Ideas Take Work

 “When would be a good date for the next big gathering?” This question was followed by various comments and some back and forth until a date was chosen.

Flowers by the coast on big island

“Now, who will be part of a small group to organize it?” This second question was followed by lots of silence, people looking down and not making eye contact.

Everyone was happy with the idea of a big gathering, but it didn’t seem that anyone was actually wanting to put in the work to make it happen. The woman who asked the question doubled down and said that it needed to be new people, not the same people who organized the last gathering. With that statement, she let some people (myself included), who may have been close to being guilted into volunteering, off the hook. At the same time, she was challenging people who don’t see themselves as ‘organizers’, perhaps simply because they have never done it before. Ultimately, there was no decisions made— she told everyone to go away and think about it.

It wasn’t long before I started to doubt whether the gathering would happen (or at least as soon as was suggested). People liked the idea, but ideas require someone to actually be passionate enough about it to work for it. Ideas need some passion to see them become a reality.

As we oversee teams over three islands, we see that there are different kinds of people. There are idea people— who have lots of big ideas. There are refiners— people that take other people’s ideas and make them better. There are implementers— people who figure out how to make ideas a reality. There are finishers— people who push the team to complete things.

Idea of clean porch meant lots of work scrubbing

There are more possible roles and different ways of talking about it (see various personality tests about how people work), but we see that we can’t always stay in our preferred roles.  On our first team we did a lot of personality tests to evaluate the different roles on our team and the gaps. It wasn’t a bad thing, but we learned to be wary of these tests.  They can be great tools for self-awareness, but also for excuses.  Sometimes hearing what their ‘preferred role’ was, meant team members would pigeon-hole themselves and refuse to do anything else.  They weren’t naturally inclined or gifted in such and such, so how could anyone expect them to do that?  But what if you’re on a team with no natural idea people or no implementers or no finishers? The danger is that your team will just stagnate because it doesn’t have the right combination of people to push things along.

Sometimes there are tasks that no one is particularly excited to do. There is the grunt work that just has to get done in order for the ideas that we like to happen. We have been trying to teach our youngest son this lesson more as we try to shepherd him towards more responsibility. We aren’t going to always do things for him. The things we did when he was young, he’ll need to do for himself if he really wants them to happen. He loves our family traditions— including our traditional day off with pancakes in the morning, a family movie with popcorn and maybe a dessert. But does he love them enough to do the work to make them happen?  What about the parts of family life that he doesn’t care about as much, is he wiling to serve the family to make things that someone else might love happen?

Some family time

Ideas take work to make them a reality. We can’t make them all happen. Some shouldn’t happen. So we pray that when there is an idea that should be done, we would be able to discern it and then have the passion and perseverance to put in the work to see it through from start to finish!

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We made it safely to the big island and had some wonderful days connecting with our colleagues from the other islands during our annual gathering. We did something different with a lot more time in singing and the Word— it went well and seemed to be a blessing to our group. Our older two kids made it safely back to school and we had some good final time as a family before having to say goodbye. It sounds like people back on Clove Island are starting to take health precautions more seriously with businesses setting up handwashing stations and more education. 


PRAYERS REQUESTED
Pray that the lessons we learned during our annual gathering would stay with us and inspire us to live differently. We travel back to Clove Island tomorrow. Pray for us and our kids as we get used to being separated again. We had some good times catching up with our colleagues on the big island, but it is clear that this year is a year full of transitions— pray for God’s grace to abound to them all and protect them and the work as people come and go. The medical team are headed for some vacation— pray that it would be restorative and that on their return that the newer family would have the authorization finalized to begin working in the hospital on the plateau (they had a meeting with authorities on the big island, so hopefully it will finally go through).