Lessons from lions: Acknowledging failures as well as successes

It doesn’t take long for anyone watching a wildlife documentary to recognize that it rarely ends well for any lonely animal roaming apart from its herd. Typically, an errant zebra or wildebeest, without the safety of numbers, becomes the target of predators.

I was surprised to learn, then, that lions are successful only 25% of the time when they chase prey. That’s a 75% failure rate. Most of the time, they catch nothing.

Let that sink in.

When a lion or, more likely, a lioness tracks its prey, it brings home food only one out of every four times. And yet the lion population remains strong, thanks in part to conservation efforts, but also to the fact that lions do not give up after a failed chase. Their instinct to protect and feed themselves as well as their young is so strong, they continue to listen and look for the lone animals that might provide their next meal.

This got me thinking about what likely success rates I need for a task or project in order to pour my time and energy into it. Am I willing to invest resources and risk the emotional toll and stigma of failure if there’s only a 25% chance that I’ll succeed?

What we see in nature videos is perhaps thousands of hours of recordings distilled into only minutes of footage of successful chases. We do not see all the waiting or the times when the hunted escapes while the hunter goes hungry.

Beyond wildlife documentaries, it is important for us to remember that what we see in movies or majestic social media reels is a mere sliver of reality. What isn’t realistic is our perception of immediate and easy success.

Infinitely accessible information, 24-hour news cycles and the prevalence of social media skew our perceptions of reality about more than animal chases. It is impossible to avoid the shiny clips and stories of what appear to be beautifully choreographed, standing-room-only church services, vibrant and healthy institutions, successful and thriving faith-rooted entrepreneurships, and well-connected and faithfully discipled intergenerational congregations who celebrate that they’re growing!

When we see these stories and images, we need to remember that there is some truth to what lies before us and that we are seeing only what the storytellers want us to see.

What we don’t see and may not know, because we humans rarely divulge the less shiny parts of our stories, are the years spent painfully navigating “worship wars” and church splits that preceded the well-choreographed, standing-room-only worship service.

We read about the vibrant and healthy institutions, not the budgets from recent years that reflect their fragility before reaching the delicate balance of sustainability.

We love stories about successful and thriving faith-rooted entrepreneurships, but most come without referencing that 9 out of 10 startups fail. We rarely hear about the months and years when an entrepreneur’s family relied on a spouse’s income in order to pour everything they had into a hunch and a dream.

We might covet the well-connected and faithfully discipled intergenerational congregations who appear to be growing, but we don’t see the leaders who are overworked and burning out, exhausted from constantly navigating the rapidly changing tides of declining religious institutions.

What if, for every shiny story of success, we mindfully reflected on what it took to achieve that success? What if we acknowledged the reality of our failures and the faithfulness inherent within them? What if we normalized accepting failures as productive speed bumps on the way to success?

Because the fear of failure is strong among congregations and faith-rooted institutions, we rarely share the stories of our faithfulness that do not result in impressive reports of growth, innovation or thriving. It is the “almost got it” or “learning moment” stories, however, that can serve as the greatest encouragement to keep trying.

The health and sustainability of our congregations and Christian institutions relies on our sharing stories of success and failure so we can learn from each other.