Some of you may know that I wrote a book and created a podcast a few years ago about failure. In the book, I proposed the idea that an Annual Conference should give an award to encourage experimentation and failure—that is, promote risk-taking. Highlight a church that tried something new that didn’t work out the way it hoped, but that also learned a few things in the process in order to try something else in the future.  

It took me only nine months to realize, Oh, I’m now in a position to make this happen! So I’m introducing the first Turtle Award and the winner will be announced at Annual Conference.  

Why the Turtle Award?  

I’m currently reading The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky. In the chapter on building an adaptive culture, the authors encourage leaders to reward smart risk-taking. One section gave me an ah-ha moment: “Like turtles, people need to stick their neck out to move forward. One company we know gives a Turtle Award each year to the initiative that generates the most lessons for the organization, even when the initiative bombs.”  

I’m stealing this idea and asking churches to tell me about a risk they took since last July that didn’t pan out. Fill out the form here. The Congregational Development Team will identify the entry that speaks to them the most and award it one of two $500 grant/awards. We’re grateful for the Midwest Methodist Foundation for sponsoring one of these grants.  

The form will ask you to describe what you tried and what you learned from it. As we experiment and innovate, we want to learn from things that didn’t work so we can try something different next time.  

Certainly we can learn from ministries that have gone well. But, if you’re anything like me when I was pastoring a church, you might hear of a wild success of another church and start getting down on yourself a bit and wonder why you weren’t having success after success.  

This award also connects with this year’s Bishop’s Appeal for Innovative Outreach. 

How have you stuck your neck out? Failing at something doesn’t feel very good, but in this time we must try new things in order to share the Good News creatively. Presenting this very award may be a less-than-great idea, but I’m experimenting and sticking my neck out along with all of you.

Let’s turtle together!