Humble Pie
4 good lessons from a bad decision.
Mark Vroegop
April 1, 2006
"What am I supposed to do with this?" I handed my wife a photo of "Ground-breaking Sunday." It was a beautiful scene. Senior citizens, children, new families, and our leadership team were celebrating the start of construction on our new ministry center. She graciously smiled and said, "Frame it, and let it be a reminder of your need to be humble." The picture that was supposed to represent a great moment in the life of our church actually represented some deeply personal lessons on how to lead a congregation through risk, uncertainty, and failure. Four years earlier, I had cast the vision for this new facility we desperately needed. Our leadership team had determined to pursue a capital campaign that relied completely upon the gifts of our people. No debt. Our church family had given faithfully over a three-year period, and our construction estimates indicated that we finally had enough funding. The final bids came back a few days after Groundbreaking Sunday. Much to our dismay, they were markedly higher than anyone expected. We would have to reduce the size of the project, renege on our commitment to build the facility debt-free, or ask our people for more money. Panicked, I asked our building chairman, "So, what exactly did we do on Groundbreaking Sunday?" "I think we need to look at it as a ceremonial groundbreaking," he said. I groaned. Immediately, we faced two issues: our leadership team had to determine how we were going to address this problem, and we had to decide what to communicate to our church. From the beginning, we determined that process was as important as product, especially in our situation. Eventually, we asked our church for an additional $130,000 and an extension of their previous pledge commitments for another ...
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