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Can Christians take Risks? |
The concept of risk is a challenging one for many Christian leaders. On the one hand, many churches and Christian organizations are conservative in their target setting. Leaders may feel that if their church or organization doesn't hit the targets of vision that it has set itself, then the church has not only failed, but that God is not blessing them. This is a dangerous paradigm to take. On the other hand, God is a God who understands and uses weakness to achieve His purpose. Achieving the salvation of the world through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was the ultimate in using weakness. It was also risky. The very heart of the sacrifice of the cross was that Jesus chose to go through with it. In the garden of Gethsemene, Jesus prayed "Yet not what I will, but what you will." (Mark 14:36). It had to be a real choice, with the inherent risk that Jesus could not go through with it. If there was no choice, there was no sacrifice. The Father chose to make Christ fully human, with the risk that he could be fall to the temptation of Satan, that he could succumb to the corrupting influence of power, or that he could sidestep the ultimate sacrifice. The fact that Jesus resisted all temptation, maintained his integrity with the spiritual power with which he was entrusted, and surrendered himself to the cross does not take away any of that risk. In the selection of His twelve disciples, Jesus also took significant risk. Those how have hired people to fulfil roles where the job will expand significantly know the difficulty of selecting people who will make the transition successfully. Jesus took the risk of calling a group that would probably not make the short list of most current-day executive search teams! One of the questions on the leadership style indicator on this website is "I try to avoid taking risks". Over 50% of the a sample of 2000 leaders from a wide range of countries agreed or strongly agreed. Less than 20% disagreed, and felt comfortable taking risks. Whilst it is clear that we should avoid taking unnecessary risks, our faith in a risk-taking God may well cause us to take risks ourselves and for our organizations in establishing more stretching goals that risk failure. Setting too simple a goal can severely limit
the organization's ability to achieve great things for the Kingdom of God. Michaelangelo
said "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we
miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." If we set small-step,
incremental goals, there is a tendency that we do what we used to, only better. If
we challenge ourselves with large goals, then we need to take risks in redefining our
strategy. |
| Pause for Thought : Spend a couple of minutes assessing the amount of risk in your current vision for your church or organization. How likely is it that the vision will be reached in the expected timescales? Are the challenges facing the organization stretching enough? |
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