The Risk of Being Vulnerable

This may be a mistake, but I'm going to be brutally honest and tell you that I'm struggling with fear and faith and the possibility of failure.

First, let me share that this week our church bid farewell to George Lawson and his family. George was the youth pastor at our church the past two years. The kids loved him. In his final sermon he said that when the church invited him to join the staff and lead its student ministry, he asked, "They do know I'm black, don't they?"

The mostly white church did embrace this young black man. Our family was fortunate to get to know him and his family when we started attending their community/care group in January. We didn't know it, but soon George was struggling with leaving the security of a job with a salary to pursue the calling he felt to go plant a church in inner-city Baltimore.

We helped the Lawsons pack their truck Friday, and they departed today for an uncertain future-- uncertain in that they don't know what the future holds. But they are stepping out in faith, hoping to reach a struggling community and establish a new church. They have faith that their new church will grow enough to pay him a salary before too long.

Another member of our community/care group whose business is not doing well is facing a similar challenge, and I think of other friends who have struggled in recent years to put food on their families' kitchen tables.

I got laid off from my last job at the end of August 2011. While I have searched earnestly for a new job since then, I also have worked to pursue the American dream of opening our own business. Right now I feel like I'm walking through molasses on both fronts. I haven't earned a living to feed my family these past eight months, and that makes me feel like a word I'm not supposed to use. I think we have a really good business idea, but having to beg people to give us money to pursue our dream is very humbling.

Some days are very tough. Just getting out of bed. Just facing my wife and children, or worse our neighbors and fellow church members. Writing this blog is easier because I don't have to face you. I don't even know who reads this blog, and today I'm glad I don't.

One of the purposes of this blog is to give tips to other budding entrepreneurs, and today my encouragement (to you and to myself) is to not give up. Even when things seem hopeless, keep the faith. Better days are coming. When I was growing up, my dad loved to quote Winston Churchill's famous graduation speech, "Never, never, never give up." I love Teddy Roosevelt's famous speech about the man in the arena:

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause, who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."