Pastor Ryan Gaffney

A few days ago we all said goodbye to Carrie Fischer, perhaps the actress I most beloved in childhood. Prior to that were the deaths of Alan Rickman, Gene Wilder, David Bowie, and the Great Barrier Reef. This combined with a grim election season, a increase in poliece shootings, and several crises on top of one another like the Flint water crisis, the Dakota Pipeline, and last but not least, the Syrian Cival War, have lead many to decry the year 2016 as the worst in history, and announce that they cannot wait for it’s end.

Which is why I feel a little guilty admitting it has been the best year of my life.

The year started for me, when I asked Tiffany’s parents for her hand. In Janurary, I took a whirlwind tour of Turkey following Paul’s Missionary Journy on scholarship. My last semester was incredibly challenging, and I rocked it! Preaching regularly, planning a wedding, and ultimatley graduating above my goal of a 3.5 GPA with a Master of Divinity Degree.

Then came the wedding, the honeymoon, and the begining of our lives together in a new apartment, with a new car, and a new dog “Obi Wan”.

As the news around us internationally we were working to build community and fight isolation in our home of San Marcos. And saw the development of a new gaming group, a weekly coffeehouse meetup, a pubnight, two biblestudies, ane three potluck events with our new neighbors.

Things look broght for 2017 as well, with new employment and ordination prospects, It looks like Tiffany and I will be able to write out own ticket.

All this, as usual, has beconed me to reflect. And to wonder why it is that I celebrate while so many suffer. Am I insulated from their suffering? And if so, is that a result of privlege or hard work? Is it all going to start paying off because I have built my house on the proverbial Rock, or did I just luck out?

So often in the past as I worried about the future I rolled my eyes at the suggestion that closeness to Christ and faithfullness to his call would result in some kind of emotional security and temporal blessing. Repeatedly throughout my life I have reflected that things were just below “fine” and religiosity was absoltutely not helping. Is this just another up that will lead to another down?

Only one way to find out!

It’s Christmas, so I am rewatching a number of Old holiday favorites: Die Hard, First Blood, Elf, you now, the classics.

I happened upon RENT this year, which I watched and enjoyed in theatres when it first came out. It’s a holiday musical about young people, alternative lifestyles, and telling Christians they are doing it wrong. So it’s pretty much the total package as far as I’m interested. Only trouble is, I’m not as young as I used to be, the story made more sense this time, and these bold cultural rebels have started to seem a lot more like horrible people that deserve everything that’s coming to them.

Imma show you what I mean.

First of all: The problem is not that a lot of the characters are queer. I’m fine with that, I certainly don’t think that liking members of the same sex means you deserve to die in poverty. Things like refusing to work, committing crimes, and being irresponsible in handling infectious diseases however to have a tendancy to make one poor and dead.

Homosexuality has become a smokescreen for these characters. Anyone who criticises them just doesn;t understands, and is really homophobic. They do something horrible and then kiss, “Hey mister, she’s my sister” they respond to the shocked faces. “Ooooo” the audience responds. Look at those bad judgemental peole who cannot appreciate love. Unfortunatley, I’ve seen this attitude played out in real life too.

The plot of the play begns with Mark and Roger, neither of which is gainfully employed but who nevertheless live on the lower east side. Mark is a filmmaker who has never made a film. Roger is a guitarist who hasn’t played in a year. This arrangment is possible only because their former roommate Benny is the landlord and has allowed them to become a full year late on rent. They steal power and burn things indoors without a chimney, but they are mad that they might have to pay anything at all. He tells them that if they don’t pay he will have to kick them out. They sing about how hard their life is for a while before resolving into a musical crecendo that they are not going to pay rent… ever.

How is this okay? Who is okay with this? How are we as an audience supposed to expect and cheer for any resolution to this besides eviction?

Enter Angel who kills Benny’s dog for money, and uses that money to buy booze for everyone. He’s therefore a hero and we all like him, but it’s not kindness, he makes it clear in a long sont that he expects the favor to be returned “Today for you, Tomarrow for me”

Oh and there is also a bi-girl who cheats on everyone while pretending to be monogamous. She is an “actress” who puts on disjointed and masterbatory shows that nobody would ever pay for tickets for. She is also mad at Benny because she wants the performance space rent-free just like the boys apartment and he won’t give it to her.

