The Monday Memo from John Stanko

635: Down But Not Out

I love London. One year while I was there I went to see Handel’s Messiah at the Royal Albert Music Hall. What a wonderful way to enjoy a timeless masterpiece of music and Scripture in the city where it was composed. That visit sparked one of my Christmas favorites from the Monday Memo archives, which I present to you again this year.

MESSIAH

The Messiah is considered by many to be the greatest musical feat in the history of mankind. Commissioned by a charity to produce a benefit concert, Handel wrote the Messiah in only 24 days. A musician once told me that someone trying to copy the Messiah could hardly do so in 24 days— that is the level of inspiration in which Handel operated when he wrote. Handel never left his house for those three weeks. His food trays remained untouched outside his office door. A friend who visited him as he composed found him sobbing with intense emotions. Later, as Handel groped for words to describe what he had experienced, he quoted St. Paul, saying “whether I was in the body or out of my body when I wrote it I know not.”

What’s even more impressive is that Handel wrote Messiah under extreme duress. The Church of England strongly criticized and opposed Handel and his previous Scriptural works put to music. At the age of 56, he had no money, often going out only at night so as to avoid his creditors. Handel performed what he considered his farewell concert and went home, fully expecting to end up in debtor’s prison. Yet the first performance of Messiah in Ireland raised almost 400 British pounds for charity and freed 142 other men from debtor's prison in 1742. Of course the rest is history as countless millions have enjoyed and marveled at this work for more than 250 years. Handel also went on from there to enjoy tremendous success and popularity in his latter years.

So what does this have to do with you? Perhaps you are a person of purpose but you feel frustrated, even defeated in your PurposeQuest. Maybe you find yourself down and out, discouraged and criticized, forgotten and a failure. Perhaps your finances are in poor shape. If that description fits you, read on, for I believe this Memo can restore your hope and faith. If that’s not you, read on anyway, for you will probably enter that phase one day as you pursue your purpose.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU ARE DOWN AND OUT.

What should you do if you are in a season of “un-use,” disfavor or inaction? As we close out 2013, I would urge you to do three things if you are discouraged, disillusioned or dismayed. And if you’re not, I urge you to find someone who is—you shouldn’t have to look too hard—and encourage them in their dark time.

1. Renew your faith in God. Your success and purpose expression doesn’t depend on your faithfulness; it depends on God’s. Remind yourself that God can do anything, and then rest in Him. Handel went home to retire and perhaps thought it was all over for him. Yet God helped him, a group found and commissioned him and God can and do the same for you.
2. Keep preparing for your day of success. I don’t think Handel went home to retire and abandoned music. Don't you abandon your love either. Keep writing, reading, learning and practicing. When the phone rings or the mail comes with your opportunity, you will be fresh and prepared, having worked in faith for the day of success.
3. Be generous. Handel wrote the Messiah for charity, even though he was destitute. What can you do for someone else, even though you are down and out?  It is a good thing to do the unexpected in hard times, and giving something away definitely fits the bill when you are in need yourself. What better way to express your trust in God?

I’m grateful for God's help in 2013 and I hope you can find reasons to be as well. If not, then just thank God for His faithfulness. At least you’re still alive! Then take this Memo to heart or share it with someone who needs it. I pray that as you do what I recommended above, you will see a purpose breakthrough in 2014. Thank you for allowing me to come into your life every week and thank you for being a PurposeQuest-er. As I close this Memo, I wish you not only a great week, but a happy holiday season!

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KENYA UPDATES: I just posted two updates from my work in Kenya. Please remember the orphans and widows as you close out your year-end giving. You can give through my website or by sending a tax-deductible check to PurposeQuest, PO Box 8882, Pittsburgh, PA 15221-0882.  Thank you and may God bless you as you close out 2013 and get ready for 2014!

621: A Fat Duck

Every two years, I reprint one of my favorite Memos entitled 'A Fat Duck." I sense it's time to bring it out of the archives, so I present it to you again for your reading enjoyment and purposeful consideration.

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I read this quote many years ago from Ralph Waldo Emerson:  "Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be."  That is what I have tried to do through the Monday Memo and my purpose teaching: Inspire you to be who God created you to be, who you have always wanted to be.  I have found, however, that some resemble the duck described by the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.  I hope you aren't like this duck, but just to make sure you aren't, you had better read on.

GROUNDED

The story has it that there was a duck flying with other wild ducks when they flew over some tame ducks in a barnyard.  The wild duck decided to stay with these tame ducks for a while.  He stayed for an hour, a day and then several months.  Finally, his wild duck cohorts flew overhead one day and beckoned the wild duck to rejoin them, which he gladly did.

