Last week I wrote about that old saying, “Don’t let your talent write a check your character can’t cash.” I thought I was probably finished with it, but I’ve kept thinking about it this week, especially as I’ve thought about my own years in ministry and some of the conversations I now get to have with leaders.
Success is a strange thing in ministry. We want to do well. I don’t know many ministry leaders who walk into a Sunday hoping the service doesn’t connect, the choir doesn’t sing well, or the message doesn’t make a difference. We work hard because we care about what God has entrusted to us, and when people notice that and encourage us, it means something.
I’ve always thought one of the harder things to learn as a ministry leader is how to receive that encouragement well. Someone catches you after a service and tells you how much the music meant to them. Someone tells you that you did a great job preaching, serving, or whatever. Maybe they send you a text later that afternoon telling you what God did in their life that morning. Those moments matter, and I don’t think we need to brush them aside with some kind of false humility. Sometimes the best response really is just, “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”
The challenge is what happens with that encouragement after we receive it.
Somewhere along the way, “That was really encouraging” can quietly turn into, “I must be pretty good at this.” If we’re not paying attention, the affirmation that was meant to encourage us can begin to define us. Before long, we aren’t simply grateful that God used our gifting. We begin depending on the response to tell us something about ourselves.
I can look back now and see some of this in my own leadership, although I certainly didn’t recognize it at the time.
Things a young Rhon had to learn
When I was a young worship leader, I thought being successful meant doing a lot of the work myself. I wasn’t very good at delegating. Some of that came from being young and inexperienced, and some of it was simply that I knew how I wanted things done. It was easier to do something myself than explain it to someone else, then watch them do it differently than I would have done it.
The problem was that my approach worked.
Things got done. The ministry moved forward. I worked hard, and people appreciated it. From the outside, there wasn’t necessarily anything that would have made me stop and think, “Something about the way I’m leading needs to change.”
Over time, though, I began to understand that doing all the ministry wasn’t necessarily the same thing as leading the ministry. I had to come to understand that growth in ministry meant growth in my own leadership.
When I finally began giving things away, something happened that I hadn’t expected. Other people started taking ownership. They brought ideas I wouldn’t have thought of. Sometimes they did things differently than I would have done them, and I had to learn that different didn’t always mean wrong. I could help them grow, encourage them, make adjustments when needed, and then give them another opportunity.
Eventually I realized that one of the best things I could do as a leader wasn’t to show everyone how much I could do. It was to help other people discover how much God had put in them.
I wish I could learn and never go back
I wish I could tell you I learned that lesson once and never struggled with it again. Leadership doesn’t seem to work that way. The situations change, the responsibilities get larger, the titles change, yet some of those same things can keep showing up in different clothes.
That’s part of what has interested me as I’ve learned more about the Primal Question.
I find myself asking different questions now, both about my own leadership and when I’m coaching someone else. Instead of only asking whether something is working, I want to know what is happening underneath it. Why was it so important to me that this succeeded? Why did that criticism stay with me for three days? Why was I uncomfortable when someone else got the opportunity? Why did I feel like I needed to take control instead of trusting someone else with it?
Those questions aren’t intended to make us suspicious of every success or analyze every compliment somebody gives us. I don’t think that’s healthy either. They simply help us pay attention to what our hearts may be doing with those experiences.
Looking beneath ourselves
For someone whose Primal Question is “Am I Successful?”, that can be fairly obvious. Success can begin doing more than measuring an outcome. It can start answering a question about me. If this went well, then maybe I’m doing well. If people liked it, maybe I’m okay. If the ministry is growing, maybe that proves I’m a good leader.
The same thing can happen with any of our Primal Questions. We can begin using approval to convince ourselves we’re loved, invitations to reassure ourselves we’re wanted, control to help ourselves feel safe, or getting everything exactly right to reassure ourselves that we’re good enough. None of those things are necessarily bad in themselves. The trouble comes when we ask them to carry a weight they were never designed to carry.
Maybe that’s why I’ve kept thinking about that quote from last week.
Talent really is a gift. I hope we develop it. I hope we work hard at whatever God has entrusted to us. I hope people notice, encourage us, and occasionally tell us we did a good job. I also hope we learn how to receive that encouragement with genuine gratitude without needing it to settle something inside us.
I’m still learning that.
Looking back at that young worship leader who thought he needed to do everything, I don’t think he needed less passion. He needed a different understanding of leadership. Success wasn’t going to be measured by how much ministry he could personally accomplish. Part of success was going to be measured by how much ministry he could give away and how many other people he could help grow.
Maybe character begins growing in some of those places, when we become secure enough that we don’t have to prove quite so much.
We can receive the compliment without living for the next one. We can let somebody else get the credit. We can allow someone to do it differently. We can admit when we got something wrong. We can celebrate another person’s gifting without wondering what it says about ours.
And maybe the question worth carrying with us this week is a pretty simple one:
What am I asking my success to prove about me?
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