I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

Lately I've been increasingly aware of my faults. To some degree, that's because I've had a few encounters where they've been drawn out of me and hung up for the world around to see. Those are never fun times. More often then not, those moments of exploitation lead me to frustration rather than redemption, but I guess that's the case with most people. Why the human race is so content to exploit each others weaknesses is something I will never quite figure out...

But there have been other instances where my faults have been brought to the surface with love and direction. Such has been the case at ENCM lately. In the past few years that I have been volunteering my time and service I have garnered more responsibilities during my work. Truth be told, I have a really hard time being organized and ordered. My world tends to be some sort of abstract painting, messy and colorful and very rarely planned. This works really well for a single 32 year old without a care in the world, but not so much for that same person in me that finds myself in the position of baring the cares of others. The more I read about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus the more I see that most of the point of all of this is to face others, let them in and bare their burdens with them, and share yours...

That being said, I found myself, very often, over my head in the work that I wanted to do at ENCM. I would miss meetings, feel overwhelmed with tasks that should be simple, and very often hide away from my responsibilities because I really didn't know how to manage them. Now, it would be easy to exploit that weakness. It would be easy to just cut me loose and ignore my sincere concern for others that could be well hidden behind my disorganized ways. It would be easy to judge me or categorize me or loose sight of my strengths because my weaknesses were so glaringly obvious.

Thankfully, a non-profit like ENCM relies so heavily on God's grace that the very nature of the organization and those that find themselves working there is to hand that grace out to those of us that are lead to their doors, for whatever reason.

I say all of this to say that ENCM is in a new stage of growth. Thanks to the leadership of our board we have now organized ourselves into committees, with a board member at the helm of each committee. The creation of these committees, although maybe not a direct reaction to my organizational issues, has been a way that I have found it possible to actually accomplish the things I know I can be a part of at ENCM. These committees are a way of organizing volunteers, planning events, rallying fundraising attempts, working on the buildings and creating a board culture that is in direct service through the organization. This gentle way, whether indirect or not, of helping me organize myself and accept the help of a bigger body with strengths to match my weaknesses has enabled our organization to move forward with a decent amount of order and progress that will be measurable in the coming months. And I am loving the chance to thrive in spite of my weaknesses!

Creating a structure to support the weak may not be sexy, it may not be capitalistic or appealing, but it is gracious and it's inspired me to work on the things that I'm bad at, knowing I have a group of people willing to partner with me to move forward and achieve something far bigger than ourselves. This is what gives me the hope of Christ as it's shown through real Christian community.