‘As I reflect on my career, I learn more from my worst mistakes than I would ever learn
from my greatest triumphs.’
the wrong hand surgery on a patient — and he’s become a popular invited speaker as a result. He and his colleagues from Massachusetts General and Harvard Medical School later detailed the series of missteps that led to the mistake, as well as the safety procedures enacted as a result, in The New England Journal of Medicine. Since that very public admission of error, Ring said he went on what he calls the “Wrong Procedure World Tour,” speaking in front of medical groups and organiza- tions interested in improving their own patient- safety programs. “I wasn’t surprised when people started asking me to come speak,” he said. “I think people are craving these conversations.”
DIVINE FAILURE Health-care providers aren’t the only ones dis- cussing their mistakes on the conference stage. This month in Chicago, pastors from around the Midwest will gather for the fourth Epic Fail Pas- tors Conference, the brainchild of J.R. Briggs, a blogger and pastor at The Renew Community in Lansdale, Pa. Prior to launching Epic Fail Pas- tors, Briggs left most conferences feeling dejected rather than inspired. “All these conferences had interesting speakers,” he said, “but I found myself walking away saying either I feel really crappy or this is really irrelevant to my life.” Fed up, Briggs dashed off a blog post proposing
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a conference where nobody was allowed to talk about the success they had achieved; instead speakers had to share how they failed in ministry.
“The value in that,” he said, “would be helping pas- tors embrace failure and see failure as an invita- tion to growth and an opportunity for grace and healing.” Almost immediately, his inbox started filling up. “No blog post I’ve ever written has had more hits,” he said. “It was both exciting and tragic. Exciting because it was clear it was touching a nerve; tragic because it’s so common, yet no one is talking about it.” In April 2011, the first Epic Fail Pastors Confer-
ence was held in a church-turned-bar in Briggs’ town. It drew people from 17 states, plus one attendee who traveled all the way from Australia, according to Briggs. At the one-day event, several pastors talked about their failures and the lessons they learned from them. While the discussions at Epic Fail Pastors can
be highly personal and intensely emotional, Briggs wants it to be more than just confessional. “We have counselors available to help and listen, but we don’t want it to only be a moan-and-groan ses- sion. We want people to walk away and say, ‘Now how do we build on this?’” he said. “I’m a big pro- ponent of failure is a terrible thing to waste.” Goldman, the emergency-room physician, agreed that self-reflection only goes so far when