is always a risk, the resistance can act as a barometer or a compass for creativity, which tells us when we’re getting close to our most important work. The louder that voice in our head warning us about embarrassment is, the more likely it is that we’re closing in on something important.

In other words, when it comes to creative work, the more insistent the voice in your head is about telling you not to put yourself out there, not to risk failure—if you can manage to listen to it in a different way—the better the chance that you’re headed in exactly the direction necessary for accomplishing what you have it inside you to accomplish.

There’s an episode of Seinfeld in which George Costanza reflects that his instincts have always led him astray, caused him to make bad choices. So, he figures he’ll try something different: he decides to do exactly the opposite of what his instincts tell him to do. If his instincts are so bad, then, he reasons, doing the opposite of what they encourage should lead to success.

Crazy proposal for creativity: When it comes to the work you love, the passion that drives your endeavors, what if you started, like George Costanza, to do exactly the opposite of what your instincts tell you?

What if, when the resistance tells you to slow down, that becomes a cue for you to step on it?

What if, when the resistance tells you to shut up, that’s the signal for you to speak more loudly?

What if, when the resistance tells you that you don’t have any business doing something that risks public embarrassment, you embrace the risk and do it anyway?

Chances are good that you could fail.

But if you don’t, chances are excellent that you’ll never do anything interesting.

And here’s the thing: We need you to do something interesting. The world is a better place when you’re doing the creative work you’ve been put here to do.

Look at Michael Jordan.

What Does "Grow Your Church" Even Mean?

By Derek Penwell

There’s a phrase that church people throw around all the time that works on my last nerve. I can’t even tell you.

Oh, and it’s popular. I hear it all the time on the lips of those scared that their congregations are dying, and of course on the lips of those gurus whose financial health depends on the fear of dying congregations, and the belief by those congregations that a magic program/strategy/personality-type exists to answer once and for all the problems this phrase points up.

Every pulpit committee I’ve ever worked with wants candidates to have a ready answer for the questions prompted by this stupid phrase. Rural congregations. Small town congregations. Suburban and urban congregations. They all seem unreasonably confident that there is something out there—which they haven’t happened upon yet—that will allow them to escape with their lives and their budgets still intact—if someone will just tell them how to … Grow. The. Church!

It’s usually phrased in a question or as the subject of an action item list:

“How are you going to grow the church?”

“11 Things Your Pastor Should Be Doing to Grow Your Church.”

Vomit.

Grow your church. What does that even mean?

If you happen to substitute something else for “church,” maybe you see what I mean.

“How are you going to grow your child?”

“11 things you should be doing to grow your lazy friends.”

See what I mean? It supposes a kind of agency that is not only presumptuous and self-defeating, it’s literally impossible. On what planet is it practicable for a human being to insert herself in the genetic driver seat, such that “growing” a living organism is a reasonable expectation?

But somebody might say, “Well, okay, fine. You can’t 'grow' a human being, but we talk about growing plants all the time.”

Ah, but see, that’s a figure of speech, isn’t it? When a farmer says, “I think I’ll grow soybeans this year,” nobody believes the farmer is going to be working the levers and pulleys on each seed, manipulating the DNA, controlling water absorption rates, optimizing photosynthesis.

When we talk about “growing plants,” we’re talking about helping to foster an environment hospitable to plant growth. Good farmers know about preparing the soil, about planting at the right times and under the right conditions, about making sure that all the factors controllable by the farmer are taken care of.

But that’s the rub, isn’t it? Not all the factors that contribute to the growth of a plant are controllable by the farmer. The farmer can’t make it rain, or stop raining. The farmer can’t heat things up if it’s unseasonably cold, or cool things off if it’s unseasonably warm. The farmer cannot, just by force of will, increase the yield.

So, to say, “I think I’ll grow wheat this year,” is a commitment to doing the work necessary to help make the environment as accommodating as possible to wheat growing.

But here’s a trick that farmers know, which is apparently unknown to people who continue to talk about “growing the church”: If you’re in the wrong environment to grow wheat, it doesn’t matter how skillful a farmer you are; you ain’t gettin’ no wheat.

Plant wheat in the desert, sow some wheat in the middle of the ocean, broadcast wheat seeds in Antarctica and you’ve just bought yourself a heaping helping of “Holy-crap-I-can’t-believe-that-didn’t-work.” You may be the best farmer in the history of farming, and you’re still not going to make that work.