He found, however, that his barnyard living had made him so soft and heavy that he could not fly high enough to join his former mates. So he dropped back into the barnyard, promising that he would get in shape to join them the next time. The next time he heard them, he flapped his wings but could not even get off the ground.  Finally, after many attempts, wishful thinking and a lot of broken promises, the wild duck became a domesticated bird that looked good but never went anywhere.

FLYING HIGH OR NOT AT ALL?

Did you dream of flying high at one time?  Better yet, did you actually taste the heights you had determined to reach?  Then where are you now?  Are you still flying high or content with the safety and provision of the barnyard full of chickens and goats?

I am almost 64 years of age and I still have a lot of flying I want to do.  I have recently announced my 10-year plan to produce a purpose commentary Bible. I now teach at the university at both the undergraduate and graduate level eight to twelves hours every week. I oversee discipleship at my church. I do three weekly one-hour radio shows. I still produce online Bible studies that I began in 2001, as well as writing a daily devotional and the Monday Memo. I want to fly high so I refuse to forsake the heights of productivity for the safety of the barnyard, with its regular rations.  I listen to music that inspires me, go to places that move me and read books that engage me.  I want to fly high and far and I do things that contribute to those objectives.

Flying high can be dangerous, but the view is fantastic!  This week, ask yourself some tough questions.  Do you talk about flying, or do you really fly?  Are you content with barnyard chatter and routine, or are you ready to flap your wings to see how high and far you can go?  I hope you are ready to fly and that you will take others with you on the journey. I look forward to seeing you in high places. If you settle for the barnyard, we won't be meeting any time soon. Have a great week!

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RADIO SHOW: I was interviewed on a show I host this past Friday about leadership and how my writing and travels have impacted my teaching and vice versa. It's a 60-minute interview, and you can listen to it here. I hope you listen and learn something about me and my mission in life.

KINDLE BOOKS: I now have five of my books available in Kindle format to read on your e-reader. You can see those five and order them through Amazon.

546: A Fat Duck

I read this quote a few years ago from Ralph Waldo Emerson:  "Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be."  That is what I have tried to do through the Monday Memo and my purpose teaching: Inspire you to be who God created you to be, who you have always wanted to be.  I have found, however, that some resemble the duck described by the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.  I hope you aren't like this duck, but just to make sure you aren't, you had better read on.

GROUNDED

The story has it that there was a duck flying with other wild ducks when they flew over some tame ducks in a barnyard.  The wild duck decided to stay with these tame ducks for a while.  He stayed for an hour, a day and then several months.  Finally, his wild duck cohorts flew overhead one day and beckoned the wild duck to rejoin them, which he gladly did.

He found, however, that his barnyard living had made him so soft and heavy that he could not fly high enough to join his former mates.  So he dropped back into the barnyard, promising that he would get in shape to join them the next time.  The next time he heard them, he flapped his wings but could not even get off the ground.  Finally, after many attempts, wishful thinking and a lot of broken promises, the wild duck became a domesticated bird that looked good but never went anywhere.

FLYING HIGH OR NOT AT ALL?

Did you dream of flying high at one time?  Better yet, did you actually taste the heights you had determined to reach?  Then where are you now?  Are you still flying high or content with the safety and provision of the barnyard full of chickens and goats?

I am almost 62 years of age and I still have a lot of flying I want to do.  This summer, I will release my 14th book.  I now teach at the university at both the undergraduate and graduate level. I continue to produce regular Bible studies that are regularly sent to 4,000 people, as well as writing a daily devotional. I want to fly high and refuse to forsake the heights of productivity for the safety of the barnyard, with its regular rations.  I listen to music that inspires me, go to places that move me and read books that engage me.  I want to fly high and far and I do things that contribute to those objectives.

Flying high can be dangerous, but the view is fantastic!  This week, ask yourself some tough questions.  Do you talk about flying, or do you really fly?  Are you content with barnyard chatter and routine, or are you ready to flap your wings to see how high and far you can go?  I hope you are ready to fly and you will take others with you on the journey. I look forward to seeing you in high places. If you settle for the barnyard, we won't be meeting any time soon. Have a great week!

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FLYING HIGH IN KENYA: I had a great day yesterday in Kenya and you can read about it here.  It was the fulfillment of years of dreaming and working and it fits right in with what I wrote above.  I hope you will take the time to read it. I also hope you will take the time to read more about all the day's activities here. (Click on the picture to read the inscription.)

