My Last Week

The snow has melted for most of this past week. There still remain fair chunks of the mottled white stuff, though, strewn about or heaped into weathering mounds, reminiscent of white chocolate Hershey's kisses meeting their ill-gotten fates on some car's dashboard as it sits, windows up, in the middle of the summer's heat. The past few days have caught me reminiscing, looking back & being flooded with memories of my tree planting days of yore. Perhaps it's due to the combination of being in a small city with piles of dirty crew-cab trucks, filled with dirty crewmen looking exhausted even though the morning's light has just begun to make its ascent. Perhaps there is another reason, maybe like my green MEC backpack, which I used as a "home" whilst on the cut blocks, which still remains faithfully at my side. The duct tape scrap that I had casually thrown on my bag one day in the summer of 2002 finally came off about a year ago, but my bag refuses to forget that scrap's presence: a ghostly white patch of long-spent duct tape adhesive heralds the tape's former position, and every once in a while, it causes me to think about those "blissful" 11 hour work days in +35°C heat...

This is my last week sojourning in Lloydminster. I will be leaving in 6 days, having learned a pile about my new job and also about life in general. It always strikes me as odd, how some of the necessities of "the grind" seem to translate into excellent insight for greater life. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, as it usually turns out this way--learning always tends to bleed outside its intended perimeter.

I've come to a newer appreciation of how the church, as an organisation, has been structured by Jesus Christ through my management training here. The company for whom I work has a philosophy of empowering every associate that they've hired. Regardless of whether you're a 14-year old part-time stock person, or an inventory control specialist with a 10-year running career, my company gives each member of the team a certain level of authority to act autonomously and make choices independent of their supervisors. The reasoning behind such a philosophy is that the big wigs recognise: a.) that supervisors and management can never be everywhere at once, and b.) that, for the most part, the people we hire aren't dunces. In fact, the people who are typically the best informed at making many of the decisions arising from spontaneous interaction between customer and company tend to be those in lower positions (they typically are the ones with whom the customer interacts, and therefore are the ones who have personally witnessed most of the necessary information surrounding the pending decision). Since these associates are intimately involved in the case-by-case customer interactions, our company has decided to give them a level of authority allowing them to deal appropriately in such situations. This relieves the amount of tedious decisions needed to be made by management, makes the customer happy by speeding up decision turnaround and give our associates a feeling of ownership in the company. It works very well.

As a manager of a larger compliment of staff, with a relatively large footprint and having a high level of customer interaction, a lot of activity goes on around the store without management being able to physically oversee or even surveil much of the daily operations, we count on our staff to be our eyes and ears. Granted, we can query a million reports of how business is doing at the Point of Sale, but any customer activity before this process can go undetected. How is management going to know if many customers are inquiring about specific product features that none of our current stock provides, unless each customer interaction has been reviewed by management? What about theft, or short-stocked items? As management, our greatest resource is our staff. They provide information, deliver productivity and create the customer experience. As members of the team, our staff act as the eyes, ears, hands and feet of the management team as far as storefront daily operations go.

Now, I don't think that Jesus/God/HS actually need anyone to be their hands, feet, eyes or ears. They seem to be pretty good at doing what He wants to do, what with being omnipotent, omniscient and omniscient. In fact, both Paul and John prophesy that Christ will indeed reveal Himself to the whole world in His full glory, proclaiming His truth to all mankind without any help from those who choose to follow Him. Instead, though, it seems to be that the organisation of the Church as it was designed seems to focus more on ourselves and upon a communal relationship with the Lord. If God did everything for Himself, where would we fit in to the picture? What would be our purpose and what would we do with ourselves? Furthermore, how would we grow in relationship both with Him and with others, if God didn't ask us to interact with others on His behalf? How would we ourselves grow and develop in competency, authority and confidence if we weren't given an opportunity to flex such muscles for His Name? One of the underlying motives of my company giving authority to every member of our staff is that, by doing so, we foster growth and development in responsibility and management from the get-go. You don't gain experience by sitting around having your superiors doing all the hard things for ya. You need to extend beyond your current position and assume the position of a higher level of authority (as far as you're permitted, of course) in order to find out how such higher things are done effectively.

Such is it with the Church and why Christ chose to call us His Body in this interim, before He returns. Because He purposefully has chosen to step back for a bit, He has given us the authority and space to learn, to grow and to become more like Him. With this Divinely sanctioned independence in hand, how are you going to respond? Will you continue to ask how to undertake every single menial task, or will you go out on a limb & try stuff, knowing that there is a possibility of failing (but also knowing that your Boss is able to fix any "mistake" that you might make, and turn it around to become a positive experience eventually)? Will you sit on your thumbs waiting for your Boss to do the things He's asked you to do, knowing that He's able to do them Himself and doesn't really need your help at all? Or will you test the waters, stretch yourself, go out on that limb and act in a capacity, in a level of authority that is technically beyond your given position, where failure is possible, where growth is inevitable, and where trust and reliance in your Boss' estimation of your ability may take you to places you never thought you'd ever be able to go?


Responsibility. Authority. Power. Challenge. Reliance. Trust. The position's been offered--will you take it?