It's ok to make mistakes...

if you are trying. It's not okay when you're not paying attention or messing around.

This is my big thought from the yard today.

There were a couple of things that happened behind the scenes of our service this weekend. Friday night we had some issue with the circle. Those that were there know what I'm talking about and I won't go into detail about it here. In any case, we had a brief discussion that if we couldn't get the circle right we shouldn't do it. I commented back that we were doing the circle.

Excellence is a core value for our weekend team. Most of the team that serves on the weekend is made up of volunteers. We have the best volunteers, period! We push them to try new things all the time. Yes, we want the services to go smoothly and we want things to be right, but sometimes as we are stretching and trying new things, something doesn't go as planned. Sometimes it does, and that is great. But when it doesn't, that is ok too. It is from those experiences that we learn and grow. In most cases we figure it out and learn what not to do.

Here are a couple of quotes that I came across that think speak to this:

"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties." --Erich Fromm, German-American psychologist

"There's a way to do it better -- find it." --Thomas Edison, American inventor

"If you can't accept losing, you can't win." --Vince Lombardi, National Football League coach

"Have fun, always set goals, but never set limits." --Shannon Miller, Olympic gymnast

"We try a bunch of stuff, we see what works, and we call that our strategy." --Dennis Bakke, AES co-founder and former CEO