Growing Weary?

One of the main leadership lessons I've been learning lately is that this work is tiring.  Thinking, planning, praying, writing, talking, serving, helping people work through change ... it doesn't stop.

But I also know there is a difference between being tired and being weary.

We usually get tired when we are working hard, from doing things that need to be done, from thinking forward and planning and collaborating to make it come to pass.

We usually get weary when we having been working hard and it seems we are having no effect.  Either the vision doesn't catch on, the planning goes too slow (or too fast), or the people don't cooperate (or actively resist).

Likely we've all been both of these at different times, working on different efforts.  What it reminds me is that the work of leadership will only happen when we have a calling, a passion, a specific desire to do something.  Otherwise it's too much and we'll throw up our hands and walk away.

The corollary, of course, is the critical step of defining to what it is that we are called.  It can be easy, at times, to think that we are called to a specific job, a specific ministry, a specific project.  But I would argue that careers and positions are simply expressions of that call, vehicles to live out our call or our passion.

That is why connection as my passion can enable me to direct a local Portland nonprofit ... at the same time co-directing an international microenterprise ministry ... at the same time I chair a denominational board.  In each case, the work that I do is cast a vision for connecting people to people, groups to groups, organizations to organizations.

And while I am almost always tired, it is that vision, that passion for connection, that keeps me from growing weary.

What is your passion?