What If We Failed?

Last night our life group talked about the third lesson in our current study, “What If.” The topic was “What if we failed?” and there were two interesting things that we discussed. The first was an excerpt from Rob Bell’s new book “Drops Like Stars,” where he talks about a study that was done with two groups of students in a ceramics class. One group was told they would be graded on quantity – how many pieces they would create over a certain number of weeks. The other group was told they would be graded on quality – the workmanship of a single piece created over the same number of weeks. So, Bell says, which group do you think produced the best work of the highest quality?

It wasn’t the answer I thought it would be. The group that was asked to produce the most also produced the best. Why? Because, researchers found, that group was allowed to try and fail over and over again, and by producing a large number of pieces, the students also learned the best techniques and ended up creating the pieces of highest quality. The other group, they discovered, spent weeks theorizing and planning but didn’t practice as much … and by not failing, they actual were unable to learn how to produce a better quality product than those who learned through trial and error.

Now, this study was not an argument for or against different learning styles … they merely drew out the observation that failure can be – and often is – a necessary part of the learning process. When we discourage or disallow failure, people do not grow as effectively as they would if we allowed failure as part of their learning process.

I know this to be true of my own experience. Here at Fellowship (the church where I serve on staff), I have been given the room to try and fail and learn and grow … in a church environment, no less … and am now much better at my job than I was when I started. Instead of demanding perfection, my mentors have given me room to make mistakes – instead of being condemned for them, they have sought to teach me through them, and I’ve learned lessons in a much more profound way than I would otherwise have grown.

Which really only makes sense, because I’m going to make mistakes whether my boss (or husband or friend) likes it or not.

The second thing that our study drew out was the relationship between failure and forgiveness (but I’ll post that later, since my coworker keeps telling me to shorten my blogs).

How have you experienced failure in your life? Has it been an occasion for misery or for growth?