Congregations face the same kind of harsh realities when thinking about “growing the church.” There are plenty of congregations that aren’t going to be “megachurches,” no matter how much pressure they apply to their pastors and lay leaders in an attempt to control their own growth. It’s not happening.

People will react with indignation: “Are you saying God can’t perform a miracle in these barren lands? Can’t God raise up another Joel Osteen in South Dakota?”

Sure. God, by definition, can do whatever God wants. You also might win the lottery, but that doesn’t seem like—given what we know about economics and probability—very sound financial planning.

And even if that were the extent of your financial planning, would you hold the liquor store cashier who sold you the ticket responsible when your Power-Ball dreams don’t materialize?

But here’s my problem: People who talk about “growing the church” actually know in some deep place they generally keep hidden from themselves that they’re employing a figure of speech. These would-be church-growers (kinda, sorta) know that nobody can “grow a church.” But they want so badly to believe that somebody out there has the magic formula, that they keep clinging to the hope that it’s possible (if we could, for the love of God already, find the right minister) to engineer their own survival. And so they keep alive the fantasy that if they look hard enough and/or make their ministers miserable enough, they’ll finally stumble across the secret they’re pretty sure somebody has been keeping from them all these years.

But it rarely ever works. It just doesn’t—at least not in the way most people are apparently programmed to think.

So, how about this?

How about we seek an immediate moratorium on the phrase, “grow our church,” and just get busy (like the farmer) working on the things we can control?

How about we quit saddling our ministers and lay leaders with unrealistic expectations, quit projecting onto them our own fears about our inadequacies?

How about we celebrate the church we are right now and the church we actually have the potential to be in the future, instead of bitterly clinging to an image of the church we’re convinced we could be if only we could find the magic formula?

How about if we just bloom where we’re planted, instead of where we wish God had planted us?

The Blessed Mercy of Driving the Wrong Car

By Derek Penwell

I knew a young woman one time who, when she turned sixteen, was promised a car to drive. Needless to say, she was pretty stoked about the prospect of having her own wheels. She knew exactly what she wanted, too. This young woman wanted a new Camaro. She’d done her homework, so she knew just which option packages she wanted, all the bells and whistles. A fairly ambitious set of desires; but you’ve got to dream, right?

On the day she turned sixteen, she was ready to go with her parents down the dealership and order this fine piece of American engineering. Her dad poked his head in the door from outside and said, “Hey, sweetie! Come on out here. Mom and I have a surprise for you.”

She got up from the breakfast table and ran toward the door. She figured that this was even better than she expected. Her parents had anticipated her desires, and had gone out to surprise her by getting her the car of her dreams. Almost impossible to contain her excitement.

But as she cleared the side door and looked out in the driveway, what awaited her there wasn’t a new Camaro, but a ten year-old Pontiac Bonneville. Huge thing. It was the color of a rusted boat anchor. Looking at her “new” car, the birthday girl was crestfallen. She shot a glance at her parents. “But I wanted a Camaro,” she pouted.

Her dad said, “People in Hell want ice water. You don’t always get your first choice. This is a good car—it runs well and it’s safe.”

She broke down in tears. “Well, I’m not driving that thing around town. What will my friends think?”

And she didn’t drive it, at least for a while … until she couldn’t stand staying at home doing nothing. Then all of a sudden that Pontiac Bonneville didn’t look so bad. (Well, actually it did still look bad, but you know what I mean.)

I think about that Bonneville when I hear congregations complaining about not being who they think they should be, about not having the kind of resources to do really “important” work. You ever hear that kind of self-pity coming out of a congregation?

“We’re so small. We look at other congregations, and we’re embarrassed about what we have to offer. We don’t have a family life center. No sparkling youth program. Our ability to send our outreach dollars to the home office has been severely hampered. The whole thing is just really depressing.”

And often these congregations, because they have so little confidence, end up doing very little. Actually, let me rephrase that: These congregations end up doing very little of anything new or brave or exciting. Despairing of ever being Camaros, they’ve failed to understand that being a Pontiac Bonneville is still enough to get the job done.

What’s the job?

Of a car? To take you from point A to point B. And, given the constraints of speed limits (as well as the laws of physics), a well maintained Bonneville can do that as well as a Camaro.

What’s the job of a congregation?

To worship God and help equip followers of Jesus for the reign of God.

And here’s the thing: You can do that without a family life center, without a sparkling youth program, and without a lot of extra money.

You shame the angels if you don’t live bravely with what you have.