What Can I Handle?
So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good; so far as we do evil or good, we are human; and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing; at least we exist.
T. S. Eliot1
I. D. Thomas, in A Word from the Wise, tells the story of a Georgia farmer living in a dilapidated shack. He hadn't planted anything, so nothing needed to be cultivated. The farmer just sat, ragged and barefoot, surrounded by the evidence of his laziness.
A stranger stopped for a drink of water and asked, "How's your cotton doing?"
"Ain't got none," replied the farmer.
"Didn't you plant any?"
"Nope. 'fraid of boll weevils."
"Well," continued the visitor, "how's your corn?"
"Didn't plant none. 'fraid there wasn't gonna be no rain."
"How are your potatoes?"
"Ain't got none. Scared of potato bugs."
"Really? What did you plant?"
"Nothin'," was the reply. "I just played safe."2
The church leader who never takes risks quickly finds: No risks, no returns.
The Bible supplies many instances of this Law of Risklessness. Proverbs predicts the nonrewards the sluggard can expect. Jesus' parable of the talents rests on the futility of trying to avoid all risk.3
Similarly, our survey showed that the risks of not taking a risk are the riskiest of all. Leaders who made few or no major decisions per year, regardless of category, were the most likely to have been dismissed from a church at some time in their ministry (see Chart 6).
This doesn't mean risk taking is something one merely decides to do and does. Even those outgoing souls who thrive on the thrill of risk sometimes have to force themselves to act — and will readily admit to the need to continually sharpen their skills.
For some, though, risk taking seems next to impossible. They would sooner ...
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