Andy's books include the newly released The Grace of God, as well as Communicating for a Change, Making Vision Stick, Next Generation Leader, The Principle of the Path, and How Good is Good Enough? Andy lives in Alpharetta, Georgia, with his wife, Sandra, and their three children.
I want to jump into a pretty raw and disturbing leadership truth as it relates to being present.
The more successful you are, the less accessible you will become.
For some of you this is frustrating. For others of you it is liberating.
This isn’t a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just a thing, thing. It’s just a leadership truth.
Because you’re leaders you love to grow and love progress.
This is actually not a bad thing at all. There’s something in a lot of us that says, “Not me.” Especially if you’re in our 20s.
This unavoidable truth tends to drive us in one of two directions.
- Refuse to face this reality and burn out trying to be accessible to everyone.
You can only truly be accessible and present to a very few people.
When you were called to ministry, it was all about people, not programming. You saw someone and it broke you’re heart, or someone ministered to you and rescued you. And you wanted to do that.
- Use success as an excuse to become more inaccessible than necessary.
Now I’m a big shot. Everyone starts conversations with me, “Andy, I know you’re busy…” I get the opportunity to say, “Go, be warm and well fed…”
Over time it’s easy to use our success to become even more inaccessible than we need to be.
I understand we start on one end and end up on the other.
Unawareness is bliss. The more unaware you are of the needs of the people around you, the less put upon and obligated you feel. The more you know, the more overwhelmed you feel.
There are no 15 minute problems. People say, “Pastor, can I come see you for 30 minutes?” You’ll talk for 30 minutes, and I can’t say, “Well, I know you have problems, but your 30 minutes is up.”
It used to be that the only bad things you knew about were the ones in your community. We’re aware of all of the sick people in our churches because of social media. Every time you turn on your computer you’re aware of some need.
We all just want to close our doors and study, go in our office and do busy work. Before long, our hearts grow cold, and we’re no longer accessible. We’re no longer present.
If you’re a preachers kid, you kinda life your life twice. You see everything your dad did. Every time you were in a restaurant someone would come over to talk and start with a 5 word lie: “I don’t mean to interrupt…”
There’s going to be so many broken marriages, prodigal sons, cancers, etc. you could give everyone 15 minutes and not get anything done. You could give everyone 3 hours and still not solve any problems.
We’re at California Pizza Kitchen, and I’m behind my assistant and her assistant. I’m at the salad bar, and I’m almost through, and someone says “Andy!” hysterically. “Andy! Andy! Andy!” And she starts into the story of her cancer. She’s on some kind of medication, seriously. I’m hoping she remembers this conversation. I’m talking and listening. I’m not rushing. I’m present. And then she sits down in the area you wait for your table… so I sit down. So now my assistants are watching me and aren’t sure what to do. They can’t hear what’s going on.
It’s heartbreaking. If you’re in ministry, you have those moments. You say, “It’s too much.” You just want to draw.
The Apostle Paul speaks to this.
Galatians 6:9 – Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Galatians 6:10a – Therefore, as we have opportunity,
You’ve got limited time and opportunity, but as you have opportunity…
Galatians 6:10 – Let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
Galatians 6:2 – Carry each other’s burden, and in this way you will fill the law of Christ.
You can’t shut it all out.
You can’t take it all on.
This is one of those primary tensions you have to manage. This is not a problem to solve. If you ever solve this problem, your heart is hard toward people.
Years ago I coined a phrase that has defined my ministry:
Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone.
We struggle with this because when we were a kid adults told us, “If I give you one, I have to give everybody one.”
You remember what you thought? “No you don’t. I won’t tell anyone.”
There’s this silly adult idea that that if you do it for one you have to do it for everyone.
I wanted to take my son on a father-son outing. He goes to a public high school. So I pull him out of school.
Then I want to take my middle school son out of his private Christian school. They tell me “no.” They tell me he’ll get a “0” in everything, that if they let him out they’ll have to let everyone out.
This creeps into our ministry. If you do premarital counseling for one couple, you feel like you have to do it for everyone. If you work with someone with a struggling marriage, you have to work with all of them.