521: I Was Wrong

I have often written about failure and the role it plays in your development. Perhaps you have heard me present or read my four-question series designed to help people understand the importance of failure:

1. Is failure a learning experience?
2. Do you often learn more from failure than success?
3. Are you always to be learning and growing?
4. Then should you fail as often as possible?

Usually, people answer "yes" to the first three questions, but answer "no" or not at all on question four.  I have come to see that I have been misleading people on that fourth question and I am here this week to tell you that I was wrong, or at least incomplete in my thinking where question four is concerned. You will have to read on to understand how I was wrong.

AN IMPORTANT ADJUSTMENT

I was teaching a class last Friday and we were discussing failure, and it was then that I realized question four was incomplete.  It should read

4. Then should you fail on purpose as often as possible? 

Think of the most famous example of failure in the world of business: Thomas Edison's discovery of the light bulb. Edison experimented and failed with thousands of materials to find the correct filament that would burn and give light for a long period of time.  While you can say that Edison failed thousands of times, he failed with purpose.  He was trying to achieve something and the achievement was so important and valuable to him that he persevered and eventually found success.

If you just set out to fail so you can learn, your failure will not be tied to anything important and will not lead you to any sucess.  Therefore I was wrong when I urged you to fail. I am confident I am correct when I direct you to fail on purpose.

MORE EXAMPLES

A baby gets up every time he or she falls because the baby has purpose: learning to walk.  You failed in school and gave wrong answer in the pursuit of learning.  You did not hit every ball you swung at, did not make every goal you kicked a ball to score, nor did you hit every jump or foul shot.  Yet you kept swinging, kicking and shooting because you had a purpose to win and improve.  You could tolerate failure because you had purpose.

What implications does this have for your PurposeQuest?  It has serious implications, for you will not tolerate or even allow failure unless it is in the pursuit of something that has overriding value, enough to keep you on the path to success no matter what the cost.  What's more, you won't endure failure in searching for your purpose unless you see the value in the search and ultimate conclusion.  Without that, you will be content with the status quo and endure failure if it leads to your success, which in that case is to preserve the status quo.

I am excited about my new found discovery and adjustment. We will come back to this next year when we take time to enjoy another Celebrate a Failure week.  This time, however, I will be armed with new insight that will make failure more purposeful, where it will play an even more important role in your life and personal development.  Until then, enjoy being a person of purpose and if you happen to fail, fail with purpose. Have a great week!

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LIBRARIES FOR KENYA:  This week I posted a blog entry about my goal to establish two libraries in Kenya next year, one with my friend Pastor Peter.  I invited you to read Peter's latest entry about his progress toward the library and then give generously to help Pastor Peter impact his village for the Lord through the gift of learning, reading and books.  If you are ready to give now, you can do so through my website or by sending a tax-deductible check to PurposeQuest, PO Box 8882, Pittsburgh, PA 15221-0882. The picture at left is a substance-abuse support group that Pastor Peter sponsors in his village, a concept he is pioneering in his area.  The library will be a place where these folks can meet as well as a place where children can do their homework. 

439: It's Time To Celebrate!

It's finally here.  It's time to celebrate a failure!  In case you missed it, I have declared this week Celebrate a Failure week, asking that you take some time this week to focus on the important role that failure has played in your life or the lives of others. If I ask you to do that, it's only fair that I do the same, so here is a reprint of my all-time favorite professional failure. 

THE WORST CONFERENCE IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD

When I worked for Integrity Music, I helped plan and organize the worst conference in the history of the world!  Our team was scheduled to be in Dallas, and we thought registrations were coming in slowly, but didn't think there was anything to worry about.  Then we learned right before we were scheduled to be there that the postal service had lost our brochures, all 50,000 of them.  Only a handful were delivered and that explained the low response.

Instead of canceling the event, we pulled out all the stops to spread the word that we were coming, confident we could still have a successful event.  Were we ever mistaken!  On the first night of the event, we had less than 1,000 people in a church that seated 5,000.  Right after we started the event, the sound system failed.  When I returned from trying to work in the audio booth, I saw Ron Kenoly on stage playing the guitar and trying to lead worship. (Ron isn't known for his guitar-playing skills, believe me.) When he asked for the words to come up on the screen, it was then we realized that the projection system had malfunctioned.  The bulb burned out and the church didn't have a spare. 

I ran backstage to try and print off some sheets with the words on them only to discover that the copy machine was broken.  I got up to take an offering and apologized, saying that I felt like I should be paying anyone who happened to be there that evening.  To make matters worse, the event went on to lose about $15,000.  I realized that weekend that a bad event is like flushing a toilet.  Once you flush, there isn't any way you can stop the process; you just have to let it run its course. 

