Recently Noah, my four year old, has been a bit difficult at home. He is listening poorly, pushing boundaries, and at times willfully going against what we say. We were told the twos were terrible and the fours terrific, but it feels the opposite to me.
Yesterday I took my two kids to the beach and I told Noah he could play anywhere he wanted as long as I could see him.
What ensued was telling.
He played for 45 minutes all by himself in the water – throwing sand, grabbing seaweed, jumping waves, and screaming. He didn’t bother anyone and he was having a ball.
I was sitting there peering up from my book every minute smiling and then it occurred to me – he just needed space.
He’s a young, aggressive boy that has tons of energy. We live in a relatively small house and in a busy and compacted city. He is always in places where he has to be mindful of his surroundings and personal space.
He hears frequently, “No”, “watch out”, “be careful”, “pay attention”, “obey me”.
While those are necessary words in a small house and busy city, he needs some space to just “be” and be wild at that. Where he can hear simply,
“Go do your thing and come back when ready.”
It occurred to me today as I peered up over my book that he was getting what he needed – space.
But then my next thought was about the church and catalytic leaders specifically.
Catalytic Leaders
I sat there on the beach thinking about how many of us catalytic leaders, when confined in space, bump up against many others and seem restless and sometimes uncontrollable. Like we don’t listen and we are just defiant.
Obviously maturity plays a part here, but that is not what I want to comment on today.
Even the most mature catalytic leaders, if not given space to lead, to create, to dream, to fail, to call the shots, will get stir crazy and become a “problem” for the ministry.
Catalytic leaders are meant to spark things. They need a blank canvas and an order to “go paint.”
I couldn’t help but think about how many of our young APEs (apostles, prophets, and evangelists) are going stir crazy in confined ministry settings with leaders peering over their shoulders saying, “be careful”, “do this”, “watch out”, “listen to me”, when what they really need is to be shown an open field and told to go make something happen.
Our catalytic leaders need churches to plant, new pockets of people to reach, issues to fight for – new territory that no one is thinking about and championing – blue oceans.
I am forever grateful for Chris Nichols that he saw this in me early. I was a caged APE in a small school with little room to operate. But even as a sophomore, barely a Christian, he kept giving me vision after vision to go an create new things in new spaces. First it was new things on my dorm floor, then it was whole dorm buildings, eventually it was a whole campus that no one wanted to go to – SDSU. He knew that I needed space and that I could create if I was given that space. At first, some people on the staff team didn’t even want me on student leadership. I was kind of difficult and not that refined. But Chris saw my potential and helped craft a leadership environment that would release me fully into who I was.
I am concerned that we have some leaders, that are meant for wide open spaces, but because they are driving us a little nuts we have decided that they are just trouble or immature.
I am concerned that some of our young catalytic leaders are getting frustrated by confined space, and are going to quit – quit before they ever get to experience what ministry is supposed to feel like when you have an apostolic, prophetic, or evangelistic calling.
What we need to do is take them into some space, and ask them to go create.
What is a feeling or thought you have as you read this post? How is God stirring you? Please comment here.
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