No you don’t.
I tell pastors they need to be working with one struggling couple all of the time. Hopefully not their own. You don’t need to do all of the funerals, but you need to do some of them.
In church world, we feel like we have to be fair. Fairness ended in the Garden of Eden. Nothing has been fair since. Fair is not anything to shoot for.
Don’t be fair. Be engaged.
- Go deep rather than wide.
Give someone your cell number and tell them you’re available any time day or night. - Go long-term rather than short term.
We need to see it through to the end, win or lose. We need a success story every once in a while. We need to decide to work with one or two all the way not everyone for a few minutes. - Go time, not just money.
Don’t just support mission trips. Go on one. And go the next year, and take your family.There’s nothing better than getting up in front of the people you lead and your heart full of what God is doing in someone’s life.
I learned this in 1987. I’m preaching for my dad one Sunday night downtown on Peachtree Street. Because we were downtown a lot of street people were around. Every now and again one glassy eyed, high as a kite street person would come down for the alter call and commit to anything if you gave them a bit of money or helped the find a place to stay or meet.
So I walk into my dad’s office and this woman behind me says, “Preacher, do you believe what you just preached?” I had just preached on forgiveness. She said, “I need to talk to somebody about that.”
There’s this moment when you think, “Let me get your number. We’ll set up a meeting…” But every now and again you get a nudge. The Holy Spirit says, “Not this one, not this time.”
What I didn’t know was that was the beginning of a 20 year relationship with a woman named Jane. Typical story. Over the next 20 years, I learned about medicare, Medicaid, how to tell if someone was lying. It was an education. Hillary Clinton was right, it takes a village. I got my roommate involved.
She lied and stole, lied and stole, lied and stole.
We wanted to get her a job, she had some typing skills. So we were trying to find her a house, so we found this house with three college guys with an extra room.
So one day Jane comes in and says, “I quit my job.” I’m like “No! Why?” She says, “I have AIDS.” She didn’t think it was fair to her employer or the guys she was living with. And then she disappears.
Then she came back a few months later and says, “I lied. I’m not HIV positive.”
I told her, “If you ever get clean. God’s going to use all of this crap. And you’re going to have to go back to Mississippi and confront what happened there.”
Jane finally got clean and got a job. She comes to me and says, “I want to start a ministry for abused women. How would I do that.” So I’m like… “Uh…”
So she starts a group in her apartment and invites me to come. And I don’t want to go hang out with all of these women who hate men. So one time she says the boyfriends and husbands are coming. So I’m like, “Uh, sure, I’ll come.”
So Jane’s sitting there facilitating this discussion with these women. She’s got her Bible in her lap, facilitating this discussion. She’s just dealing out grace, dealing out grace. Sandra and I couldn’t say a word.
We ran out to the car and just sat there, and suddenly burst out crying. Part of was the pane in the room. Part of it was the complexity of those relationships. Part of it was the fact that Jane was sitting there.
She called me and said with a giggle, “Andy, you were right. God is telling me to go back to Mississippi.”
She would call, and I would call. I struggled to maintain that relationship.
Her brother called and told me she passed away, and she wanted to leave what she had to the church.
So I got a check a couple of months later for $6000. I held that check. I’ve held bigger checks, but I’ve never held a more precious check.
My dad was in high school and felt called to ministry but didn’t have any money for college. So this man, Julian Phillips, asked him what he wants to do after high school. He said he wanted to preach, but had no money for college. So Julian talked to Rev. Hammock about it. So a week, and two weeks, and a month went by, and he didn’t hear from him. And one day Rev. Hammond called and said, “We’ve got you a full ride to the University of Richmond.”
How would you like to be the pastor that sent my dad to college? This is a pastor who I’m sure talked to many high school boys. He couldn’t send all of them to college. But he got engaged.
When you do for one what you can’t do for everyone, you often end up doing for far more than just one.
Don’t be fair. Be engaged. Go long. Go deep. Go time. Don’t make excuses. Don’t let people guilt you because you’re not fair.
If we all do for one, maybe that’s how we change the world. But even if not, we’ll have changed for someone.
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