18 May Is Success Overrated?

We love success stories, rags-to-riches stories, person vs. the world and the person wins stories. Sadly, success stories, in fact, success itself, is often monetized in missional ministry. You would like a grant to help the unhoused? How many people have you successfully served? Success can be defined as a set goal being achieved. Grant request forms often ask how many people you have served and how you measure success. In other words, what results have you seen in that person because of your efforts? I read something recently that has me challenging the missional model.

My pastoral coach asked me to read “Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion,” By Jesuit Priest Gregory Boyle. Amazon describes Father Boyle’s work this way:

For twenty years, Gregory Boyle has run Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention program located in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, the gang capital of the world. In Tattoos on the Heart, he distills his experience working in the ghetto into a breathtaking series of parables inspired by faith.

Father Boyle has a chapter titled “Success.” It contains two powerful quotes:

“If our primary goal is results, we will choose to work only with those who will give us good ones.” (page 178)

“There are people you can’t reach. But you can reach out to them all day long.” (page 186)

Boyle argues that there is always an opportunity to give “one more chance.” I can relate. It’s dangerously easy to turn people into projects; to want something for them more than they want it for themselves. In the earthly measure of results, that usually ends in failure.

Boyle has spent months, even years, investing in people, only to have them felled by a rival gang’s bullet. He’s officiated hundreds of funerals. Yet, he doesn’t consider one moment of that time he spent with them wasted. That’s because Father Boyle’s measure of success is to love them as Jesus loves them, with boundless compassion, as the title of his book states.

34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35 (NIV)

Father Boyle confesses that early on, he “flew too close to the sun,” misguidedly believing that he could save anybody. God doesn’t call us to fix. He doesn’t call us to save (that’s His job). He calls us to love. He calls us to be freely used by Him to do the fixing and the saving.

The key is expectancy, not expectation. Don’t expect any specific results from God. Expect that He will do something in the lives of others if you love them as He loves them and you. I know what I speak of, I’ve made the mistake of expectations in the lives of some we have served as Samaritan’s Heart Mission Church. So, what’s the answer?

Let me slightly contradict what I just wrote. If there is someone in your life whom you have become frustrated with because they haven’t accepted Christ, or they have and their spiritual growth isn’t fast enough for your satisfaction, pray this prayer for them:

14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:14-19 (NIV)

 If you do earnestly pray this prayer, you can have the expectation that God will move in their life. That’s the true measure of success in God’s economy!

Pastor Jerry Bader