A Television

They say leadership is a lonely place. I understand this. Yet I have also observed that there are those who, as leaders, seem to get more automatic deferential treatment, no matter what the circumstance.

I was always groomed to be a leader. My parents, and even my older siblings, set me up into positions where I could shine. The encouragement was subtle, but unmistakable. In fifth grade, lacking a formal student council and class officers, a few of my friends concocted an election to choose our class President. Out of some 100 total votes, I got all but about a dozen, that were scattered among three other candidates.

My Dad always stressed how his generation needed to prepare to get out of the way for future leaders. He would say this with a twinkle in his eye and a nod my way. Friends and family would tend to defer to my ideas for what we should do next. In a church planting scenario, I was the default visionary. As my prior post indicates, everybody encouraged me to become a minister. My teachers thought I should teach. People here and there knew I would get into politics one day, and probably do very well. 

At a church camp in the early 1990s, the program almost fell apart over a personal rift between the Camp Master and most of the staff. The Camp Master threatened to walk away from the camp at mid-week. I was recruited to go talk to him. As he jabbed a finger in my chest and recounted all the ways he had been disrespected and mistreated, I stood my ground and got  him to a prayer circle with the rest of the staff. I woke them all up at 2AM and the camp finished on a positive note.

In social situations that made others nervous and awkward, everybody could always count on me to provide cover until they got more comfortable.

With all this confidence that has been placed in me, I could never understand why it all would fall apart at the slightest, most ridiculous things. The net effect has been for me to freeze at critical points in my life. Made by God to be a risk-taker and innovator, I was repeatedly and predictably pounded down at junctures in my life that required steadiness and confidence. By the time I was 30, I was no longer the bold leader I had been before. 

Take TVs.

I was a leader in a church planting project in the 1980s. We would meet at each other's homes. 

One morning, I was slated to be the speaker (or "preacher"). A family with pre-school aged children showed up early, and the kids went right in and turned the TV on, to cartoons. Now, this was Sunday morning, and I was in an adjoining room praying and preparing. I asked an elder if he could have them turn the TV off. Before I could finish my sentence, this leader in the church said "Why do you have to be so . . . ", except, in my memory, I don't remember how he finished that sentence. But the emotions I felt by mid-sentence are as clear to me now, as then. 

Moments later, I approached this same leader, and said "I have been asked to preach. Shouldn't there be some respect for my needs? Shouldn't I be allowed to prepare in whatever way suits me best? And can't I do this without being second-guessed?" Or - I said words to that effect.

This elder went away, and soon I heard him turning off the TV, and saying to the kids that we needed to have things quiet, since we were about to have church. Now, this should have been done in the first place - but by now the damage had been done. The fact that it is still clear in my memory should indicate that it was no small matter to me then, or now.

A similar thing, involving TVs, has happened this past week. I cannot go into details - but once again my desire, or vision, if you will, for establishing the right environment within a church or family setting has been called into question, and the main object is, once again, a television.

I wonder how many men and women have left the ministry, or the church entirely, because people do not know how to let leaders grow, develop, and finally, lead? You can't be all excited about someone's leadership potential, and then when the time comes for him or her to lead, make jokes or insult the person's intelligence. 

Don't let a television get in the way of some leader's forward movement.

Some day I will write about some other scenarios in which prospective leaders (or better yet, servants) were insulted into staying away from church work altogether: The Church camp kitchen incident; a parent's crying fit when faced with an adult child wanting to go away to college; the newlywed that was so jealous of her husband's church friends, that she underminded their devotional and prayer times. And maybe someday, others will actually read these blogs and share their own stories.

Important? Well, that's how people made me feel. But they were the first to turn on me when I actually began to lead. 

But to God, I stayed, always, important - but for entirely different reasons.

Hospitality and Disillusionment

My sense of self-importance was tested early on. My master career plan had me earning an MBA. Yet, I would not have an MBA for the money I could earn. I would have it so that I could flaunt my talents and credentials, without any regard towards meeting my material needs. I would be a talented leader and visionary. I would be an ethical manager. I would make my business career secondary to my calling in the Lord.

So, with an eye toward launching ministry as I approached the age of 25, I would select an MBA program that would give me the best opportunities to grow as a minister. The MBA was not the goal. It was only a means to achieving spiritual success with a worldly title.

Two factors made my decision to go to Texas Christian University: a full-ride scholarship, and an offer from several families in the Fort Worth area, for me to live with them, free of charge. I had both of these conditions satisfied, before accepting the offer from TCU. It would be a cost-free, worry-free way to serve God while winning a graduate degree in management.

The free room and board was an affirmation, and a confirmation, that I was making the right move. Soon, I was made the youth minister of this particular church. With a lot of inexperience, but a hearty vote of confidence from TCU and a body of believers, I was ready to move forward. In a few short years I would be a rising pastor with an MBA.

I really felt I had nothing to fear. My basic needs were being met. I had a lot riding on the assurance that my tuition, and room and board, would not be worries to slow me down.

After all, did not the early Church, in the Second Chapter of Acts, share "all things" in common? Was it not the whole point of Kingdom living, in this age, that we support one another, and bear with one another, as one family of the Lord? We are but a spot on the eternal timeline, if that. Those with Kingdom hearts should believe, and behave, as though their material possessions are best put to use in helping those that want to serve the Lord full time! And this was my intent.

And also, didn't the Apostle Paul write, in First Corinthians 9: That was also the Lord's instruction to those bringing the good word, that they should live off the good word.

I naively believed that a few years focused on developing as a minister, while doing the work of a full-time student, was something that others would value enough, to share of their possessions for a short time.

I should say that, at the same time, my funds that would have been used for room and board, were put in the collection plate of the respective church.

But my sense that I was due this kind of help from a body of fellow believers, was based more on a sense of self-importance, than on any humble and sincere desire to work out my salvation the right way. In less than a year, the hospitality once offered me began to crumble, and the MBA focus weakened. I made a few youthful errors in judgment, but none harmful, or outright sinful. Mostly, my hosts forgot that they had offered me their homes, and that my decision to come to Ft Worth was based on this assumption. I began to feel that there was no support for me at all, and that people couldn't care less whether or not I got my MBA, or if I ever became a minister.

But it was all about me, and that was the problem.

It was like love being offered, then taken away. It was putting my trust in people, and then feeling betrayed by them. It was trying to do the right thing, even heroically, and then feeling as though God was looking away, and did not care whether I succeeded or failed. It was a pattern to be repeated throughout my life.

I was talented. Success came easy to me. Therefore, people, and God, owed it to me to continue to make things easy.

Important? No, not at all. I made little difference in the lives of the kids that were my charge, and the congregation in question did fine without me.

Today, I am focusing on doing important work, without thinking of myself as instrumental in its success.

The congregation in question has mostly dissipated. Most of those that attended it at the time have left it for bigger, more visibly successful churches.

The idea that we should share our goods, especially with those involved in God's work, is still good and right. For ministers to get MBAs, is still a commendable aspiration.

But the idea that I am important and that for that reason alone, I should be taken care of, has been debunked.