Brian Simmons, Ed.D.
Heritage Christian School, Indianapolis, IN
21 years in Christian Education
It has been said that experience is the best teacher, but I have learned that experience sometimes is also the most painful teacher. A wise man will learn from the experiences of others and attempt to avoid their mistakes. It has also been said that practice makes perfect. I have learned through the years that practice only makes perfect when you practice the right things. My golf game is a great example of this truth! Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. You must practice the right things for practice to make perfect. Some people with thirty years of experience actually have only one year of experience repeated thirty times!
In this brief article I will share one mistake I made a few years ago and the lesson I learned from that mistake.
The day started off like any other. It was the month of May. In Indianapolis, May is a BIG month because the Indy 500 is a part of the culture of our city. I was nearing the end of my first year as Administrator of Heritage Christian School. At the time, we had about 1200 students, 108 of which were gearing up for the Little 500.
My daughter, Aubrey, was in kindergarten excited about her first big wheel race! The Pace Car was here, and the course around the school's flagpole was lined with tires. My wife instructed me very clearly earlier that morning not to be late for my daughter's big race.
A few minutes before the race was scheduled to begin, one of my sons came into my office in tears. A teacher, in his opinion, had been very harsh with him. My entire family was having a difficult year adjusting from a prior ministry where we had joyfully served the Lord for fourteen years. My heart went out to my son as he shared with me what had happened.
I responded to the situation by calling the teacher into my office. I raised my voice with her as I shared my perspective of her interaction with my son. Moments later the Lord convicted me of the sinfulness of my response, and I said to her, "I was wrong. I am sorry. Please forgive me." The damage had already been done.
I missed my daughter's race. Worse yet, I offended a teacher, and in the next few months she was quick to tell anyone who would listen how wrong I had been in my treatment of her. To say that my priorities are God, my family, my Christian school ministry, and my church ministry in that order is tidy on paper, but to live out these priorities day in and day out is a challenge. Here, my role as head of school, and my role of father and husband had come to a point of conflict. I believe to this day that the teacher had responded in an unnecessarily harsh and rigid manner, but my response was unwise at best.
A few months later, I was called before three members of the Board of Directors of my school. Several other people, it turned out, were unhappy with my leadership (or lack thereof). These perceptions stemmed from this incident and others as well. Perceptions are not reality. Reality is reality; however, a few of my board members thought they had a handle on truth based upon the perceptions of a few people. They waited to confront me on these issues until a time when the other Board Members were conveniently out of town. I was criticized harshly at that meeting.
Swindoll says that life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond. My response to the criticism of three of my board members was:
Thank you for your rebuke. I think I deserved it. It sent me to self-examination, soul-searching and prayer. Will you remember me in prayer as I attempt to be the husband, father, and Christian leader that God intends for me to be?
According to J. Oswald Sanders, in his book Spiritual Leadership,
There is nothing else that so kills the efficiency, capability and initiative of a leader as destructive criticism… Its destructive effect cannot be underestimated. It tends to hamper and undercut the efficiency of a man's thinking process. It chips away at his self-respect and undermines his confidence to cope with his responsibilities.
No leader is exempt from criticism, and his humility will nowhere be seen more clearly than in the manner in which he accepts and reacts to it.
I think you must expect more and more criticism, for with increasing responsibility this is inevitable. It causes one to walk humbly with God, and to take such action as he desires.
I have learned that I am not perfect. We all have what CS Lewis calls "fatal flaws." When I make a mistake, I need to seek forgiveness from the One I offended and the ones I offended. With this response, problems become opportunities. Otherwise, problems remain problems. In Sanders' words, "with such an attitude, criticism is turned from a curse into a blessing, from a liability into an asset."
The three board members are no longer involved in the leadership of my school. One, the chairman, a few months later asked me to forgive him. He said to me as we sat next to each other at a funeral, "How will you ever forgive us for what we did to you?" I responded to him by his first name, and I said _______ I already have! We need to forgive. Really forgive!! This means we will not think about the incident any more. We will not bring up the incident and use it against another. We will not talk about the incident, and we will not allow the incident to hinder our personal relationship with the one we have forgiven.
Six years later, the teacher is no longer with us. In fact many have come and gone since that time. Each new hire represents an opportunity to take one more step toward the fulfillment of our mission, "to glorify God through the discipleship of students and the pursuit of excellence in education with Christ as our focus and the Bible as our foundation." Our vision statement completes the picture. It states, "so that students will be fully prepared to fulfill God's purpose for their lives." I am not responsible for the wrong perceptions of others nor am I responsible for whether or not another person accepts my sincere request for forgiveness. I am responsible, however, for my response to difficult situations. When I blow it, I need to humbly seek forgiveness, learn from my mistakes, and move on.
The bottom line, in my opinion, is that we are not finished when we fail.
We are finished when we QUIT!
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