A few years ago I was floundering. I had been working in one place for about 3 years and felt like nothing had any meaning anymore. Sure, kids were coming to events and on the outside the groups looked like they were flourishing, but from my vantage point I knew that we were stalled. I was running groups for the sake of running them, with no idea of where we were going, no vision of why I was running these groups in the first place.
I felt a bit like a Captain of a ship at sea, giving orders, making sure everyone felt like they had purpose and a job on my ship, no one would have imagined that I wasn’t completely in control. And yet, all along, unbeknownst to them, I had no idea where our ship was heading. We were just wandering around the ocean under a guise of direction because from inside our ministry it seemed organised and together.
At the height of these feelings, I sat down with a guy I used to work with, and poured all this out on him. I confessed that I felt like I was in a rut.
He thought about it for a moment, and then asked me what was making me feel stuck. Was it the repetition of the programmes themselves or a lack of vision in the running of them?
Because, he said, there’s a difference between a rut and a groove. They may look the same from the outside, you’re doing the same things. With a rut, you’re stuck, but with a groove, there’s purpose and direction.
These few words changed the way I see what I do. I was challenged to take weekly or regular programmes and see them not as an obstacle to be conquered or endured, but an opportunity to be grasped. If I could become cohesive about how I do ministry, focused and purposeful, then I could find that groove.
I haven’t mastered this. Not even close. In my new job, I’m yet to find this grand direction, vision and strategy. I suppose this series of blog posts is an attempt to push me to do so.
Strategy. It’s the secret that turns a rut into a groove.
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