“You know you’ve become the missionary you were meant to be the day you become dependent on the people you were sent to serve.”
I had to read that statement twice before I began to seize its full significance. Why? Because my natural tendency, as well as yours I would imagine, is to believe ministry is more about others becoming dependent on me as ‘full-time worker’ than on me becoming dependent on them.
In the book, The Ideal Team Player, Patrick Lencioni argues that there are three core qualities to an ideal team player. They are hungry, they are smart, and they are humble. The hardest to measure and assess, he said, is humility.
Pride is probably our default mode in most ministry efforts. We want to do the job well, and we enjoy when others notice the good job that we are doing. Appearing dependent on others makes us look weak, less capable than we thought, lacking the necessary skills to do the job, or not “leading” as we should. Pride is one of those root sins that keeps us from admitting (or asking for) our need for others help and for God’s help.
So, maybe one indicator of a heart that is learning humility is to assess its ‘dependence factor’; that is, how much does that person demonstrate real need of others, real need of God in the culture in which they find themselves?
“You know you’ve become the missionary you were meant to be the day you become dependent on the people you were sent to serve.”
By the way, I pulled the quote at the beginning of this blog from another blog by Jonathan (http://leadbysoul.com/leadership/the-quiet-leader/). The quote is from a documentary interview of his father, John W (WT Papua alum).
Filed under: Crossing cultures, Dependency, Humility |
Thoughts Along The Journey 
Thank you, David, for this very encouraging reminder. I hope you don’t mind if I pass this entire post on to the people I serve with in another organization. So often it seems that ‘the west’ is blamed for barging in and taking charge, but I have come to realize that pride is no respecter of races. From top to bottom in any organization, it haunts us all.
Thanks Henry! Blogs are open forums for people to share and ‘discuss’ ideas about our walk with Christ. So feel free to share this post with others if it would be helpful.