"...whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things."
Philippians 3:7-8
Loss is always hard.
We are always trying to improve, to reach higher goals, to move forward. We are wired to gain, not suffer loss. When we lose, we hurt.
Yet loss comes. We lose jobs and money. We lose friends, co-workers, and relationships. We lose parents and even children. We lose our memories and sometimes our minds. We watch others lose their lives, all the while knowing that we too will lose ours.
In any organization, loss occurs. We have experienced loss of jobs, loss of money, loss of friendships, and even loss of life. Our organization will invariably change as we move ahead, leading to the loss of the comfort that comes from "doing things the way we have always done them." Simply changing the way we do something means we have lost the way we used to do it.
John Maxwell teaches that while we all fail, the trick is to fail forward. Perhaps the same is true in our loses. Can we somehow gain even when we lose? Can we learn from our loses? When we gain and learn, even in our losses, we grow. ECM is committed to growth, to moving forward even in difficult times, to taking the risks that are necessary to fulfill our mission. In doing so, we will invariably suffer loss.
Ultimately, both our worldly gains and our losses mean nothing when compared with the joy of knowing Jesus Christ. May every gain and every loss spur us on toward a greater knowledge of Him and toward our goal of bringing hope to the most vulnerable in our societies.
