These posts are adapted from Donald Keough’s excellent book The Ten commandments for Business Failure. This book was such an excellent source of common sense and probably one of the best books I’ve read in some time.

When it comes to failure, the best thing you can do is be intimidated by what might happen. It will paralyze you and your church, motivating you to defend where you are rather than take the position you need to be in.

When people are afraid of the future, they will do anything to push the present. They will want today to be tomorrow. They will want tomorrow to look just like yesterday. And that will guarantee that you will fail. Even if you can manage to keep going in the present, you will have failed anyway. You will have become a time capsule of yesterday.

Go for it.

Of course, Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. Wait…isn’t forever in the future?

These posts are adapted from Donald Keough’s excellent book The Ten commandments for Business Failure. This book was such an excellent source of common sense and probably one of the best books I’ve read in some time.

When you communicate for failure, make sure you keep things confused and muddled. Don’t present anything that could be confused with a focused vision. And make sure you don’t back up anything that you do say clearly. Also, make sure your spoken vision does not line up with your functional focus. It is absolutely imperative that no one has any real idea of continuity between statements and actions.

You can’t help but go wrong with this!

These posts are adapted from Donald Keough’s excellent book The Ten commandments for Business Failure. This book was such an excellent source of common sense and probable one of the best books I’ve read in some time.

There are many ways to fail, but if you want to simply strangle your church, make sure you maintain a complicated bureaucracy of committees and boards. To ensure that nothing ever happens, don’t appoint people who meet the Scriptural requirements of leadership. Just fill the positions with whoever is available, and make sure they have overlapping job descriptions. Better yet, don’t give the committees job descriptions. Just let them have big titles and then debate endlessly.

These posts are adapted from Donald Keough’s excellent book The Ten commandments for Business Failure. This book was such an excellent source of common sense and probable one of the best books I’ve read in some time.

If you want to be an absolutely mediocre failure, then make sure you acquire as much external advice as you can. Attend every conference you can. Hire every consultant you see advertised in your leadership magazines. Read every trendy book that is published. Make sure you do everything they say.

In fact, don’t waste any time considering or praying about what it is God wants you to do. Just do what the experts tell you.

Yeah, Jesus rejected the opinions of all the experts. Sure Paul had the balls to oppose Simon Peter when he knew Peter was wrong, even though Peter was the ‘senior’ apostle in the church at the time [Galatians 2:11]. Ok, so John received his vision of the Book of the Revelation when he was ‘in the Spirit on the Lord’s day’ – a clear statement of quiet meditation.

But you don’t need that. You just go ahead and listen to those experts. It’s not like the Holy Spirit speaks to us anymore anyway.

These posts are adapted from Donald Keough’s excellent book The Ten commandments for Business Failure. This book was such an excellent source of common sense and probable one of the best books I’ve read in some time.

To fail, you really need to make sure you are always rushing from activity to activity. Do not spend a significant amount of time thinking about where you are going or why, and certainly do not evaluate the effectiveness of your time usage. Just do stuff, whatever that stuff is. Don’t take retreats or have times when you do nothing but think about things.

Whenever something new comes down the line, don’t think about it. Just do it. If you see something you don’t like, just rush over and fix it. Don’t think about it. Everything that comes flying at you, just absorb it. Don’t process. Don’t breathe. Just do.

Ignore that Jesus spent so much time alone [Mark 1:35, Mark 6:47, Luke 9:18]. He wasn’t thinking about what he was doing. He certainly wasn’t praying about what step to take next. Don’t worry about God speaking when you wait in silence [Psalm 63]. Just rush in and DO.

These posts are adapted from Donald Keough’s excellent book The Ten commandments for Business Failure. This book was such an excellent source of common sense and probable one of the best books I’ve read in some time.

Success is more permanent when you achieve it without destroying your principles. –Walter Cronkite

In order to fail, make sure that people do not trust you. That way, no matter how good you are at your particular role in the church, you can be sure that no one will follow you or duplicate what you are doing. If you play the game entirely for yourself, you are guaranteed to alienate everyone and find yourself trying to do everything yourself.

Everyone else is going to cheat you, so why not cheat them?

Of course, that logic does not stand up to the scrutiny of Jesus’ life. Jesus turned this kind of thinking on its head, challenging his disciples to speak plainly, to live with integrity and to put others ahead of themselves.

These posts are adapted from Donald Keough’s excellent book The Ten commandments for Business Failure. This book was such an excellent source of common sense and probable one of the best books I’ve read in some time.

You’re right. You don’t need anyone else’s opinion but your own. You got where you are; that means you know what you’re doing. What could anyone else possibly contribute to your understanding?

If you want to fail, just assume that you know all there is to know and have a perfect understanding of it. You will show all those people who think their opinions matter.

And why not? You certainly have a biblical precedent. King David assumed his lust for one of his general’s wife was the right choice on a warm night in Jerusalem [2 Samuel 11:1-5]. Nebuchadnezzar assumed that he had conquered the Levant by his own power and ingenuity [Daniel 4:29-37]. Peter thought he had Jesus figured out more than once [Matthew 16:33, Mark 9:5]. The Pharisees who stoned Stephen knew that their opinions must be correct [Acts 7:54-60].

So, go ahead Captain You-Planet! The world must bow to your opinion. Follow your own advice and you’re sure to fail spectacularly!

These posts are adapted from Donald Keough’s excellent book The Ten commandments for Business Failure. This book was such an excellent source of common sense and probable one of the best books I’ve read in some time.

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world. –John le Carre

There is nothing that can assure failure better than keeping yourself cut off from everyone – both those who are supposed to be working with you and those you’re trying to minister to. Get together with a small group of like minded inflexible individuals and keep your focus on that circle.

Under no circumstances should you interact with the common rabble or the undesirables. As a follower of Christ, you are special and there is no reason to associate with people who do not share your view of things, no matter how off base it is.

Of course, Paul reminded the Corinthians that he had become “all things to all men that I might by all means save some.” [1 Corinthians 9:22]. And he often spoke from within the context of those he was trying to minister to. And there is that whole incarnation thing where Jesus became one of us so he could know us better and lead us into salvation.

But don’t let that stop you. You just circle those wagons and focus on the conversation with others who are just like you. That’s a definite step in the wrong direction, sure to bring about failure for not just you but everyone else in your circle.

These posts are adapted from Donald Keough’s excellent book The Ten commandments for Business Failure. This book was such an excellent source of common sense and probable one of the best books I’ve read in some time.

For this is the tragedy of man – circumstances change, but he doesn’t. –Machiavelli

If you want to fail miserably in ministry, make sure you become rigid about what ministry looks like. Do not even entertain the possibility that the world might change. Just keep doing what you’ve always been doing the same way you’ve been doing it.

It doesn’t matter if your community’s population has shifted and now includes immigrants and minorities or that people speak a dozen languages within a couple city blocks of your church. Just hold firm to they way things have always been done. Don’t listen to the voices of those who need the Gospel. What do they know anyway?

No, stay put and you’ll be fine.

Of course, Jesus did say that he had come to give us an overflowing, moving life [John 10:10], and in the Book of Acts, the apostle Paul sure seemed to have adapted his presentation to his situation. But that kind of flexibility was only available to Jesus and the apostles. The Holy Spirit is much older now, and he is not as limber as he once was.