I’d like to think I would do it differently if I could, but clearly you can’t go back. A friend of mine Randy uses a phrase weekly, and it helps me to have a better attitude going forward.
Regretfully, in my 20s & 30s I was more immature than I’d like to admit. Reflecting with some painful clarity, I cringe remembering how rude & arrogant I was -- I was cocky to say the least. Youth, strength, and talent can go to your head, messing with your heart. What I needed back then was a better perspective, a perspective I gained by returning to my roots in concrete and meeting Randy.
When I transitioned in my mid-40s from traditional full time pastoral work to planting a church, I entered a realm new to me by becoming bi-vocational. These last 11 years of my 28 years in ministry I have been in two worlds, so to say. I returned to the work I did before following the call to ministry, concrete construction, and the Lord has blessed our family beyond imagination as we minister and work in concrete simultaneously.
Strangely enough, I’ve learned more about people, myself, and my relationship with God serving bi-vocationally. And, I’ve met some wonderful people I never would have had I remained in traditional pastoral ministry, amazing people like Randy over at Summers and Taylor.
Randy is a dispatcher for a local concrete company, which means he and the team of dispatchers he works with deal with logistics. They schedule with contractors the delivery of the concrete, they coordinate with the batch plant, and the drivers. I talk to dispatch dozens of times weekly. Stressful isn’t a strong enough word for the job they do; their work is like a combination between being air traffic controllers and herding cats. The people they deal with and the responsibilities they carry are demanding. Yet, Randy has a perspective I’ve needed for years, and hearing him each week repeat his mantra helps me immensely.
By the way, you might not know it but the second most used commodity in the world is concrete, second only to water. As a building material, concrete is used twice as much as wood, steel, aluminum, and plastic all combined. Concrete is everywhere, in fact one could easily make an argument that our civilization itself rests on the durability of concrete. We have roads, water treatment plants, structures for industry and education, our very homes, and more, all dependent on the enduring strength of concrete.
As we try to strategize and schedule work, at least once a week Randy will say over the phone, “We are all in this together.” In other words, we are all doing the best we can, we all have challenges, we all need to be patient & understanding and let’s all do our best to cooperate -- like the old saying, “Teamwork makes the dream work.”
Most everyone we know is facing difficulties and trials. Life is hard and the more we see life as a competition, the more difficult we make matters -- this is true in our churches, homes, places of work, and our communities. Our Political system is probably the “best” example of how counterproductive competition in life is.
There’s a powerful metaphor mixed-up within the word “concrete.” Unpacking its etymology, “Con” meaning “together,” and “crescere” meaning “to grow up,” by deconstructing or taking apart the Latin combined to give us the word “concrete,” we get the captivating imagery of “growing up together.”
The Bible is filled with examples of how we grow transformationally, together. Spiritual maturity requires cooperation and mutual participation through a community. Consider Prov 27:17, “Iron sharpens iron, So one man sharpens another.” Here’s a “concrete” example from Eph 4:15-16, “15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
All too often we compete with others for status, attention, or position, and in doing so we fail miserably to reach our full potential. Life would be better all the way around if we could only learn to respect each other and cooperate more, that’s why I appreciate Randy’s phrase “We are all in this together.”
Regretfully, in my 20s & 30s I was more immature than I’d like to admit. Reflecting with some painful clarity, I cringe remembering how rude & arrogant I was -- I was cocky to say the least. Youth, strength, and talent can go to your head, messing with your heart. What I needed back then was a better perspective, a perspective I gained by returning to my roots in concrete and meeting Randy.
When I transitioned in my mid-40s from traditional full time pastoral work to planting a church, I entered a realm new to me by becoming bi-vocational. These last 11 years of my 28 years in ministry I have been in two worlds, so to say. I returned to the work I did before following the call to ministry, concrete construction, and the Lord has blessed our family beyond imagination as we minister and work in concrete simultaneously.
Strangely enough, I’ve learned more about people, myself, and my relationship with God serving bi-vocationally. And, I’ve met some wonderful people I never would have had I remained in traditional pastoral ministry, amazing people like Randy over at Summers and Taylor.
Randy is a dispatcher for a local concrete company, which means he and the team of dispatchers he works with deal with logistics. They schedule with contractors the delivery of the concrete, they coordinate with the batch plant, and the drivers. I talk to dispatch dozens of times weekly. Stressful isn’t a strong enough word for the job they do; their work is like a combination between being air traffic controllers and herding cats. The people they deal with and the responsibilities they carry are demanding. Yet, Randy has a perspective I’ve needed for years, and hearing him each week repeat his mantra helps me immensely.
By the way, you might not know it but the second most used commodity in the world is concrete, second only to water. As a building material, concrete is used twice as much as wood, steel, aluminum, and plastic all combined. Concrete is everywhere, in fact one could easily make an argument that our civilization itself rests on the durability of concrete. We have roads, water treatment plants, structures for industry and education, our very homes, and more, all dependent on the enduring strength of concrete.
As we try to strategize and schedule work, at least once a week Randy will say over the phone, “We are all in this together.” In other words, we are all doing the best we can, we all have challenges, we all need to be patient & understanding and let’s all do our best to cooperate -- like the old saying, “Teamwork makes the dream work.”
Most everyone we know is facing difficulties and trials. Life is hard and the more we see life as a competition, the more difficult we make matters -- this is true in our churches, homes, places of work, and our communities. Our Political system is probably the “best” example of how counterproductive competition in life is.
There’s a powerful metaphor mixed-up within the word “concrete.” Unpacking its etymology, “Con” meaning “together,” and “crescere” meaning “to grow up,” by deconstructing or taking apart the Latin combined to give us the word “concrete,” we get the captivating imagery of “growing up together.”
The Bible is filled with examples of how we grow transformationally, together. Spiritual maturity requires cooperation and mutual participation through a community. Consider Prov 27:17, “Iron sharpens iron, So one man sharpens another.” Here’s a “concrete” example from Eph 4:15-16, “15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
All too often we compete with others for status, attention, or position, and in doing so we fail miserably to reach our full potential. Life would be better all the way around if we could only learn to respect each other and cooperate more, that’s why I appreciate Randy’s phrase “We are all in this together.”
