Fail: About the Book and Author

Now Featured at the Patheos Book Club
Fail
Finding Hope and Grace in the Midst of Ministry Failure
By J.R. Briggs
Foreword by Eugene H. Peterson

About the Book

"I thought God had called me to plant this church. Why did we have to shut our doors after only three years?"

"I was at my breaking point. Then I got the news that our nine-year-old daughter had leukemia. I would have quit ministry forever, but I had no other employable skills."

"False accusations were made against me and my family, wrecking our reputation permanently and forcing us to leave not only the church, but move out of the area."

"I've served my church for the past 27 years and I've grown that church from 150 to 24 people."

What do we do when we've failed? Some ministries are shipwrecked by moral failures like affairs or embezzlement. But for most of us, the sense of failure is more ordinary: disillusionment, inadequacy, declining budgets, poor decisions, opposition, depression, burnout. Many pastors are deeply broken and wounded, and we come to doubt that God has any use for us.

J.R. Briggs, founder of the Epic Fail Pastors Conference, knows what failure feels like. He has listened to pastors who were busted in a prostitution sting or found themselves homeless when ejected from ministry. With candid vulnerability, Briggs explores the landscape of failure, how it devastates us and how it transforms us. Without offering pat answers or quick fixes, he challenges our cultural expectations of success and gives us permission to grieve our losses. Somehow, in the midst of our pain, we are better positioned to receive the grace of healing and restoration.

About the Author

J.R. Briggs has served in ministry for over a decade in mega-churches, house churches and church plants. He founded Kairos Partnerships out of a growing desire to walk alongside and encourage pastors and leaders in order to better equip them for God-honoring ministry.

In 2008 he and a team of people founded The Renew Community, a Jesus community in the greater Philadelphia area. Today he serves as the Cultural Cultivator of Renew, attempting to create an ethos that cares the most about the things Jesus cared the most about. He also serves as the Director of Leadership & Congregational Formation with The Ecclesia Network and is on staff with Fresh Expessions U.S. He is the creator and curator of the Epic Fail Pastors Conferences, spaces hosted around the country giving pastors opportunities to process failure and grow to see failure as an invitation for grace and healing, instead of shame.

J.R. is the author of When God Says Jump: Biblical Stories to Inspire You To Risk Big and Redefining Life for Men as well as coauthor of The Message // Remix: Solo (with Eugene Peterson). He earned degrees in Biblical Literature and Christian Education from Taylor University (Upland, IN). He also studied abroad at Jerusalem University College and holds a Masters degree in Missional Theology from Biblical Theological Seminary (Hatfield, PA).