TWO CHOICES

I had two choices after that disastrous weekend.  The first was to quit, which I briefly considered.  The second was to take three months between Dallas and our next scheduled event and study what went wrong.  I chose the latter and we went through everything we did.  We came up with a number of innovations and built in more than a few safeguards to make sure what happened in Dallas would never happen again.

By God's grace, our next event was a fantastic success.  We introduced some changes that generated quite a bit of revenue, and our team was better prepared and focused.  Today I thank God for that terrible Dallas event and some others that followed.  I learned more from those failures than I ever did from the good events.  I also learned that a bad event isn't the end of the world. 

When a baseball player strikes out or a soccer player misses an open goal, they don't go off the field and sit in the stands.  They keep playing through their failure.  In practice, they work on their technique but in the game they keep swinging and kicking.  That's what you and I need to do as well. 

Don't ever let your failures discourage you, and don't give up on your dream.  Accept that failure is a part of every successful person's life, even your own.  Adjust your expectations, but don't quit!  Today I can organize great events because I organized some poor ones.

So bring out the confetti!  Put up the banners and inflate the balloons. We have some celebrating to do!  Don't let Celebrate a Failure Week end without taking the lesson of the week to heart:  Failure isn't fatal or final unless you allow it to be.  I hope you have a great week as you join with friends and failures around the world as we stare failure in the face and laugh at its attempts to limit our effectiveness and creativity.  As you do, I know you will have a great week!

Feel free to add your comments, failure stories, favorite failure quotes or other pertinent information on the site where this entry is posted.

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THE SOPHIA FUND AND DEBORAH FOUNDATION:  I wrote this week about what I would do if I had some money to further the causes of the Sophia Fund and Deborah Foundation.You can read that post here.  On my last trip, I was able to distribute $3,000 from the Sophia Fund and 28 duffel bags of educational resources and books while in Kenya and came home ready to continue my efforts in those two initiatives.  You can read the impact we made at one orphanage here.  Once you read these two entries, please donate to help us feed even more orphans while also helping to stimulate their intellectual development

I am asking that every Monday Memo reader contribute at least $5 this year.  You can give through my website or send a check to PurposeQuest, PO Box 91099, Pittsburgh, PA 15221. Just let me know if your contribution is to be used for food or books and I promise to use it for that purpose. Just $5 will help me feed an orphan for two weeks!  Do what you can and please do it today.

438: The Case of the Missing Memo

I am home from Kenya and I had a great visit.  I invite you to visit my travel blog to read all about it.  In the meantime, I am still searching for the Memo that I posted last week, which mysteriously disappeared. In nine years of writing the Memo, that has never happened, so I guess I was due, so to speak.  That doesn't change anything, however, where Celebrate a Failure week is concerned.  It is still set for March 1-7. You can read about how to celebrate here, but in the meantime, let's see If I can't reproduce what was lost last week and overcome my failure to deliver.

FOLLOW MY LOGIC.

During one past Celebrate a Failure week, a woman told me, "Couldn't we make these Tolerate A Failure Weeks?  I'm learning to tolerate failure, but I'm not ready to celebrate it!"  My view on the matter, however, is that failure plays such a vital role in your life, purpose and personal development that you must value failure for the important part that it plays.

When I conduct leadership and purpose seminars, I usually lead people through this sequential argument where failure is concerned.  Perhaps you have heard me go through this:

1. First I ask, "Can failure be an important learning experience?"  Everyone usually answers, "yes."

2.  Then I ask, "Don't we often learn more from failure than we do from success?"  People again answer, "Usually, yes."

3.  I go on to ask, "Aren't we as leaders and followers of Jesus to be learning and growing at all times throughout our life?"  Once more, the answer that comes back is "Yes!"

4.  Then I conclude by asking, "Then shouldn't we be failing as often as possible?"  At that point, the room usually falls silent.

That reasoning is why I believe it's important not just to tolerate failure, but to celebrate it, which we will do all next week.  I have my list of my personal failures to study, and I want to milk them for all they are worth to prepare for my future successes. 

THE ONLY REAL FAILURE

In Marianne Williamson's book The Gift of Change, she wrote, "The only real failure is the failure to grow from what we go through."  (There''s another way you can celebrate - by posting your favorite quote about failure on this site as some have already done).  If what Williamson said is true, then we need to allow that truth to sink down to the core of our being.  Henry Ford said that failure isn't the end of the world; it's just a chance to begin more intelligently.  I agree; do you? If you do, then join me in celebrating failure and developing a mindset that failure is an important part of success.  

     Please enter your comments or questions about this entry on the site where it is posted. 

