Focus on the Heart

My God is a sneaky one. There are times when I’m so pre-occupied with a million and one tasks I forget that one thing He has called me to do – write. You know what He does? He sends me experiences so moving that my insides will burst like popcorn if I don’t write about them. The incidents range from the spiritually sublime to the downright infuriating.

This week, He did it again. He prodded me to write Guideline #2 for my “Manual for Servant Leaders Who Insanely Love to Serve God Despite Harassments and Frustrations” (working title). I’m kidding. Scrap the word “prodded”. "Tasered" describes the experience better. The struggle to keep the peace and my cool, to continue loving my siblings in Christ and at the same time nurture those the Lord has given me to shepherd was so unnerving I couldn’t sleep for two nights.

Upon reflection, the Lord once again impressed on me that He allows these things to happen for a reason. The fruit of this experience was a rich harvest of lessons learned. And so I have Guideline #2: Focus on the heart of the servant. When a servant leader is faced with what he or she perceives to be imperfections – even in other ministry’s affairs – (be it a wrong color, sub-standard design, conflicting schedules, erroneous sentence construction, noise, mess, character flaws, etc., etc.) look to the heart of the servant. If there is goodness of intention, zeal and passion to serve present there then everything else becomes a minor, minor thing.

Yes, correction is needed if there is cause. From the book “The Way of the Shepherd”, a gift from a loving sister in my community, I read pain must sometimes be inflicted (perhaps in the form of “reprimands or poor performance reviews”). In Chapter 3, “Help Your Sheep Identify With You”, the story was told about a ewe whose ear had to be tagged to identify it as belonging to a flock. The shepherd had to hold the ewe tight to tag it. Later, the shepherd held the ewe again but this time to comfort it. Both times, the sheep was held close – the “first to cause pain” and the next “to offer encouragement”. The lesson given was “for great leaders, leadership isn’t just professional; it’s personal.”

Taking that lesson out of the corporate world and applying it to community service, I will rephrase that as: for servant leaders, leadership is less professional; it’s more personal. I remember this line from a mass song: “I will hold Your people in my heart.”

Another thought flashed in my head as I prayed about the situation: focus on the heart of the servant to keep it from being broken irreparably. Handle it carefully like fragile china. Undue criticism could after all dampen the spirit of a volunteer. Let me stress this vital point: community servants are volunteers. Their only compensation is love.

The calm slowly creeping inside me as I write this is proof positive that the Lord tasered me just to get this guideline recorded. And so I pray that the next guideline He sends will descend upon me from a serene cloud of wisdom. My servant leader’s heart is fragile too.