I recently read a story about a NY Cab driver who decided to take away every possible negative and leave his customers with only positives. This required him to spend extra time each day cleaning and polishing his cab. He purchased drinks, other refreshments, and reading material for his customers and decided he would treat every one of his riders as a first class VIP. The result? This man basically runs a limousine service out of his yellow cab. He rarely picks up random people anymore because most of his customers call him personally to get a ride. Rather than complaining like those around him he decided to do the best job he could do and let the chips fall. The key is that he created favorable conditions for those chips.
This story made me think. How many times do we fail to achieve success or get noticed in our given industry simply because we refuse to separate from the pack and rise above? With this in mind, I decided one something that I believe to be true.
There are two ways to be noticed in this world: Excellence or Incompetence. Only one happens by accident.
Think about it. When you watch the news, it is either a story about someone who did something incredibly stupid or they did something incredibly innovative or brilliant. This, I believe, speaks volumes for the church today. Are we going to follow the paths of the masses and decry the decline of Christianity in our world with the strongest possible language and then stand aside in our Holy Huddles and hope someone shows up or are we going to take what we have been given, do the best we can with it and pray that God will help us create favorable conditions for the chips to fall?
How scary would this world be if the likes of Leonardo Da Vinci, Martin Luther, Jonathan Edwards or Abraham Lincoln had decided that the world was simply too broken and should be left alone? I shudder to think what the church would be like had Luther not decided to stand up against corrupt leadership and reform the church.
The point in all of this is that we have a choice to make everyday. Do we do the best with what God has given us or do we complain and look elsewhere, wondering why nothing good ever happens to us? We may not change the world, but we can certainly change our attitudes and rise above reality.
2 comments:
What do you think that would look like in church?
I think in church life this would mean churches would stop copying each other and find out what their unique gifts are as a congregation. Instead of a Church in the Texas Panhandle trying to look like a specific church from Orange Country California, they would develop their own "model" that would reach and teach the people in their given area. I guess the short answer is it would do away with one size fits all programming and lead to greater creativity by individual congregations.
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