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THE SOPHIA FUND AND DEBORAH FOUNDATION:  I was able to distribute $3,000 from the Sophia Fund and 28 duffel bags of educational resources and books while in Kenya and came home ready to continue my efforts in those two initiatives.  You can read the impact we made at one orphanage here.  Once you read it, please donate to help us feed even more orphans while also helping to stimulate their intellectual development

I am asking that every Monday Memo reader contribute at least $5 this year.  You can give through my website or send a check to PurposeQuest, PO Box 91099, Pittsburgh, PA 15221. Just let me know if your contribution is to be used for food or books and I promise to use it for that purpose. Just $5 will help me feed an orphan for two weeks!  Do what you can and please do it today.

437: Is Failure Spiritual?

I am in Nairobi, and it feels great to be back!  I have a team of 13 with me on this trip and they all traveled well.  You can follow our journeys on my travel blog, which is also linked to my Facebook account.  There may or may not be a Monday Memo next week depending on my access to the Internet where I will be. 

In case you are just joining the Monday Memo family, I have declared the week of March 1-7 to be Celebrate a Failure week the world over.  Here are some ways to celebrate (you can also read more about failure on the Monday Memo site):

1. If you are a pastor, you can talk about failure in your Sunday services on March 7 or during your midweek gatherings. Someone wrote me once that there is no failure in the Bible. See if they're right. If not, then share what you find that can help people who have failed. You have plenty of them sitting right in front of you every Sunday.
2. If you are a business leader, why not talk about failure with the other leaders and staff. Do you have any failures to celebrate as a business or team? What did you learn from them? What is stopping you from creating new failures? What could you possibly achieve today if you weren't afraid of trying and failing?
3. You can celebrate as a family. You may want to study a biblical character who failed, like Samson, Moses, David or Peter. Maybe there is some family story of failure that can be discussed and examined. Maybe you can even focus on some historical figure like Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela or Winston Churchill, who were great leaders who also experienced great failures at some point.
4. Classroom settings need not be left out of our celebration. If you teach, I would imagine that you can find enough teaching material to make up a classroom session or two. History and science are full of failures that eventually led to success, of failures that provide significant lessons for your students.

THE QUESTION

This week, let's consider whether on not failure is spiritual. Let me start by quoting from Thomas Merton’s book, New Seeds of Contemplation.

Perhaps we still have a basically superstitious tendency to associate failure with dishonesty and guilt—failure being interpreted as “punishment.” Even if a man starts out with good intentions, if he fails we tend to think he was somehow “at fault.” If he was not guilty, he was least “wrong.” And “being wrong” is something we have not yet learned to face with equanimity and understanding. We either condemn it with god-like disdain or forgive it with god-like condescension. We do not manage to accept it with human compassion, humility and identification.

Thus we never see the one truth that would help us begin to solve our ethical and political problems: that we are all more or less wrong, that we are all at fault, all limited and obstructed by our mixed motives, our self-deception, our greed, our self-righteousness and our tendency to aggressivity and hypocrisy.

Merton said that failure to face my own humanity causes me not to accept the humanity of others. Failure is part of being human. You cannot serve God in the hopes that He will save you from your propensity to fail. If God did that, for example, He would not have commanded us to forgive one another. He knew we would fail one another and provided the means by which we could deal with it appropriately. God didn't say, "Now that you are mine, you won't be needing to forgive one another any longer." He was saying, "Now you can come to terms with your failure toward one another by forgiving one another."

Those who take refuge in a false sense of spirituality as they try to avoid human failure have already failed. If you don't fail, you won't try to succeed and if you don't try, you won't ever know which thing you could  do is the thing you should do. If you don't fail, you deprive yourself of the great learning experience that only failure can provide. If you don't fail, you won't fully know or understand God's love that is with you no matter what.

THE ANSWER

So is failure spiritual? Indeed it is, for it contributes to your spiritual growth by grounding you in your humanity. It's then that you know God's love and grace, and are able to share those with your fellow failing humans, not from a position of superiority, but from a position of identification.

So I pray that you will have a profitable time leading up to March 1-7. This is an bi-annual event, so if you can’t cover all your failures this year, there’s always next time. I already have enough failures to cover the next ten Celebrate a Failure weeks, and I'm sure t I will collect even more material in the coming season of life! With that in mind, I look forward to celebrating my humanity and my spirituality with you in a few weeks. Thank God He still loves and uses you and me, even in our human condition. Have a great week!

Feel free to post your comments on the site where this entry is posted.

