It's About Me to Make it About You

As I was looking back during sabbatical over the start of my time in ministry, I noticed an interesting process that I think might have broader application than just for people in ministry: I thought I was all about students, but really I was all about me; and then when it became all about me, it started to become all about students.

When I first started in ministry, my mindset was, "it's about serving students." I was full of optimism, idealism, and grand visions.

Then I hit some serious bumps. And what I discovered as I hit conflicts with students and as the community I was "leading" went from 50 to 15, was that I was really about me. As the work fell apart all around me, I struggled deeply to believe that I was gifted, valued, helpful, called or loved by God.

In other words, I needed validation. And I wanted it to come from successful ministry and students liking me. And when that didn't happen, I realized that I wasn't nearly so pure-hearted as I had initially imagined. I was actually in this for me, all about me, to make me feel good and important and like I was doing something important in the world.

This is one gift of disappointment--it strips away so many of the lies we tell ourselves about our motivations to get to the raw places where God can actually begin to do the hard work of helping us to be healthily re-wired human beings.

So what happened in the aftermath was interesting: the Lord began to make it about me.

He took my broken confidence, my questions, and my shaken identity and he began to re-make me. My identity and sense of who I am was never supposed to come from my work. It was always supposed to come from him. And he spent many, many months drilling this lesson into my very, very thick skull.

And what happened as a result was interesting: as the Lord made it about re-making me, I began to actually be able to serve students. I was no longer looking to them or my ministry to validate me. I was already validated, loved, cared for, accepted. So I could freely love them--I wasn't using them to make me feel good about myself.

It is impossible to serve in genuine humility from a place of vulnerability and fear. It is only possible to truly serve others from a place of confident freedom and security. Jesus offers us that place, offered me that place. And from that place, he invites us to serve. It's the only place where we can genuinely do so.

Like I said, I think that this has application beyond ministry--parenting, perhaps. I see this process of stripping away happen often for my student leaders as they hit disappointments or frustrations.

The hard part, at least for me, is fighting back self-protective cynicism and remaining soft and teachable...and being willing to continue to lead and serve, even when it's hurt before.