The Year of Manning Up: NOT Taking Responsiblity

On the other hand, leadership/manning up also involves NOT taking responsibility for certain things. How is anyone going to learn if you keep on doing everything for them? How are people going to be grown, stretched, developed, if you don't allow them opportunities to fall, mess up, fail?

So what does this mean? This means, for one, that I have to stop acting like everyone's functional Saviour. This means that I need to stop doing everything for everyone. This means that whenever someone phones and needs me, it won't always be the best thing for me to drop what I'm doing to be with them. This is not to say that I shouldn't be dependable, but it is to say that I shouldn't be their one and only.

Not being everyone's functional Saviour also means acknowledging that I too need help. Kirsty recently told us how she and her husband had gone to a friend's house for supper, along with a whole bunch of other people. Being the lovely people they are, they offered to help with the dishes, only to have Lisa [I forget her real name, so this will have to suffice], the woman of the house say, 'No, no, don't worry about that, I'll do it tomorrow morning.'

The next Sunday, Tom [being the equal opportunities activist I am, I've also forgotten his real name], the man of the house, came over and said: "I have Lisa's permission to tell you that she's sorry for not letting you help her wash the dishes, and for allowing you to create this over-idealistic picture of her as the perfect woman. She likes people to think that she's capable of doing everything: for looking after the house perfectly, running around after our children, looking after me, helping with my ministries, but she's not. She can't do it all, and next time you're more than welcome to help with the dishes."

This post seems to have morphed from being about NOT taking responsibility into functional Saviourship, but I suppose that if we look at Christ's example, even though he was the Saviour, the Perfect One, He was never a functional Saviour. Look at the way He was with His disciples: there were no magical shortcuts between towns and villages- those disciples trudged the full distance following Jesus. Yet, the disciples undoubtedly learnt so much from him

So it appears then, that in manning up, I'm going to have to walk a fine line between too much responsibility and too little. Hope this made sense.. my head hurts. Sleepy time..

PS I picked up the term 'functional Saviour' from somewhere, so I hope I'm using it correctly...!!!