436: Halls of Failure

In case you missed last week's announcement, by the authority vested in me as a purpose coach and teacher, I have declared the week of March 1 officially to be Celebrate a Failure week the world over. During that week, I urge you to find every way possible to celebrate the powerful role of failure in your life or the life of your organization. You can read last week's Memo to discover some suggestions of how to celebrate. This week, however, I want to talk about the halls of failure, of which there are quite a few in my country. These are places where thousand of people come every year to honor those who failed regularly and with distinction in their careers.

Where are these halls of failure, you may ask? There is one in Canton, Ohio, another in Cooperstown, New York and another in Springfield, Massachusetts, just to name a few. If you follow such things, you know that these are the locations of the baseball, football and basketball halls of fame. Let's talk about why I call them halls of failure.

FAILURE IGNORED

Let's first look at baseball (sorry to my non-U.S. readers). The best batters in baseball failed at least 65 percent of the time when they came to bat. The best pitchers failed as many as 40 percent of the time when they pitched, not to mention how many "non-strikes" they threw. The best fielders failed only about 10 percent of the time, but some of the managers remembered in the hall of failure lost almost as many games as they won.

In football, the hall of failure quarterbacks missed 50 percent of their pass attempts. The best running backs fumbled numerous times and the best defenders missed many tackles. In basketball, some of those enshrined in the hall missed 40 percent of their free throws. Others turned the ball over (gave it to the other team) hundreds of times and many lost games for their team when it counted most -- at the very end when they were the last ones to touch the ball.

You know that these halls where the greatest players are memorialized are not called halls of failure but instead halls of fame. They are places where thousands pay money to go and remember the greatest players, regardless of how many times they failed. In fact, no one even remembers how many times they failed. Their failures are ignored in the face of the successes they enjoyed.

FAILURE FORGOTTEN

What about the players memorialized in these halls of fame? What is their attitude toward failure? The statistics I quoted above are accurate; they did indeed encounter many failures in their careers. The key to great success for them was that failure did not define who they were or the legacy they left. Consider Michael Jordan, perhaps the most famous basketball player of the modern era and these facts about him in his own words: "I missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

The great players learn to forget their failures. They use them as a means to improve. They studied what they did wrong and what they would do again if faced with a similar situation. They failed so much that they learned how to succeed. More importantly, they did not allow failure to define them because they did not quit.

So what's your story? How many times have you failed? Truth be told, you probably haven't failed nearly enough to be successful. Have you allowed past failure to limit your attempts to succeed today? Have you allowed the voice of past failure to coach your play today? I'm not referring to your sports career, but to your attempts to write, act, lead or parent. If you don't learn to forget your failure, no one else will ignore it. That's why we are celebrating failure, so can laugh at it and move on to success, however you define success for your life.

Don't miss this wonderful chance to put failure in its rightful place as a teacher and mentor. Join with me on March 1 and the days following to put failure in perspective. If nothing else, take a moment now and then to reflect on the truth found in Romans 8:28: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." Talk about how God has worked God in and from your failure and then go out and do something great that your failure taught you to do. Have a great week and preparation time leading up to March 1.

     Free free to respond to this entry on the site where it is posted.

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LAST CALL: I depart this coming Friday for Kenya with 13 others. If you want to give to the Deborah Foundation or the Sophia Fund, this is the last week to do so before I depart. If you haven't already done so, please take the time to read this latest updates on the Sophia Fund and the Deborah Foundation here. As you read, you will understand what a difference you can make in a child's life with very little effort or investment. 

If you feel compelled to help our upcoming trip, you can give through my website or send a check to PurposeQuest, PO Box 91099, Pittsburgh, PA 15221.  Just let me know if your contribution is to be used for food or shipping and I promise to use it for that purpose. Just $5 will help me feed an orphan for a week!  Do what you can and please do it today.

KENYA: We have decided to reschedule the training I had planned to do when I come in February until June or July.  I will keep you informed of the dates and other pertinent information you will need to register. 

435: Time to Celebrate!

It's been almost two years, but it's that time again. What time is it? Why no other time than to celebrate failure. That's right, I am declaring the week of March 1-7 to be Celebrate a Failure week the world over. If you have read this Memo since the beginning, you will know that this is the fifth such celebration we have held since 2001. If you are new to the Memo, let me explain to you what Celebrate a Failure Week is all about.

