Ownership
When’s the last time you had to raise your hand to admit that you were wrong? This experience never gets easier and is always a lesson that grows us in humility. Our culture pushes hard against personal responsibility. It’s someone else’s fault, it shouldn’t be this hard, or here’s a quick fix to make it go away. There’s much that could be said here, but the word I want to focus in on is ownership.
During one of my stints with Youth With A Mission (YWAM), I was staffing a school and my role was that of the Work Duty Coordinator. The main purpose of this job was to make sure our students knew when they were supposed to be where for their weekly work duty responsibilities.
Two-thirds of our class was assigned to weekend cafeteria duty. Every other weekend they served in the campus cafeteria where they would feed the roughly 1,000 people on campus. We alternated weekends with one of the other schools and I had received a text early in the quarter requesting a change to flip-flop one of our originally assigned weekends.
You probably see where this is going. I had communicated that change to our class, but had mixed up the weekends in my presentation. One Saturday morning around 7:15 a.m., while sipping my warm cup of coffee overlooking the Kona-side coast of the Big Island, I received a text from the campus work duty director asking where everyone was. Breakfast for 1,000 people was scheduled to be served in just under 90 minutes and the cafeteria was empty.
I assured them this wasn’t our fault and referred them to the other school’s leader. I scrolled back through my phone, thinking I should at least double-check the text exchange from a month-and-a-half prior. Nearly spilling my coffee, I realized my error. Our school needed to be there ASAP or the campus wouldn’t be eating.
I remember being so humbled and thankful at the quick response of everyone in our school from the school leader all the way to students who weren’t even assigned to this work duty – everyone showed up. We got the meal served and it was what happened after that stuck with me.
The manager of the cafeteria circled us up and began to reprimand our group for our lack of responsibility and tardiness. Knowing the only person there in the kitchen to blame was myself, I hopped in as respectfully as I could during a pause in the lashing, stepped in the middle of the circle and told him this was completely my fault and turned and thanked everyone from my school for showing up and having my back.
I then asked to speak to the manager in his office alone. I explained the situation and after he cooled down, he forgivingly understood. There was nowhere for me to hide here. I had to take ownership of my mistake – I didn’t have a choice.
But I want to also be honest with you, ownership is something I haven’t done well in other areas of my life. There are hurts in my past and failures I’ve had that I’ve spent a long time refusing to take ownership for. Some of them are surely not all my fault, and yet others my choices certainly played a role in the outcomes.
Regardless still, I am where I am. And that is something I need to take ownership for. Friend, there’s a million different reasons why you may be where you are. And yes, some of those reasons may have been a result of other people treating you poorly. But we are where we are. What are you going to do about it now? Ownership is practiced in the present.
Maybe you’re recognizing your walk with the Lord has been placed on the back burner. Or maybe your self-control has been out of control. Or maybe you just haven’t been that kind to people lately. There are two things to say in closing. The first step to ownership is employing the self-awareness necessary to know where you are. Secondly, it’s now up to you do something about it.
Friend, God has made us intentionally with minds that are fit to consider, employ, and practice. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2). A transformed mind implies a mind that was once misdirected that then gets redirected.
God has done and continues to do so much for us, as believers. But He has also given us responsibility and has charged us to take ownership. The clear, full, intended way to consider the world is through the lens of the One who created us. Friend, lets together take ownership of where we’re at and step forward responsibly towards the intended way to live.