It’s not that these characters have no moral code. It’s just that their moral code is terrible and wrong. These characters identify the following things as immoral in the movie

1. Expecting payment for services (with Benny obviously, but also the server at the cafe)
2. Accepting a paying job with artistic flexibility (this was called “selling out” and Mark felt guilty for it)
3. Ever not having sex with someone (Roger told Mimi “another day” and it was a big deal)

It’s worth noting concerning #3 that both Mimi and Roger had aids, neither knew about the other one, and neither told the other one they had it as a reason why whe might not want to have promiscous sex right now. This is not considered a valid excuse, and the Roger is very sorry he refused to infect what he thought was an innocent girl with a fatal disease, or contract a fatal disease from her. His bad.

And the strangest thing about all this, the strangest thing is that Benny is right there as a member of the main cast, making all the sense in the world about how fucked up this all is, and serving as a foil to the horrible characters.

They make fun — yet I’m the one
Attempting to do some good

This dude has a POINT!

I don’t know how I ever watched this with a straight face.

Oh. And one last thing. There are 525960 minutes in a year. Can’t these people do anything right?

Last week I opined on the importance of failure in generating success. I alluded to the fact that it isn’t taught or discussed enough. This week I want to talk about how I learned the truth of it, if noone taught me.

I learned it the hard way.

I’ve never failed harder then when I left Kansas. Of course I cringe, even today, to use that word. There are ways in which I wonder if it’s accurate. Good ministry took place in the years I spent there. Yet my Job was to plant a new ministry, and I left with that work unfinished. And that was because of certain things I did wrong.

The truth I can say now that I coulden’t say then is that I was pushed out. The Regional Director (My Boss’s Boss) who hired me was promoted away soon after I started (he’s actually been promoted again and is now President of InterVarsity) The person that replaced him and I never really saw eye-to-eye.

I neglected fundraising for as long as I could, and depended instead on the endowlment that had been built up by previous donors. As much as I intended to, I wasn’t good at communication with supporters.

Finally, I made cultural mistakes. Having never been an IV student, I didn’t know all of the uwritten rules. I believed it when I was told that the annual retreats were opportunities to rest. In actuality those were the most important times to demonstrate compotence. My bosses rarely saw my work on campus, they only saw how excited about IV I was at staff retreats.

All of these things formed a perfect storm, and I wasn’t fired, but more and more of my supplemantary funding started being taken from me, while at the same time I started to be scrutinised more closley, while at the same time I saw staff begin to distance themselfs from me socially. I saw the writing on the wall.

I remember walking alone on dark train tracks after submitting my resignation. Manhattan Kansas was a new place. It was no longer my ministry context, it was just my home. I lamented aloud, and wondered how God had allowed this to happen. After all my students were reporting good things, I was growing as a person and as a minister, my work on campus was solid. How could I fail? What happened to my subbosedly God-given vision to start something new?

How could I fail if I had been doing something God wanted done?

I still don’t have a great answer for all that. I can say that the pat Christian answer is wrong. It’s not so simplisticly true that if we are faithful we will succeed at everything we attempt. Instead I am living proof that you can do your best, try your hardest, and devote years of your life to something righteous, and that’s still no guarentee. Sometimes Shit just happens. Sometimes obstacles you didn’t expect and coulden’t have expected get in your way.

And in that place, God is with you. In that place there is grace and love. And the fact that sometimes we fall down can actually serve to encourage us that falling doesn’t make us bad or wrong, and can give us the confidence to get up and try again.

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." – Samuel Beckett

I don’t talk enough about my failures.

It’s a complicated situation to talk about. Many Christians don’t understand failure, and think failure and faithfulness do not go together. All of us, even me, have a tendancy to wonder what a failing person did wrong. So it becomes dangerous for leaders to talk about their failures. So leaders don’t. So the misunderstanding never gets fixed.

The truth is that most ministry fails. What’s more, the ministry that succeeds does so for a number of factors that are complicated, and usually unknown to us. The reality then, is that the best way to create a successful ministry, is to create unsuccessful ministries until one fails to be unsuccessful. That’s my method.

I can’t count the number of small groups I’ve worked with, projects I’ve started, dreams I’ve invested time and money in, that have ended in failure. Some died in the womb, some did not survive implementation, some lasted a long time before eventually turning belly up. All of them offered lessons and insight of course, but I’m not going to sit here and pretend that the lessons learned are always useful. Save one.

They all taught me how to fail.

Every other field knows this. If you ask a writer how to write well, they will tell you to write every day, get all the bad writing out of your system, one day you will realise it’s gotten good. Ask a game designer how to make good games, you make a prototype, playtest and fail. You ask a salesman how to sell, It’s a numbers game, get 100 “NOs”… Why then, when you ask someone how to minister do they tell you to continue in steadfast prayer and fasting?

Let’s fail boldly into the future.