THE GROUND RULES

I would recommend that you take every chance during the last week of February to talk about failure, its role in your life and the lessons you have learned from past failures. Here are some ideas of what you can do:

1. If you are a pastor, you can talk about failure in your Sunday services on March 7 or during your midweek gatherings starting on Monday, March 1. Someone wrote me that there is no failure in the Bible. See if they're right. If not, then share what you find that can help people who have failed. You have plenty of them sitting right in front of you every Sunday.
2. If you are a business leader, why not talk about failure with the other leaders and staff. Do you have any failures to celebrate as a business or team? What did you learn from them? What is stopping you from creating new failures? What could you possibly achieve today if you weren't afraid of trying and failing?
3. You can celebrate as a family. You may want to study a biblical character who failed, like Samson, Moses, David or Peter. Maybe there is some family story of failure that can be discussed and examined. Maybe you can even focus on some historical figure like Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela or Winston Churchill, great leaders who also experienced great failures at some point.
4. Classroom settings need not be left out of our celebration. If you teach, I would imagine that you can find enough teaching material to make up a classroom session or two. History and science are full of failures that eventually led to success, of failures that provide significant lessons for your students.

WHY?

Why the need for such a celebration? And is it truly possible to celebrate failure? Should it not be tolerated at worst and avoided at best? We should celebrate failure because it is an inevitable part of life. We avoid failure because we believe it is somehow a measure of inadequate spirituality, and in some ways it is, because you will never measure up to the ideal of perfection on this side of heaven or the Lord's return. If you are going to do anything for God, whether to fulfill your purpose or achieve your goals, you will need to embrace the learning process that only failure can provide.

You can read what I have written about failure in past Memos, but let me quote one of my favorite authors, Parker Palmer, and what he had to say about failure in his book, The Active Life:

If I allow my life to be deformed by the fallen angel called “fear of failure,” I will never be fully alive. I will withhold myself from actions that might fail, or ignore evidence of failure when it happens. But if I could ride that fear all the way down, I might break out of my self-imposed isolation and become connected with many other lives, because failure and the fear of it are universal. I would learn that failure is a natural fact, a way of discerning what to try next. I would be empowered to take more risks, which means to embrace more life, and in the process I would become more connected with others. The monster called fear of failure (or ridicule, criticism, or foolishness, or any of the other fears that are so easy to regard as mortal enemies) would become a demanding but empowering guide toward relatedness.

But on this side of such an experience, we may wonder why we should anywhere near the monsters, let alone ride them all the way down. After all, they are monsters, and they do harbor powers of destruction as well as of creativity. Even if riding the monsters is the only way to reach safe ground, there is no guarantee that we will get there. People have fallen off before the end of the journey and have been stranded in some bad places. So why take the risk of riding the monsters in the first place?

[The reason is that] some monsters simply will not go away. They are too big to walk around, too powerful to overcome, too clever to outsmart. The only way to deal with them is to move toward them, with them, through them. We must learn to befriend some of these primitive powers that seem so much like enemies. In the process we will find them working for us, not against us, working for life, not death.

What are you afraid of? Is some past failure or the fear of a future one keeping you ineffective and paralyzed? Are you so afraid of missing God’s will for your life that you are missing God’s will for your life? This is why we need a Celebrate a Failure Week. It's not to glorify failure but to set the stage for success. That may not make sense at this point, but if you follow along for the next few weeks, I think you'll understand how it works.

So get ready for a big celebration, for we all have some colossal failures to celebrate and some important lessons to review. We want to get failure working for us and not against us, so with that in mind, let the party begin. Have a great week as you make preparations for the big event.

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STILL NEED HELP: I just posted an update on my upcoming trip to Kenya entitled 100 Pairs of Shoes. I leave for Kenya on February 5 with 13 others and I am still collecting money and supplies to take over with us. If you haven't already done so, please take the time to read this latest update on the Sophia Fund and the Deborah Foundation here. As you read, you will understand what a difference you can make in a child's life with very little effort or investment. 

If you feel compelled to help our upcoming trip, you can give through my website or send a check to PurposeQuest, PO Box 91099, Pittsburgh, PA 15221.  Just let me know if your contribution is to be used for food or shipping and I promise to use it for that purpose. Just $5 will help me feed an orphan for a week!  Do what you can and please do it today.

KENYA: We have decided to reschedule the training I had planned to do when I come in February until June or July.  I will keep you informed of the dates and other pertinent information you will need to register. 

396: Encore!

Since it is my birthday today and in light of just finishing my latest book manuscript (it is off to the publisher), I decided to dip back into the archives for this week's Memo.  Actually, I found this encore Memo when I was researching some material on failure for my latest book.  The Memo below appeared under the title Failure P.S. last May and was the final Memo in a series on learning to celebrate failure. I hope you enjoy this edited and encore presentation of Monday Memo 342.

