Billy Graham's grandson resigns after admitting affair

Billy Graham’s grandson, Tullian Tchividjian, a pastor, recently resigned after admitting to having an

affair.  His wife had one previously, and Tchividjian, while trying to work through that turned to a female friend and that relationship, in his words, turned “inappropriate.” 

I am not here to shame this man.  Marriage is hard and failure happens.  The media, however, loves to find failure in a man with convictions and by doing so reveals the lack of their own. 

But this story reminds me again about the importance of team dynamics. 

I recently heard a leadership talk by Ed Catmull founder of Pixar, the maker of some of the best animated films of the last several decades. 

Catmull related that after the success of their first film Toy Story, they struggled to find another new idea.  They had dissolved the old development team and hired a new one. 

The trouble is that the new team didn’t work well together.  Even though they had lots of ideas, they just couldn’t gel as a team and the process became, in Catmull’s words, a “disaster."

They had to start over

They ditched the development team and brought back the old group.  This group worked together well and developed a new storyline that worked and brought together what would become A Bug’s Life. 

Catmull noticed something though: the storyline that this team came up with had the basic elements that the unsuccessful team had needed to scrap.

His conclusion was this: A bad team with a good idea will screw it up.
A good team with a bad idea will either fix it or throw it out.

He realized that Pixar needed a second team not to develop ideas, but to develop good teams because, he now knew, good teams will produce good ideas.

I’m sure Tullian Tchividjian did a lot of good things in his life as a pastor, but his team (he and his wife) had bad dynamics.  This doesn’t invalidate the good he has done, but it makes one wonder how much more good could have been done with strong marriage dynamics. 

We pray that Tchividjian and his wife can heal, reconcile, and forgive.  There is still good ahead of them.  Let us all learn from them and others, though, to never overlook our own "team dynamics" for even the most noble of causes.

*I just want to point out that I don't claim to know any of the reasons or causes of Tchividjian's affair and mean no accusation against them.  We affirm what he tweeted the other day, "Welcome to the valley of the shadow of death...thank God grace reigns here."