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My wife and I moved into a brand new house this past week!  It's a lovely home and we are just thrilled to be there.  It has everything we want and need, in part of town we like, overlooking a valley with lots of trees and hills.  It has a full basement, from which we will run our PurposeQuest business.  It's new construction and everything is, well, it's so new.  What a blessing that home has already been

What the home represents makes it all the more special, for it truly represents a journey that included a lot of failures and heartache.  Those failures only served to enhance our appreciation this week as we moved.  When we moved out of our last house in 2005, it felt like the Bataan Death March.  The trip to our new home this week could best be described by Psalm 126:

When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion,
we were like men who dreamed.

Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
"The Lord has done great things for them."

The Lord has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy.

Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like streams in the Negev.

Those who sow in tears
will reap with songs of joy.

He who goes out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with him.

THE JOURNEY

When I started PurposeQuest in 2001, it represented a failure of sorts.  I had failed to start it earlier in life and had lost many opportunities.  I was afraid, however, and put it off too long.  When I left my church work to start the business, the people I had been with for many years were not happy and were unable to bless my departure.  I found myself with no money, four books I had written, a purpose message and no place to go at 50 years of age.

Starting over proved to be a struggle.  Before long, we found ourselves in debt, and I was traveling long distances to pursue business opportunities, often staying away from home longer than I wanted to stay.  God was always faithful and we never lacked, but the pressure finally got to us in 2005.  We decided to do what we had to do to downsize, pay off our debts and save some money to buy another home.  I wish I could tell you that all my business decisions since 2001 have been good ones, but they have not.  Yet I learned along the way and also found and sharpened my "voice" -- my message and how to deliver it.

THROUGH THE RAIN

This morning I walked through our youth department at church and heard a song from the movie, Joseph King of Dreams.  The song title is You Know Better Than I.  I invite you to watch and listen to the song and see if it speaks to you like it did to me.  

If that doesn't do it for you as we put the topic of failure to bed, then I know this last passage will.  It's found in the short letter of Jude, verses 24 and 25, right before the book of Revelation.  The verses are actually a prayer, and I hope you can hear me praying this for you as I sit and write this Monday Memo, celebrating the goodness of God while I do with my life what I love to do:

To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy—to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore!   Amen.

Amen and amen.  Now that you have overcome your fear of failure, it's' time to go and do something great for Him!

    Feel free to write a comment to this entry on the site where it is posted.

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REVELATION: I need your help. I urgently want to publish my next book, this time a devotional from the book of Revelation. I wrote about this project in my blog last week and encourage you to read what I wrote there. In that post, I explain my urgency in wanting to get it out for people to read. Then please consider if the Lord wants you to help me to restore an important book of the Bible that has been obscured by so many weird interpretations.  If you have any questions about the project, please don't hesitate to contact me.

THE SOPHIA FUND:  We received another $500 this past week for The Sophia Fund, making a total of $5,500 raised so far. That is just super. Thank you so much for responding. but please don't stop now. The need is urgent and the workers are grateful, but are requesting even more help.  If you didn't read the email below that I received last week from Eddie Adembesa in Kenya, here it is again:

Greetings from us all WEMA widows with the trust that all is well by the grace of God.
 
This is to acknowledge that we have received $1,000 Sophia Fund and $50 St. Paul’s Baptist Church which you sent to us through SARAH NETWORK towards the feeding programme for orphans under the care of WEMA widows.
 
This has not only put a smile on the face of the children but also the widows who have great lack due to the prolonged drought that Kenya is facing.
 
To every single person who made this possible, it’s a big thank you and God truly bless you and enlarge your territories. A good measure shaken together, pressed down and overflowing. I call this a divine connection from God. Let’s continue to pray for one another as we continue noble task. Once again thank you and God bless you.

As I promised, every penny you send is going to feed the poor in Zimbabwe and Kenya. Nothing goes to overhead or administration.  With reports like the one above, won't you consider helping orphans and widows today?  You can read about my rationale for The Fund here (named after my late mother) that will help feed widows and orphans in Kenya and Zimbabwe. 

Please consider a contribution of at least $5 toward the fund and hopefully more.  You can use the "Chipin" widget on the Monday Memo site to contribute, or go directly to my website to contribute there through PayPal, or send a tax-deductible check to PurposeQuest, PO Box 91099, Pittsburgh, PA  15221.  Make sure you let me know it is for The Sophia Fund. Don't delay; give today and make a difference in the world.

The most recent posted entry about The Sophia Fund is here.

FACEBOOK:  I continue to update my personal page on Facebook.  Check it out and let's be friends when you have a chance.  Also you can find me on Twitter @johnstanko. Go there to sign up and follow me.